It is often the guiltiest conscience which speaks the loudest and most often.
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Whisper #375
A temporary hell of one’s own making is preferable to an eternal heaven resting on another’s whim.
Whisper #374
Sometimes, we are like onions, peeling the layers of previous and oncoming generations, moving towards the core that is the nothing we are.
Whisper #373
It is only human for someone who ascribes wholly to liberalism (as they understand it) to also be convinced that the alternatives are fascism, nazism, and communism. After all, we project ourselves on the world out of necessity.
And they are not necessarily wrong in their belief about the alternatives.
But when that conviction is so prevalent and entrenched as to become a blind spot, then you have the curious phenomenon of people who think that anything different to their point of view (liberalism notwithstanding), no matter how slight, necessarily leads to the alternative extremes.
This is what happens when an idea is conflated with the person (or people) who ascribe to it or opine to — when they think they embody it and so what they say about it is true, indubitable, perfect and incapable of objection.
Ideas are always spoilt by people and ever it was thus.
Why? — Because ideas organise people and people crave power.
Whisper #372
A: I do not want my beloved to be perfect — far from it. I want them to be open, attentive and receptive to me.
B: Why not? A perfect person is surely a delight and does not come with torments and tragedies associated with imperfection.
A: Because above all I value love and nothing makes my love lazier than perfection, than things being as they should be, than my beloved being perfect. Like life, love is at its fullest and can grow to its highest when faced with challenges.
You wouldn’t know it and maybe you dare not see it, or if you’ve seen it, your vanity dare not accept it, but love also has its skills, its muscles and, like a living organism, like a unity between parts, it can grow or it can wither.
B: But there is surely something you like your beloved to be — or else how can you even be attracted to someone in the first place?
A: Yes, I want my beloved to be rough and ready, not smooth and sorry. But what has that got to do with perfection?
Whisper # 371
A: What makes you so good at making a decision?
B: I tell myself that there is always something more important to be done and that this pending decision is getting in the way; so long as I let it linger, it occupies more time, space and energy than it deserves.
Whisper #370
A: Why is beauty so important?
B: That question is meaningless, but let me try to answer it from the spirit in which you asked it.
Because beauty does not discriminate in its relation to you, in how it affects you.
Beauty uplifts you, irrespective of who you are.
If you are a depressive through and through, beauty will uplift your depression and sharpen that state in you. In beauty, you will find reasons to be depressed and feel justified in doing so.
If you are ambitious through and through, beauty will incite that ambition. In beauty, you will find reasons to be ambitious and feel justified in doing so.
But does beauty care for what you make of it? Certainly, not.
Beauty is a stimulant, spiritual fuel, which asks no questions about the engine which it supplies. And so, throughout the ages, it has inspired the worst and the best of human beings — without asking any questions and without being apportioned any blame.
In a word, beauty is morally neutral — and, perhaps, so it should be…?
