Always rationalize others’ behaviors and sharply question and apologize for your own, no matter what the behaviors in question.

Never justify your own uncivil behavior, no matter what may have happened to inspire it. Own the blame, and blame no other.

Express the incredibly strong internal responses that you have to things in the quietest possible terms, and only at times and places specifically set aside for doing so.

Guard against the emergence of an “activist mentality” in your own thoughts and behavior.

Support longstanding norms even if at the moment they result in catastrophic outcomes to which you are stridently opposed.

Put others first and yourself second.

Remember that now is rarely the time; the immediate moment passes quickly, and time itself is quite long.

— § —

Why do we live in a troubled society in the conceptual middle of a troubled globe?

Because these rules, so long known by so many wise people, are the precise opposite of what have been broadly embraced by the public these days. Every one of these, when flipped to its opposite, is now the conventional wisdom.

Nobody stops to realize that if we flip each of these to its opposite, we must also flip the title to read: “Rules for living in a selfish state of eternal offense and factional warfare.”

I once thought the most important thing about social media was its multiplexity in combination with its abridgment of time and space.

I was wrong.

The most important thing about social media is the end of the newspaper, not so much physically as metaphorically, c.f. Anderson.

Yes, it will be a postnational world. It already is, even within nations.

No, it will not be a harmonious one.

We are entering yet another “new age of barbarism,” to recycle the term once used by the Frankfurt School scholars.

— § —

I do not blame this on the right.
I do not blame this on the left.
I blame it on both.
On both sides, bigots and extremists, all.

Per Yeats, the center has failed, once again, to hold. Humanity seems incapable of preserving it.

— § —

The term #failson is an interesting one, but I think it’s more #failcitizen that is at stake. I’ve posted before about the lack of grown-ups.

I have spent my own life trying very hard to grow up. Every single social and economic force in our current milieu militates against it. As a result, we are and are surrounded by people who don’t know how to run a world.

— § —

Contrary to what it may look like here, I haven’t had much time over the last couple of years to think much about the world, about the things I spent most of my life studying.

I have been digging, for the past year in particular, into myself. There is much to work out. And every time I think I may be halfway through the tunnel, I realize that this is likely not the case, but that I don’t know where the tunnel ends.

I have been working on developing frames of mind to turn toward the world while remaining also tuned in to myself. But this is a work in progress.

— § —

I don’t call myself a Christian because I’m not one. But I will say that by and large, the Christians and the Buddhists and the Taoists have it right.

The university professors, the activists, and the raging hordes on Facebook busy sharing posts about coconut oil and lemongrass have it wrong. Evil doesn’t always recognize the evil in itself.

— § —

The world is haunted. Only the children are not. I suppose it has always been thus.

Only these days, people don’t like children. They’re jealous of them—because they’re vying for the same attention and recognition that the children are.