Ask Old Jules: Kitsch, Life at age 18, Christmas, Moral standards, Maintaining motivation

Old Jules, what’s your definition of kitsch?

Kitsch is the bumper-sticker rendition of all thought-forms, art-forms, music-forms and media.

Old Jules, what were you like at 18, how are you different now, and what have you learned?

I was a soldier in the pre-Vietnam War army. Not an enthusiastic one. I was confident, considered myself mature, and had made my own way for a considerable while. By hindsight, I was a babe in the woods.

Old Jules, how did you celebrate your Christmas day?

I don’t celebrate Christmas, but I’ll spend the day with my cats and chickens. As I spend most other days. I’m spared the need to indulge in holier-than-thou rhetorical manipulations concerning how others should spend their days by virtue of not being a Christian. For which I’m eternally grateful. Edit: I’m awfully fond of Robert Earl Keene’s Christmas humor, however. https://youtu.be/oqN483jm6JE

Old Jules, who sets the moral standards, and gauges them?

You’re the only one who can for your own life. The intruders and busybodies tend to try doing it for others while conveniently overlooking their own, but the straight fact is that every human being in the planet can attempt to establish your moral values for you and short of armed intervention can’t cause you to adopt what they among themselves believe you should agree to. Which is why there’s so much armed intervention. Treating your moral choices as your own affair and not behaving conspicuously out of step will keep you off the radar.

Old Jules, how can one maintain motivation in their accomplishments?

How does an undisciplined individual acquire the discipline to acquire discipline? It isn’t a philosophical question. It’s called bootstrapping. Pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. There are plenty of methods of acquiring discipline. Martial arts. Zen. Silva Mind Control. But they all require discipline to follow through once the new wears off. A person who has no discipline hits and bounces off them just as you’ve bounced off everything else you’ve attempted. Bootstrapping is the answer. But that has to come from within you.