Three Rules of Living a Public Life
Rule #1: Never, ever admit that you are wrong. It makes you look weak.
Rule #2: Gently flipflop if you have to admit you possibly were factually challenged. Attack the other side as having misled and then say that honest people can reach different conclusions … and if that doesn’t work:
Rule #3: See Rule #1.
Filed under Trash Talk, Zen Wisdom
Half of all problems can be ignored and they will turn out all right. Somehow magic will happen.
The other half of the problems we will just make them worse by trying to fix them. If you don’t have a good solution then don’t muck with it.
The important thing is to focus on just a few things which make a real difference and let everything else work itself out.
Filed under Uncategorized
In all things I feel blessed. Have come to appreciate that any bad seems to usually work out in some way that is for my good.
A good attitude can work miracles. Stay curious. Challenge authority. The biggest loser is someone that doesn’t try to play the game.
Life is a game. You may not like politics or whatever, but not liking something will not keep it from coming to you. Life happens. Play it well.
Filed under Uncategorized
Most get into politics for the right reasons. They want to do good.
Party politics mucks that up quickly with its ‘either you are with us or against us’ mentality. So you end up voting for things that you wouldn’t normally vote for, sell your soul to get votes for things of interest to you, and find that people that give you money didn’t actually ‘give’ it … they were just prepaying for favors to be asked later.
Filed under Politics
If I can get anything wrong then I will. If I can make some miserable mistake then I will.
… And if I can learn from that and make money, and I do, then I will.
Life happens. Learn from it. Don’t fight it. Go around walls.
Filed under Uncategorized
Zen – Freedom and Fattening
“People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid….and remember anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening. Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats…. just sayin.”
– Pamela Cara Cherry Manley
Filed under Uncategorized
The problem with discussing social issues in public is that they usually end up being unsocial.
Once we get beyond describing ourselves as Heinz 57 with legs … well that’s when the fight breaks out.
Filed under Civil Society
If you can’t argue against your own beliefs convincingly then you really don’t have strong beliefs to begin with.
To me it seems only reasonable that if you wish to be an effective advocate then you must also seek to be an effective devil’s advocate, juror and jurist, commentator and debator all existing simulteneously with the other.
People that argue their position because they have ‘principles’ often ignore any data which does not support their position.
The claim of taking a position according to some principle is rarely based upon anything more substantial than ‘I already have an opinion and I am saving my brain capacity to decide what to have for lunch’.
If you really have principles and follow them, and believe them right for imposing upon others, then surely you have given thought to counterarguments and counterevidence. Surely. Surely … at least occasionally. Some evidence would be nice.
Filed under Civil Society
The recorded history of the world as we know it is encapsulated in the signs below. It has always been so and will always be so.
Idiots of the World: Unite! ... or why there is no peace in the Middle East or whereever 'do unto others before they do unto you' is the philosophy.
I normally say thank you to whomeever I borrowed something from. Oops! I forgot to write down the source. So, I haven’t overlooked you, whomever you are. No, I have forgotten you. Good news: I will remember eventually. Perhaps in 2013 …. or …
Filed under Civil Society
The problem with liberals is that they are right half of the time.
And conservatives often have a point that doing nothing is sometimes perhaps better than doing something.
Our challenge is to not get run over by stupid.
Filed under Civil Society, Politics, Zen Wisdom
