Truth first: The most important things in my life.
My PC/iMac/Linux Server.
The data stored on these computers.
My Internet Connection.
My Books.
My Music
Lots of odd things and bits and pieces I possess.
My comparative freedom from the rigours of oppression that prevent me from fully appreciating the above things. Actually, that last point shoudl be at the top.
The things I was scoldily brainwashed into uttering in response to the question of 'important things in life', which I now have the personal integrity and confidence to disavow:
Abstract and un-concrete wishes for the betterment of humanity's lot (it isn't going to happen by wishing for it and all attempts so far to bring it about have failed singularly and spectacularly).
Abstract notions of 'goodness', 'kindness', 'beneficent and undying compassion'. These things seem relative, contextual and ultimately contradictory. Although I was put under considerable pressure to 'lip-service' these sentiments and although I think think I at least partially believed them, I find it all rather too vague, contingent and open to (mis)interpretation to actually mean very much.
I have been dying to say (for a very long time now), that all the 'systems of thought' - the so-called 'meta-narratives' (a world view, that attempts to explain the world we live in, with reference to itself. Examples of 'metanarratives' include political systems of thought, religious belief systems, and also to some extent, even Science itself. The glaring deficit in any 'metanarrative' is that it cannot see itself for what it is, and furthermore, it is totally blind to its own limitations and shortcomings), contain the seeds of their own contradiction and destruction. However noble-minded these meta-narratives may be, they all end up getting perverted and corrupted by inexorable human nature, no matter how noble and principled their progenitors may be.
Therefore, I believe that it is reasonable to eschew the 'beauty-pageant' efflorescations of 'hopes', 'values', 'beliefs', etc and to focus on those things that actually do matter to the individual, without fear of censure and approbrium from those who would presume to scold us into ecreting (should that be 'excreting'?) the same emotionalism as themselves.
Life cannot be constrained within the strictures of a 'system of thought' without becoming distorted,
utterly banal and ultimately, corrupted.
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"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw (Taken from someone on comp.programming)