Aphorisms II

-7. Truth isn’t some neat fact about the universe that only makes some trifling difference in the grander scheme of things.

-6. Truth is a hard edge against your life’s blood forcing you to acknowledge its beautiful brutality.

-5. Truth is the rape of a loved one and being forced to acknowledge that “should” and “ought” aren’t worth a drop of tears.

-4. You just know the words, and truth is so much more than words.

-3. There will come a time when our sense of home becomes alienated and irresistible, and we will grasp at the stars.

-2. A knight of faith is a good man in Gomorrah. What happens to a good man in Gomorrah? What happens to Gomorrah without a good man?

-1. A pun that crosses languages is something nearly beautiful.

0. Keep going, Sisyphus!

1. If I couldn’t When I put myself where I can’t say goddamn or goddammit, I would probably kill myself.
2. Titanic amounts of great effort are required to produce the slightest amounts of good results—The Earth was starforged, diamonds are earthforged, we are wombforged.
3. Effort does not guarantee success, and success is sometimes alien to effort.
4. The Hero is cheered,, because in the Hero we see, acknowledge, and feel validated in as strugglers.
5. The collective noun for Hero is journey. A journey of Heroes can lead to an oligarchy.
6. The Master-Slave relation is one hell of an idea. It’s so beautiful, so enthralling, that one may spend all its time in marvel of its dynamic solitude.
7. The above is counter-revolutionary.

8. The above is counter-revolutionary. Do not be fooled by equivocators: can you imagine a man trying to set down and lift something at the same time?
9. A bearded man once said that philosophers seek to interpret the world, but the point is to change it.
10. Once a man devotes himself towards bringing his thought into action, he soon forgets that this is not his natural state.
11. What are called social scientists are all battle-philosophers who have been skirmishing out in the wild for so long they often forget what they are.

12. All I’ve ever wanted to be was a human being.
13. She laughs at me.
14. If I valued your opinion, I would have killed myself by now.

15. Perspective is the most dangerous ur-weapon in the world. It is the trigger to the trigger, the handle of the handle, the bowstring that must be pulled to pull bowstrings.
16. Sometimes the pickets win battles and think themselves generals winning wars—behold the scientiamors, bastard descendants of the philosophers, dishonorable descendants of Socrates! Look now to what weapons their perspective has brought to them to wield by degrees! Yet bow your head—when they will perish they will as the noblest of bastards!

17. If this was a cracked article there’d be funny pictures everywhere. Today everything is drowning in images and the deluge proceeds.
18. Sometiems it strieks me that we as a peopel could ues a moer logical spelling system. I think Orwell and Huxley were both wrong: there is no need to rob people of comprehensible language nor need to stupefy them with bliss—stupefy them with incomprehensibility and the language will overcorrect to protect sensibility.

19. Philosophy makes us not-machines, and I don’t ever want to be a machine. This is why they killed it.
20. A bearded man once said that if there were no gods, there should be. A man with a mustache said god is dead, and we have killed him. But I say unto you, if we have killed god, we should at least consider paying damages.
21. If the above sentiments were shared by more people, there’d be less futility in the world.
22. An end to useless suffering would only serve to make what remains that much more important.
23. Between coincidence and pareidolia falls a shadow—looking like any damned thing.
24. The above is seditious; possibly counter-revolutionary.

25. There should be a federal Department of Validation charged with sending out agents to make sure citizens feel like their lives are a worthwhile enterprise.
26. On no account are bioethicists to be hired by the Department of Validation.
27. Flatcaps are the Trotskyest of all headwear. Be careful to trust ideas that can be put on and discarded like clothing; dress appropriately for conditions.

28. I share my birthday with Jessica Alba, Jay Leno, and a dead dictator.
29. Some days are not worth the light.
30. Some knights tilt at windmills and the rest call their foes giants.

31. To lose the credit that you know is truly yours—is there a higher agony?
32. Man fills the world with wills and expects it to talk back.
33. Man is a silly creature.
34. Fanaticism born from hatred is a dehumanizing ignorance.
35. Sociopaths are monsters: their smiles are bright and full of knives.

36. There is a heroic principle in life, and it is the realization of struggle as a human effort.
37. To realize oneself as a struggler beyond the point of contemplation is to become a god.
38. There are beautiful things that swift-footed reason can detect hovering over the waters of existence, delicious and iridescent. It takes more than reason to catch them.

39. All a self is, is a thing that considers itself the kind of thing that is doing the considering of itself. An authentic self is the kind of thing that does what such a thing does.

40. A word is a container for meaning that can be periodically emptied and refilled.
41. A name is not a like a word: it is a staging ground upon which a private world is built.
42. Accordingly, the same name can reoccur in unexpected ways and the wrong name can bring down the sky.

43. Skyhooks make poor anchors.

44. “My sacred love, my guiding light, my Hero!” surely cried Leander as he was lost to the dark of the sea.
45. Without Leander, Hero threw herself into the sea, too.
46. When the last man is lost in the last night, he will be followed by the million heroes of his million ancestors. The stories will all finish and there will be silence in the cold.