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You and I live in a time when we are being bombarded by information and images every second of every waking hour. One moment we are watching images of violence and war, and the next we are shopping online.

All of this serves to form a collage which is difficult to disentangle. This accounts for a good deal of the anxiety people experience today.

I am happy to say that I have never hated anyone. It has always struck me as a toxic emotion and one that harms the hater and not the hated. Actually, I consider people who hate others as very immature, exhibiting clear signs of emotional retardation.

Hatred skews the judgment away from clarity and factuality and towards obscurity and unreality.

I feel sorry for those who hate, and those whom their hatred infects.

Be careful what you wish for, not only because you may get it and regret it, but because of what you may become in pursuing it.

Tolerance is a noble and desirable trait. A problem arises however when we attempt to ascertain just how much tolerance we ought to show to the intolerant.

If we tolerate intolerance, will it spread like a harmful virus?

This is no easy dilemma to resolve.

People who claim to be nonjudgmental almost always do so with a smug satisfaction regarding their superiority.

The truth is they are either quite deluded or quite dishonest.

Everyone judges.

People often sit idly by waiting for an opportunity to do some great good. All the while, myriad opportunities to do small goods are all around them.

These are the opportunities which we must seize.

No one is completely right in their apprehension of reality, and no one is completely wrong either.

To find those truths most certain, observe where opponents agree.

Even from those opinions with which we adamantly disagree, there is something to be learned.

Those opinions which we find lacking in evidence are still worthy of our consideration since they must contain at the very least a morsel of truth to have convinced others of their veracity.

I have always considered pacifism a self defeating ideology. That which is worth defending demands defending.

If a people deem their culture morally indefensible, they are not long for this earth.

By far the worst display of disarmament in our time is the moral disarmament of the west.

The value of boredom is little understood and completely unappreciated.

It is from boredom that many of the greatest discoveries issue forth.

Nature abhors a vacuum and human nature abhors boredom. Discovery or creation is the cure.

Disruptions can be welcome or unwelcome, depending on the circumstances. When you are up against a hard deadline on a project, disruptions are most unwelcome. When you are in the middle of a conversation which you would like to escape, a disruption is welcome indeed.

A distraction is one of those things that can be either good or bad, depending on the circumstances.

So for example, it is inadvisable to allow oneself to be distracted when operating a motor vehicle. On the other hand after working on a project for some time, a pleasant distraction may be just what is needed to recharge one's batteries.

That's the whole idea behind the concept of recreation, where we are supposed to recreate ourselves afresh.

As we argued in the previous post the purpose of thought is to bring our conclusions and beliefs into the closest alignment with reality of which we are capable.

Of course, this is not the end, but rather a critical station along our journey.

But journey to where?

The answer of course is to the best course of action for us in any given situation.

Have you ever thought about the purpose of thought? Probably not.

Thinking deeply requires a good deal of energy and focus. Most people prefer to invest their time and energy in other less strenuous pursuits. It is therefore left to a few to do all the serious thinking.

But, what exactly do we hope to accomplish by thinking deeply?

Is it not to arrive at conclusions or beliefs regarding something of interest to us?

Is not our aim, if we understand it correctly, to bring our conclusions and...

Collectivists, authoritarians and totalitarians always and everywhere strive to focus our attention on group issues. They break us down into race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc.

The goal is to pit us against one another and to divert our attention from the machinations in which they are engaged.

The antidote is to focus instead on the individual.

Remember, groups do not think or act, only individuals do.

What it means to be a centrist, like so may other concepts, has evolved into something unrecognizable when one considers its classical definition.

Once upon a time it meant someone in the center politically. Neither left nor right.

Today it signifies a person in favor of a centralized governance with purported experts in charge of the rest of us rubes.

The concept 'entrained thinking' describes the behavior of members of the educated class whose education effectively insulates them from paying attention to novel, and potentially beneficial ideas and concepts which originate outside their narrow scope, and are often put forward by people less qualified than themselves.

Many groundbreaking discoveries have been made by people who were essentially amateurs in the field in question.

Government education (sic) can never be more than an indoctrination program.

If educating the young were really the goal then all schooling would be privately provided by the market.

There can be no end to the controversies regarding what may be taught or allowed in public schools. Prayer being just one example.

The only solution is to allow entrepreneurs to provide the variety of curriculums the public desires.

Each parent would then be able to find a school suitable for them.

It is difficult if not impossible to exaggerate the importance of persistence in the realization of one's goals. Having a sound strategy is of of course important, but persistence alone enables us to overcome the inevitable obstacles the path to success is strewn with.