Left of Bizarro

Where punching people in the face is okay and pleading for head is rape.

ἀρετή

You are your virtues, your potential for goodness, excellence. The mistake is to identify yourself with your vices. You are not your vices. Your vices merely prevent you from becoming yourself, from doing what you are capable of, at any given time.

(Christianity is the application of this view of oneself to others through love.)

No age is insane. Your sanity is judged against it.

The House of Language

Is a philosopher better able to tell you what a thought is? Is a poet better able to tell you what a feeling is? Is an architect better able to tell you what a house is?

If you want knowledge, you must learn how to change your mind. If you want power, you must be open to a change of heart.

Do not write mediocre poetry about problems that could be solved with good policy.

After you have gone too far the truth always lies in the other direction.

Your prose determines what you can do with a poem. We might say that our prose "affords" us our poetry.

(Cf. Jonathan Mayhew)

The good and the true make you better. True perceptions make you see better. Just actions make you do better.

Institutions protect us from the caprice and malice of people who don't like us, and people we don't like, likewise, from us. With strong institutions you cannot punish someone you don't like on a whim. They have to have done something wrong.

To Those in Search of Social Justice

If you want to experience joy, kindness, and understanding, you must not close yourself off to pain, selfishness, and bigotry. If you want the love and wisdom of others, you must be able to suffer their foolishness, too, their hatred.