Happy Birthday, Hilaire Belloc

Now there is discoverable in man, freewill. His actions are of moral value to him if they are undertaken upon his own initiative; not if they are undertaken under compulsion. Therefore the use of choice is necessary to human dignity. A man deprived of choice is by that the less a man, and this we all show through the repugnance excited in us by unauthorized restraint and subjection, through coercion rather than authority, to another’s will. We cannot do good, or even evil, unless we do it freely; and if we admit the idea of good at all in human society, freedom must be its accompaniment.

Hilaire Belloc, born on this day in 1870, from "An Essay on the Restoration of Property"

Choose.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where -" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"- so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough.”

Lewis Carroll, from Alice in Wonderland

If you mishandle a firearm, you could hurt yourself.  How are the expectations of any smart device different?

The word "addiction" comes from the Latin addicere, meaning to give over, to sacrifice, or devote.   

If you're struggling with devices, don't give yourself, your choices, and your precious time over to them.  It's not the device's fault. 

Choose to be more and more curious.  Choose not to click the ad, choose not to become a statistic in the algorithm, choose to put it down.

Choose to live a life astounded by the unexpected.

Strike.

Thank you, Kurt.

Decision.

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

Theodore Roosevelt

Choices.

Trust me, as a person who has failed in nearly every way possible ...

The future is not like the weather.  It doesn't just happen to us.  We shape our future with the choices we make in the present, just as our present situation was shaped by choices we made in the past.

Don't ever allow yourself to become a victim.  Own your choices, but remember: control of anything beyond the end your nose is an illusion.

Choice.

Neither by detachment neither by aggregation is the integrity of the intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the intellect in its greatness and best state to operate every moment. It must have the same wholeness which nature has. Although no diligence can rebuild the universe in a model by the best accumulation or disposition of details, yet does the world reappear in miniature in every event, so that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. The intellect must have the like perfection in its apprehension and in its works. For this reason, an index or mercury of intellectual proficiency is the perception of identity. We talk with accomplished persons who appear to be strangers in nature. The cloud, the tree, the turf, the bird are not theirs, have nothing of them; the world is only their lodging and table. But the poet, whose verses are to be spheral and complete, is one whom Nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of strangeness she may put on. He feels a strict consanguinity, and detects more likeness than variety in all her changes. We are stung by the desire for new thought; but when we receive a new thought it is only the old thought with a new face, and though we make it our own we instantly crave another; we are not really enriched. For the truth was in us before it was reflected to us from natural objects; and the profound genius will cast the likeness of all creatures into every product of his wit.

But if the constructive powers are rare and it is given to few men to be poets, yet every man is a receiver of this descending holy ghost, and may well study the laws of its influx. Exactly parallel is the whole rule of intellectual duty to the rule of moral duty. A self-denial no less austere than the saint's is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forego all things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented.

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please,--you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets,--most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law of his being.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Intellect"

Freewill.

Now there is discoverable in man, freewill. His actions are of moral value to him if they are undertaken upon his own initiative; not if they are undertaken under compulsion. Therefore the use of choice is necessary to human dignity. A man deprived of choice is by that the less a man, and this we all show through the repugnance excited in us by unauthorized restraint and subjection, through coercion rather than authority, to another’s will. We cannot do good, or even evil, unless we do it freely; and if we admit the idea of good at all in human society, freedom must be its accompaniment.

Hilaire Belloc, from An Essay on the Restoration of Property

Choose.

The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it is a clock that they themselves are winding up. But I happen to believe that the world is what we choose to make it, and that we are what we choose to make ourselves; and that our renascence or our ruin will alike, ultimately and equally, testify with a trumpet to our liberty.

G.K. Chesterton

Choice.

Can't be bothered? Then skip it and let what is loudest or most insistent (inside or out) grab your attention, as you allow yourself to be swept along with this attention-demanding flow.  It's incessant, and sometimes you may find it burdensome --- you're so much at the mercy of the waves.  Still, when you pause, you realize that you have a choice.

Edward Espe Brown, from No Recipe: Cooking as Spiritual Practice

Choose.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl

Choose.

Choice.

There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice.

G.K. Chesterton

When Tommy Shaw was in the Pistols.

Crouch.

If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Thomas Paine

Look.

As you think, so you become. Avoid superstitiously investing events with power or meanings they don’t have. Keep your head. Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren’t there. Assume, instead, that everything that happens to you does so for some good. That if you decided to be lucky, you are lucky. All events contain an advantage for you- if you look for it

Epictetus

Stand.

Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you don't believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art.

Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.

Neil Gaiman

George Jones, "Choices"

Yet.

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1523

To BACCHUS: A CANTICLE

Whither dost thou hurry me,
Bacchus, being full of thee?
This way, that way, that way, this,
Here and there a fresh love is;
That doth like me, this doth please:
Thus a thousand mistresses
I have now; yet I alone,
Having all, enjoy not one.

Robert Herrick

Decisions.

A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes -- within the limits of endowment and environment-- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions not on conditions.

Viktor Frankl

Choices.

Thank you, Kurt.

Choices.

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Aldus Dumbledore