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Thoughts on Proverbs 4
Proverbs 4King James Version (KJV)
4 Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. 2 For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law. 3 For I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother.
This connects the law of the father as generational. A father was once a son.
4 He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live. 5 Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. 6 Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. 7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
This reminds the son that Wisdom and the responsibility to it is older than the relationship before him. It is often we get caught up in our personal relations or temporal relations and ignore the meaning before us.
Miscellany #1 Some English Proverbs
1. Absence. Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones.
2. Absent. The absent are always at fault.
3. Absent. Long absent, soon forgotten.
4. Aching teeth. Who hath aching teeth, hath ill tenants.
5. Adversity. Adversity makes a man wise, not rich.
Notes #5 Sponges are Slow
A while back I made reference to the process of cephalization. This was honestly my off the cuff attempt at an argument with the tools I had available. Either I have an over-active imagination which is determined to pattern match everything, or there are similar constraints between internal decision making systems of biological organisms and human organizations. Naturally this is not going to be a one to one mapping. If we can extract certain patterns, as many others have done, from the biological origins of judgment, we might learn something about our own strange systems.
Honestly I have too much to read before I will have any semblance of an answer. So rather than sit quietly and think to myself I have decided to subject my readers once again to thinking out loud. This week I have some commentary on a paper about sponges.
Origin of the neuro-sensory system: new and expected insights from sponges
Notes #4 The Bitter War 1881
Common Core is not what you think
I’m going to provide some push back against the narrative that Common Core is designed for the lowest common denominator to make children more equal. I do not dispute that it is ineffective nor that it is insane,simply the purpose for which it was created or serves. While I cannot get into the heads of the people who support Common Core I can speak to the theories behind its creation.
The essence of the thought behind Common Core is the Cargo Cult.
Notes #3 What we Value
Many people who support traditional gender roles attempt to establish their arguments based on biological differences between the genders. This is honestly the best approach, not just because it is the truest argument but because it is the most honest. I’m going to make a dishonest argument. Why? Well, because it’s fun.
Let’s establish our counterfactual, let’s begin with the assumption that women are better than men at everything. Yes, from this assumption I can indeed argue that women should still go back to the kitchen. The concept that we will first need to understand to make this argument is highest and best use. This is a difficult concept for people to understand within themselves. You might be amazing at writing, you might even be the best writer in the world. Your grammar is perfect, your stories are perfectly structured, and you don’t have a bad idea in you. Even so, if you were, let’s say, a CEO of a multinational corporation your time might be better spent being a CEO. It could very well be the case that you aren’t the best CEO in the world, but that do to shortages and your own personal experience with the company you are more valuable as a CEO than as a writer. That it is not to say it would be wrong to be a writer, but there are many people who are very good at a great number of things yet only a few of those skills are economically valuable.
Thoughts on Proverbs #3
Proverbs 3 King James Version (KJV)
3 My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: 2 For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.
We begin with a now customary reminder of the law. This is the King’s law. He is passing down his wisdom to his son, and subsequently children in general. The promise is that the King’s law will bring the keeper a long and peaceful life. This could easily be interpreted as a threat, though it is not framed as so. It is an implicit threat but one baked in a promise. Law brings peace and long life. If we look at this literally, lawless regions tend to lower the life expectancy of the population. Drilling down, the more lawless the person the lower their life expectancy (all things being equal).
Performance Art
I’m in the middle of the Sea of Fertility Tetralogy so I thought I’d celebrate with a post. Naturally the title itself has a certain historical irony. When Yukio Mishima tried to wake his country from its slumber it rolled over gave his bloody corpse a pat on the back went back to sleep and forgot to reacquaint itself with its wife. Japan right now is very much the opposite of the Sea of Fertility. It is the island of afertility. It hasn’t even gone through the motions enough to demonstrate real infertility. I suspect this is the result of a spiritual death of an eccentric nation occupied by a strange insidious foreign religion. Fortunately, for them they have failed to understand some of the most suicidal aspects of high democratic theory…maybe something was lost in translation? Is green a central concept of high progressive theology, or maybe the ability to pronounce r’s?
Thoughts on Proverbs 1
Proverbs 1 (KJV)
1 The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;
Let us begin with the apparent but important. This passage begins with the naming of Solomon. Not only is it important that we know who’s proverbs these are but who he is, king, and who his father is. What is implicit in this statement is that both station and lineage are important. The speaker has authority not only because of who he is but who his father was. This is something I will remind you which is lost today. Implicit in the assumption of Tabula Rasa is that it doesn’t matter where you came from. While it is true that truth can come in many forms we should be careful to listen to the those who have the lineage to back it up. Knowing where someone came from in today’s day in age is not easy, but a family which can maintain itself through the generations is both something to behold and to value. The chances are always higher that the son of a good family will be able to say something worthwhile, that being said today higher is a low bar.
Lawrence Glarus 