I believe it was Russell who said, “ We all live the same lives”. That’s not Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, but the actor Kurt Russell. Just the same, it has the ring of truth. You can study Plato and Wittgenstein and not learn as much as you would from a few Fortune cookies.
If you remember the film “My Dinner With Andre”, Wally tells Andre that Fortune Cookies know exactly who they are going to. Mine do. Here are two recent ones: “Your senior years will be happy and fulfilling, and “Establish harmony and balance in your life”. For all I know Sarah Palin’s cookies say: “You will make big money spewing nonsense”.
I ponder something the dramatist Franz Werfel once said, “Mildness is wisdom”. This seems to be true everywhere but in present day America where someone mentally disturbed can buy a gun and go on a murder rampage.
You can study books on philosophy but they are only the tech manuals on morality. My insights mostly come from literature. “Either it comes easy or it doesn’t come at all”, “The greatest thing life can give you is youth”, “Her voice was full of money”, “Hit the baseball where they ain’t”. “The habit of careful veracity can be extended to the whole sphere of human activity, producing, wherever it exists, a lessening of fanaticism, with an increasing capacity of sympathy and mutual understanding.” That’s not Kurt, that’s Bert.
By George, I think you've got it!
ReplyDeleteI believe it was George Bernard Shaw who wrote, "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world." However, much of what I read in the paper isn't very funny, so must be lies. Watching the news, I'm reminded that George Carlin said, "By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth." George Orwell said much the same, "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidarity to pure wind." But hey, what do I know..."Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair." That's Burns...not Shaw.