Old Jules, what is the meaning of ‘the perfect victory is to triumph over oneself’?
It’s a cliche disguised as wisdom evangelizing a particular viewpoint concerning the nature of victory. A wisdomoid.
Old Jules, what have we done to show our love to god?
We’ve done a great deal more, say, than God’s done to show his love for us. Even if we’ve done nothing at all. We haven’t given him any sexually transmitted diseases, any brain cancer, any strokes and paralysis. Which a believer would insist God has done for us.
In a lot of ways we humans are Job, trying to walk the walk and talk the talk while God’s out there making wagers with Lucifer about our ability to keep the faith while He turns up the heat and cuts us off at the knees.
My personal thought is that Job wasted his love. He’d have been better served by Lucifer.
But of course, I don’t happen to believe much of what those old savage ancient Hebrews dreamed up as a God for themselves.
Old Jules, wouldn’t an objectively ‘good’ person try to alleviate suffering at every available opportunity? If people want to draw a line between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, wouldn’t someone who is good have to show compassion and generosity at every available opportunity?
No.
A ‘good’ person would tend his own affairs because a ‘good’ person would realize he/she isn’t wise enough to know what’s ‘good’ for someone else.
A good person would recognize interfering in the challenges of others is mere self-aggrandizement.
A good person realizes he/she isn’t wise, perfection incarnate, and that there’s plenty of pulling out of kinks in his/her own life without presuming to advise others.
Old Jules, why do human beings have to die?
If they didn’t you’d rapidly come to wish they did. Human beings would already be stacked up like cord wood a mile high and climbing, instead of that being the case half-century from now.
The quality of life would suffer if you were having to climb over half-mile of human beings to get home for supper.
Old Jules, what are the most important lessons you’ve learned in your lifetime?
Among the most important in my case was gratitude as a method of neutralizing anger issues I’d brought into this life and carried around 50-odd years. Someone told me about gratitude affirmations at a time when I happened to be capable of listening.
All my life I’d been described by people who knew me as an ‘angry person’. I never understood what they were talking about. It was so much a part of me I couldn’t even see it.
Within a couple of weeks of gratitude affirmations morning and night I began to actually recognize anger in myself. Within a month it was only a residue of a lifetime of mental habit. Shortly thereafter I added forgiveness affirmations…. Both are daily rituals in my life. And I’m the most fortunate man in the world to have learned about them 15 years or so ago.
So Far From Heaven 