When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. – Lao Tzu
The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. – Stephen King
We alone own the definition of who we are. – Montel Williams
Do the very best you can. – Dale Carnegie
Do you need to discard the ways that other people define you and then let go of all the negative thinking that you yourself associate with your reality? Do you need to study science, history, and all the possibilities open to you? Should you reassess your own language and thought?
Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. – Lao Tzu
Does good language require truth and virtue? Do failures in language create failures in education, government, and creed? What is wrong with language, education, governments, and creeds? What might be the best insights into language, education, government, and creed? Consider 4 candidates:
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. – Kipling
Every form of education is also a form of indoctrination. – Aldo Leopold
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a poor servant and a fearful master. – George Washington
Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few. - George Berkeley, bishop of Cloyne
What are the worst limitations of a particular language? One answer might be the ignorance, arrogance, hypocrisy, and self-deception of the users of that particular language. Is profound ignorance profoundly universal?
To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; not to realize that you do not understand is a defect. – Lao Tzu
A speaker of English might say, “I know what a cat is.” The speaker might be able to recognize a cat as opposed to a dog, to recount many facts about the behavior of a cat, and so on. Does the speaker possess highly detailed knowledge about the genome, physiology, and anatomy of a cat? Does the speaker truly know what a cat is? If the speaker of a language does not understand what a cat is, then is it likely that the speaker does not understand what education, government, and creed really are?
When cleverness and knowledge arise, great lies will flourish. – Lao Tzu
Does education always fundamentally depend upon government and creed? Consider five hypotheses: Law courts govern the decisions made by law. God governs the universe. Money governs the psychological universe. Causality and chance govern the outcome of physical events. Hopes and fears govern choices. Does our understanding of government fundamentally depend upon the various creeds we believe in? Consider a proverb: Whoso doth no evil, is apt to suspect none. Is the world the rule of the cynical, rich, and powerful over the naïve, poor, and powerless? Consider two books: “The Prince” by Machiavelli and “War Is a Racket” by General Smedley Darlington Butler. Is the world ruled by hypocritical language and Machiavellian creeds? Are concepts of virtues and sins essential in languages and creeds?
Do greed and pride write human history? Is hypocrisy built upon convenience, tradition, greed, and fear? Is self-deception built upon denial, appetite, pride, and hope? Does good use of language require wisdom, humility, honesty, openness, courage, self-control, and hard work? Does good use of language require profound knowledge of nature? Did Leonardo use the visual language of sketching and painting to explain his discoveries in nature?
Nature at its most beautiful, simple, and direct displays invention with nothing lacking and nothing superfluous. – Leonardo da Vinci
Is nature the dictator of good language? According to the book “The Art of Readable Writing” by Rudolf Flesch, “The classic tradition is that a writer should use the language so that the reader doesn’t even notice the author’s words and the way they are used. Anybody who has ever thought about the problem of literary style has come to the same conclusion. …
The history of English prose is, in fact, the history of the plain style and successive attempts to replace it by something else. All these attempts broke down in the end; the plain style is the only classic style that has survived.”
Would Flaubert have agreed that the novel equals the French language equals art equals religions equals life? Does language fundamentally consist of words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs? Does religion fundamentally consist of words, prayers, chants, and rituals? Both language and religion consist of human life in various aspects – but which aspects are most fundamental?
According to Rudolf Flesch, “The ordinary citizen with his customary reverence for everything that’s printed and his awe for everything that’s unintelligible … can’t rely on what he has learned in school … what he has been taught about English literature has muddled his judgment and furnished him a handy excuse for being unable to say anything simply.” Should language be beautiful, simple, direct, and natural?
Speaking, writing, illustrating, performing, and acting should be parts of nature. According to the actor Michael Caine, the rehearsals are the work and the artifice; the performance is relaxation and disappearance of artifice.
Does a good creed result from hard work and cruel honesty based upon nature and skepticism? Does a bad creed result from complacency, fanciful artifice, emotional comfort, and ignorance of nature?
Nature is not human-hearted. – Lao Tzu
Life is not fair; get used to it. – Bill Gates
Do false creeds promote bad governments that corrupt language and education? Is the worship of money truly my creed and that of a significant percentage of others? Does the ideal critic focus more on sins than stupidities?
Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires. – Lao Tzu
Is criticism the arrogance of the mediocre? Is science a plausible basis for every form of criticism? If a work is not scientifically proven wrong, then what justifies the critic?
Silence is a source of great strength. – Lao Tzu
Is every objective statement made in any language a form of biological hypothesis involving the words of the language? Does the meaning of any group of words involve various biological hypotheses?
According to Goethe, people limited to one language fail to deeply understand even their own language. According to Vladimir Nabokov, it is impossible to translate poems and novels.
Are words like fleas that can hop from one language to another? Are words that are inadequate for mathematics and science too human and too slippery for accurate criticism?
Without molecular linguistics and molecular psychology, how can you precisely analyze what you say? When asked if molecular reductionism were his philosophy of biology, Jim Watson asked, “What else is there?” According to Francis Crick, any hypothesis in biology is suspect unless thoroughly verified at the molecular level. Should every aspiring critic consult Crick’s ideas on biology? (See Crick’s Tips.)
Criticism might differ drastically with acceptance or rejection of miracles, immortal souls, and supernatural entities. Should those who want truth welcome criticism from all sources?
Does accurate criticism require science? Are skepticism and objectivity two basic prerequisites for scientific accuracy? Niels Bohr said, “Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation but as a question.” According to Jim Watson, most scientists are stupid and they work on unimportant problems. Do ignorance and stupidity prevent us from seeing the profound unity of all things? Is the worst form of ignorance the failure to recognize what is important and what is unimportant? Is the worst form of stupidity the blind stupidity that cannot recognize visionary intelligence greater than itself?
According to Euler, everything is closely connected to everything else. Are virtues, evils, truths, falsehoods, arts, and criticisms closely connected to each other? According to Jim Watson, “,,, no one benefits from false praise, and only if the truth is honestly faced does the possibility exist for rebirth.”
Are exposure to false praise, isolation from informed criticism, and denial of personal sin often barriers to improvement? According to “Problem Bosses” by Grothe and Wylie, “The bosses believe they’re good people managers and their employees think they aren’t. But the employees are like the emperor’s attendants. They don’t straighten their bosses out. They don’t give them honest, candid feedback that will counter their tendency toward self-deception.” Consider two proverbs: Conversation teaches more than meditation. Write down the criticism of him that loves you, though you like it not at present. Jim Watson wrote, “Constantly exposing your ideas to criticism is very important, and I would venture to say that one reason both of our chief competitors failed to reach the double helix before us was that each was effectively very isolated.”
Is isolation from criticism likely to be more a character flaw than a social circumstance? Thoreau wrote, “I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to each other.” Is language both barrier and bridge between two minds? Is obscurity in language often either a deliberate stratagem or an approved tradition? Does good language serve virtue and vice equally well?
What is the fundamental basis of good communication? When two people talk to each other, both need to have some understanding of the what and why, the strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities and problems of the communication. Ability, experience, knowledge, motivation, opportunity, wisdom, empathy, self-control, and common sense are important in communication.
Because people are social animals, success in life depends upon communication. Usually, success in communication depends upon ability in dealing with people and life’s problems.
Consider three insights about life. According to Thomas Edison, the greatest discovery is discovering what people want. According to Henry Ford, one of the greatest keys to success is looking at things from the other person’s viewpoint and considering things in terms of the other person’s interests. According to Leonardo da Vinci, only the inadequate student fails to exceed the teacher. Do you need empathy, knowledge, and humility for good communication?
By failing to understand what the other person wants, needs, and hopes for, do you sabotage your communication with that person? Consider a proverb: A good Jack makes a good Jill. If Jack and Jill want to improve each other’s lives, then they need to understand each other’s needs. The book “His Needs, Her Needs” by Willard F. Harley, Jr. lists the man’s five most basic needs in marriage: (1) sexual fulfillment; (2) recreational companionship; (3) an attractive spouse; (4) domestic support; (5) admiration. The woman’s five most basic needs in marriage are: (1) affection; (2) conversation; (3) honesty and openness; (4) financial support; (5) family commitment.
One-to-one relationships and group relationships have various attributes and problems. Bad forms of communication and the silence of noncommunication might damage relationships.
According to Archimedes, knowing when to speak requires knowing when to be silent. Consider three proverbs: Denials make little faults great. A word spoken is an arrow let fly. Every heart hath its own ache.
Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross identified the five stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. According to the book “The Adult Children of Alcoholics Syndrome” by Wayne Kritsberg, there are 4 general rules that operate in the alcoholic family: rules of rigidity, silence, denial, and isolation.
“The alcoholic family is inflexible. … The alcoholic family does not provide the kind of flexible environment that children need in order to experiment with life.”
The rule of silence “extends not only to talking to people outside the family, but also includes talking to the members of the family itself. The rule of silence not only bans talking about the behavior and actions of the family, it also bans talking about feelings. This no-talk rule is so strong that children who grow up in this family system have difficulty in expressing themselves for the rest of their lives. …
The denial of the alcoholic family begins with the denial that there is any problem with alcohol. As the behavior of family members become more and more dysfunctional, the denial becomes stronger and stronger. …
The alcoholic family is a closed system. … As the alcoholic behaviors become more and more extreme, the family becomes more and more isolated. … The alcoholic family isolates itself from the community, and the individual members of the family isolate themselves from each other.”
Kritsberg defines co-dependency as “the condition of a person who is emotionally dependent on an outside source to get feelings of self-esteem and who focuses on external stimuli in order not to feel his or her own pain.”
In any significant relationship are self-control, spirituality, openness, honesty, and commitment needed to confront problems and deal with them? Does any good relationship require empathy, flexibility, wisdom, humility, humor, and kindness? Is profound religious belief an important virtue for the survival of relationships, individuals, and families?
According to the entry for “Roman Law” in the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, there was “decline in religious sentiment and public and private virtue which was fraught with … disastrous results in the later days of the Republic. … The ever-increasing disregard of the sanctity of the marriage tie is one of the features in the period which strikes even the most unobservant. … This looseness of the marriage bond, as was naturally to be expected, had its effects on the other family relations … The decline of morals had an equally marked effect on the transactions of daily life …”
Are morality and virtue essential for good results in language, education, government, and the practice of a creed? Are virtue, truth, and communication closely bound together?
Consider some proverbs. Live not upon the opinion of other men. The first step to virtue is to abstain from vice. He that thinks too much of his virtues, bids others think of his vices. Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied. Vice often rides triumphant in virtue’s chariot. If thou must deal, be sure to deal with an honest man, All men naturally have some love of truth. Children and fools tell the truth. Craft must have clothes, but truth goes naked. The usefullest truths are the plainest. Truth and honesty have no need of loud protestations. Truth is a means, not an end. Truth is the daughter of Time. Truth may sometimes come out of the devil’s mouth. Truth needs not many words; but a false tale a large preamble. Truth should not always be revealed. Truth is truth to the end of the reckoning. Truth will sometimes break out unlooked for. Truths and roses have thorns about them. Nothing is good or bad, but by comparison. If a communication is good, then what are the systems of truth and virtue that provide the comparisons for good and bad?
Are there at least eight basic categories of action in communication: to reveal truth, to soften truth, to conceal truth, to distort truth, to reveal falsehood, to soften falsehood, to conceal falsehood, and to disguise falsehood as truth? Is your concept of truth always dependent upon your concept of virtue? Should you always make sure that your sources of self-esteem and inner satisfaction are fundamentally virtuous? In the material world, are money, selling, and manipulation inescapable?
Consider a proverb: Have but few friends, though much acquaintance. Does deep friendship require a deep commitment of time, effort, and devotion?
Are money, selling, and hypocrisy involved in acquaintance disguised as friendship? According to the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, 3 fundamental techniques in handling people are: (1) Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain. (2) Give honest and sincere appreciation. (3) Arouse in the other person an eager want.
Consider some proverbs. There is a scarcity of friendship, but none of friends. A true friend should be like a privy, open in necessity. False friends are worse than open enemies. Few there are will endure a true friend. Fire and water are not more necessary than friends are. Friendship consists not in saying, What’s the best news? Friendship is not to be bought at a fair. Friendships multiply joys, and divide griefs. He is unworthy to live who lives only for himself. He knows best what is good who has endured evil. He loseth nothing that keepeth God for his friend.
Is your best friend either God or what other people perceive as God? Is the human mind an electromagnetic field that protects itself by strange and subtle stratagems provided by Darwinian evolution?
In his autobiography, Clarence Darrow suggested that people who claim to believe in God, angels, and miracles don’t really believe in the supernatural – if they did, then they would be eager to sponsor scientific experiments to test their beliefs. Such experiments could reveal precisely how the supernatural realm is manifested in the natural realm. Does truth have anything to fear from criticism? Should truth-seekers promote criticism from all sources? According to Goethe, most requests for criticism are veiled entreaties for praise. Why should God need praise – except to reinforce the placebo power of belief in God?
According to Einstein, “ Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Ideally, should a person possess a religious devotion to understanding science, as well as a scientific devotion to understanding religion?
How are science, religion, language, and communication related? Does music provide a biological framework for religion, language, and communication? According to Will Durant, “ Music and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love; the deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most emotional of arts.” According to Helmut Walcha, “Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all.”
According to “Musicophilia” by Oliver Sacks, “… even the most exalted states of mind, the most astounding transformations, must have some physical basis or at least some physiological correlates in neural activity.” Is music the bridge between language and religion, both in culture and in the structure of the human mind?
Consider three proverbs. Hope is grief’s best music. Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper. Music helps not the tooth-ache.
Does music have an important role in medicine? According to “Musicophilia” by Oliver Sacks, “Music that helps patients with parkinsonism, for example, must have a firm rhythmic character, but it need not be familiar or evocative. With aphasics it is crucial to have songs with lyrics or intoned phrases, and interaction with a therapist. The aim of music therapy in people with dementia is far broader than this – it seeks to address the emotions, cognitive powers, thoughts, and memories … It aims to enrich and enlarge existence, to give freedom, stability, organization, and focus.”
Might every individual, every team, and every community need freedom, stability, organization, and focus? According to Bill Gates as quoted in “Bill Gates Speaks” by Janet Lowe, “Maintaining focus is a key to success. You should understand your circle of competence, the thing you’re good at, and spend your time and energy there.”
Without understanding language, education, government, and creed, how can you understand your own circle of competence? According to Goethe, there is nothing more appalling than ignorance in action. Should you act by what your have learned from good books and important role models? Time and fame reveal books and people. According to Emerson, fame is a great convenience for the reader, because one or two generations are enough time to identity the best of a generation’s good books and important people.
People who criticize the ignorant masses seldom realize that all of us belong to the ignorant masses. Consider three proverbs. Never judge from appearances. Judge not of men or things at first sight. You cannot judge of a man till you know his whole story.
Should you always suspect money and the profit motive, especially when you are involved as buyer, seller, or bystander? According to Samuel Clemens, honesty is the best policy unless there is money involved. Consider some proverbs. Honour and profit will not keep in one sack. Hypocritical honesty goes upon stilts. Hypocritical piety is double iniquity. The hypocrite pays tribute to God that he may impose upon men. God keep me from the man who hath but one thing to mind.
Is the worst form of single-mindedness a maniacal focus on money? To understand our world, must we follow the money? Are financial panics caused by the clever greed of the few and the stupid greed of the many? Are government’s first three laws to keep power, to gain money, and to keep on gaining more power and money? Is government at best a monopoly business with a bad attitude – and at worst a concentration camp?
Is our world filled with languages, educations, governments, and creeds that are often unappreciated or unsuspected? There might be approximately four to five thousand languages in the sense that Hungarian is a language. However, each line of work has its own jargon, slang, and rituals. According to Balzac, every profession has its shibboleths and stigmata. Are stigmata nonverbal communication and psychological business? To some extent, is every business a religion, and every religion a business?
Is language a way of doing Darwinian business among people? In terms of Darwinian evolution, words originated as ape-like noises correlated with perceptions, thoughts, and emotions. Do people attribute precision, objectivity, and values to words that the words themselves cannot support? Are language and creed inseparable?
Education within a tribe employed language, music, and religion to propagate the genes of the tribal members. Men governed women by brute force. The tribal chief and the witch doctor employed government and religion to guide the tribe. There are many languages, educations, governments, and creeds that are informal, individual, and communal.
A religion might have several levels such as folk tradition, political institution, and theological system. Each person might have dozens of creeds, formal, informal, unexamined, and perhaps partially subconscious.
In the realm of emotion, spirituality, and community, should we believe in the creed of democracy? In the realm of knowledge and accuracy, should we believe in the creed of elitism based upon empirical science, outstanding talent, or experienced judgment?
How can we survey our own ignorance? Spirituality, curiosity, and humility might be one starting point. The books of Aldous Huxley, especially “The Doors of Perception” and “The Perennial Philosophy,” explain various aspects of spiritual perception and religious experience. The books of Oliver Sacks, especially “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and “Awakenings,” reveal how all of us depend upon the normal functioning of our brains. One surveying scheme might be to consider 100 experts in 100 domains, each with 100 recommended books. There might be a useful summary of each book.
According to the French historian Taine, any subject, no matter how complicated, has a useful summary at any desired degree of brevity. Consider a proverb: He that lives with the muses shall die in the straw. The preceding proverb might be a summary of George Gissing’s novel “New Grub Street.” Are novels and other types of fiction as important as nonfiction?
According to Margaret Culkin Banning, “Fiction is not a dream. Nor is it guesswork. It is imagining based on facts, and the facts must be accurate or the work of imaging will not stand up.” Is imagination a machete that cuts a path through knowledge? Without imagination, how can you understand the strengths, weaknesses, and limitations of your knowledge? Without imagination, how can you grasp future possibilities beyond your current knowledge? According to Einstein, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
What shall be the ultimate history of the human imagination? Is God the promise of eternal life, eternal joy, and eternal reunion with loved ones? Is science the promise of giving people god-like powers? Consider a proverb: Never trust to fine promises.
What is the most unlikely promise of religion? Shall good ultimately triumph over evil? Is the universe a quantum machine that the human imagination makes up a story about? Is human history a fight between good and evil? According to Jonathan Swift, “Most sorts of diversion in men, children, and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.” Is the fight between good and evil merely a child-like belief that human life is universally important?
A Christian church might have a prayer list for people who are sick, grief-stricken, or otherwise afflicted. Yet, have more Christians prayed for a winning lottery ticket than anything else? According to Jonathan Swift, “A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.” Are greed and hypocrisy the two great wheels of history’s chariot?
If money, greed, and hypocrisy are mixed with science, technology, and optimism, then do we have a recipe for baking the future? Should we fear the imaginations of people like Einstein more than anything else? What are the four most human and most complicated features of the human mind? Is the soul a captive of love, sin, hope, and fear? Is the soul a captive of imagination, stories, beloved people, and beloved creed?
Can society survive without a strong creed affirming good over evil? Can people truly trust an atheistic moral relativist? Samuel Johnson said, “If he really does think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.” Is life a process of counting spoons, measuring sugar, and mistrusting both business and pleasure?
Should we learn the truth before business and pleasure? Do we need to become humble, confront reality, and find the truth about what should be important in our lives? Should we create a priority list of important truths as our guides in life? Do we need to listen, observe, value, empathize, organize, prioritize, follow, lead, learn, and teach?
Do things in the order of their importance. – Dale Carnegie
Lead, follow, or get out of the way. – Thomas Paine
Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. – Bertrand Russell
God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me. – Thomas Huxley
Is science the way to get the facts? Are science, religion, and government three different forms of business? In the global marketplace, money, technology, competition, sales, marketing, communication, and education increase in importance. A CEO provides vision, leadership, and realism by selling to and communicating with customers, employees, and suppliers. Leading is persuading is selling. In today’s realism, you are the CEO of the company consisting of you. Are language, education, creed, and communication essential for business? Are concepts of God and sin essential for business?
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest sources of learning. – Bill Gates
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. – Warren Buffett
Are the worst sins of your lower self the greatest sources of learning for your higher self? Are our failures in the past the price we have paid for the diminished value we have in the present? Do we have even more collective failures than individual failures? Do we need to help each other reassess our language, our lives, and our ways of communication and interaction?
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. – Henry Ford
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