The body is articulated by light and weight.
The world is articulated by lenses and levers.

Our language is articulated by our passions as much as our reasons.

Two Democracies

A democratic government asserts sovereignty over the land on behalf of its people. It obligates landowners to serve the needs of the population. A simple mechanism for ensuring democracy in this sense is for the state to collect rent in the form of a land value tax (apportioned according to rental value) and distribute it to the people as a universal basic income (a citizen stipend delivered to all regardless of wealth or income). The challenge for the individual remains to live creatively.

Most modern "democracies" assert sovereignty over the people on behalf the banks. It obligates the citizens to serve the interests of finance. To this end, they deploy a complex apparatus of differentiated income and sales taxes, ramified by exemptions and deductions, with minimal taxes on land, leaving ample opportunities to profit from speculation and to store wealth in "havens" of various kinds, while granting "welfare" only to those who can demonstrate need. The individual's predicament here is to earn a living.

"When quoting an aphorism, name recognition is everything." (Anonymous)

A philosophy is something much more general than the philosopher but

a poem
is something much more specific
than the poet.

Some of our problems are philosophical, but we don't often talk about poetic problems. Sometimes, however, a solution will seem poetic.

It is sometimes said that philosophical problems are precisely those that can't be solved. The point is to recognise that there is no solution.

I think poetic solutions are those that have no problems. We say an event or deed is "poetic" when it extricates itself entirely from the problematic.

The heart
beats
in the body,
as the soul
bears
the mind.

The hand
comes to rest
on the surface
of the table,
which appears
darkly glazed
to the eye.

Thought is to feeling
as the eye to the hand,
the mind to the heart.

Emotions are to concepts as
muscle to bone.

In order to make a machine that thinks, we would have to make a being that suffers. We'd have to put it through that suffering.

A machine that thinks but does not feel is not just undesirable, it is unbelievable. It would be unimaginative—thus, unimaginable.

From the Devil's Dictionary of Social Theory

social science, n., The study of society without an understanding of money. Traditionally, it is the business of accounting for social ills without causing embarrassment to land holders. From the early twenty-first century, it has existed mainly as a consulting product, offering putative solutions to social problems that imply no real cost to the unearned wealth of billionaires. In general, a description of society will be deemed "scientific" if it cannot be used to support arguments for a universal basic income funded by a single tax on land value.

—Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
—Then let us forget and be doomed to win the War again.
—No, you fool. You are doomed to fight it.

No nation ever won a civil war.

Wars, unfortunately, are not always won by the just. Mostly, they are won by the strong.

Technology offers power in exchange for pleasure, said Norman Mailer. He surely had a point. Witness how the martial arts have been replaced with machines of war.

If you want to understand the fervor of our protests you must understand the depth of our obedience. It is because we are so hopelessly obedient that our protests are so fervent, so desperate. In our hearts, at the end of the day, we know that we will do you as you say. That is why we demand that our orders be just. That is why we are burning our own cities in effigy of you.

The world is everything that is the case.
History happens to everyone.
God sees all and
is doing all He can.

Train your seeing as you train your doing.
Be as articulate in your commands
as you are in your statements.
Try to understand. Also, to obey.

"Our job as scientists is to discover truths about the world."
(Science determines "the truth of things".)

A politician's job is to make just decisions for history.
(Politics determine "the rights of man".)

Wisdom is to knowledge
as love to power.