The banquet of life

Some chapters are boring, some are interesting.  Some people seem to be a little bland, but when they stand up to speak they passionately set forth on their topic.  Grand ideas are floated by some students in the attempt to solve all problems, while others are happy to deal with the details.  You open your mouth and say something interesting, and the next day you open your mouth and sound like an idiot.  You take it as it comes I suppose.  Being in Kingston for classes and discussing interesting ideas with other students always takes me to a little piece from Epictetus that never fails to put a smile on my face:

Remember that you ought to conduct yourself
as if you were at a banquet.
When something is passed around to you
stretch out your hand and take it politely.
If it passes by you, don't ask for it to come back,
it's not its time.
Perhaps there'll be some left when it comes back around.
 (Encheiridion, 15)

It's a girl!!!!

So, the question is, if you find out you're going to have a daughter, can you just read "boy" stories to her anyway, or am I confined to princesses and frogs.  If that's the case, I'm going to be an upset papa.

The good life isn't ruled by money, false dichotomies

False dichotomies are one of my favorite (I just cursed at my computer because it told me favorite should be spelled favourite) things.  They're one of those things that are so amazingly useful that no one seems to care that they're absolutely nonsensical. Your false dichotomy for the day is:

I would rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable.

The good life isn't ruled by money, part 1

The problem isn't with money, the problem is with you.

The good life isn't ruled by money, intro

For the most part my first year university courses are a blur.  Besides the obvious problem of drinking, there was the fact that I was reading like a madman, though most of it wasn't really for the courses that I was taking.  I had read The Social Contract when I was in high school, but I remembered next to nothing from it.  After my second reading in my freshman year I came away with at least that first line, "Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains."  Rosseau thought that those chains could be broken, and they have been for the most part.  Unfortunately, most of us have willingly replaced them with another set of chains of our own forging.

If you're reading this blog, you are probably in a place that is freer than any other place has ever been in the history of the world. About 45% of my readers are American, 45% Canadian, and the rest scattered around various other free places in the world.  The unparalleled freedom present in these locations is only matched by the willingness that people have to be dominated by money. We face the problem not of being held in bondage, but in deciding whether we will allow ourselves to simply be the means through which another person can make money.

More to come later this week...