Ideas, insights, and opinions

Since long before I started turn-stone, I have kept a notebook of ideas for possible topics to write about, as well as quotes, and books and references which I might want to explore further.

Here are some excerpts from my notebook. I have tried to avoid bromides and the sort sayings that litter church newsletters. Some of the ones below appeared as part of previous posts, and I will certainly use others for future topics. All are original with me, although they certainly reflect ideas I have gotten from reading throughout my adult life, from lectures and sermons, and from conversations with other people, many of whom are smarter and wiser than I.

• Our sense of control, individually and societally is at base illusionary.

• There is a difference between having opinions and being opinionated. The former implies a curious and open mind, the latter rigid ignorance.

• We have a responsibility to our children and theirs, and theirs. We need to deal justly not only with each other but with all posterity. That obligation is far more important than profits for the next quarter or the chance of winning the next election cycle.

• I am a conservative and a fundamentalist. I want to conserve the natural world and I believe in the fundamental importance of respect for it.

• Abandoned towns are symbols of our arrogance, ignorance, and greed. Immigrants might be our best chance to save rural America. One approach might be a 21^st-century version of the Homestead Act.

• The grass is never greener across the fence, for wherever you go you take yourself with you, including your frustrations, failings, and problems. You cannot escape yourself.

• A life of quality is more important than a life of quantity.

• Green energy developers are no different than large real estate developers. Their defining characteristic is that they are motivated by and infected with blind greed, as are venture capitalists and others who measure good exclusively in economic terms.

• I seek interstices in the rigid organizations that comprise our lives.

• Blind partisanship is intellectual cowardice.

• When I turn into myself, sometimes I turn into myself.

• I am deeply pessimistic about the future, my main hope being that I might be wrong.

• In too much of our lives we are subject to the bullying of verbal narcissists, e.g., the domineering loudmouths who hijack meetings, such as home owner associations, PTAs, and church boards of trustees.

• Rather than pay attention or lend attention, we should give it, wholeheartedly.

• With the advent of social media, we have become increasingly superficial. Rather than share our own ideas, we share, jokes, links to videos, and cat photos.

• I have tried with mixed success to customize my life, to think of it as an a la carte order, not as a fixed menu dinner, either haute cuisine or the Wednesday blue plate special.

• True patriotism is devotion to community and is the antithesis of selfish individualism.

• Balancing awareness with despair is a primary challenge of living.

• The length of life is not as important as the width.

• I would like to live a long time, but not too long.

• How to die is the last lesson a parent can teach a child.