"Duty is a hard, mechanical process for making men do things that love would make easy. It is a poor understudy to love. It is not a high enough motive with which to inspire humanity. Duty is the body to which love is the soul. Love, in the divine alchemy of life, transmutes all duties …
Tag: free will
Facing the Mistakes of Life I
As human beings endowed with the capacity of free will we are faced with a profound responsibility and an uncommon privilege. If you’ve lived any amount of time you realize that you occasionally make good choices and every so often you make a bad one. The good choices are as instructive as the bad ones, …
Power of Personal Influence II
Ignorance is no excuse for violation of any law. Realizing this, we must take greater care to educate ourselves on the power of personal influence, for people often undermine their own stated goals and desires without even knowing it. William George Jordan offers a plateful of food for thought on the matter in Chapter 3 …
Conservation of Momentum
Physics was one of my favorite classes in high school, for two reasons. The first reason is found in the zany stunts my physics teacher managed to execute somehow under the nose of the administration and generally accepted rules of normal behavior. Our egg drop competition, for example, culminated with the winner successfully landing an …
Dominion versus Domination
Whether you believe that man was created to have dominion over the earth or that he evolved to dominate the food chain through a process of natural selection, it is in man's best interest to exercise control in a way that promotes balance, sustainability and prosperity. Being at the top of the food chain has …
The Highest Common Denominator
We are incredibly complex creatures. From macro to micro, our design is beautiful, intricate and marvelous to behold. I remember watching a short video in physics class in high school similar to the one below which showed the wave dynamics of a crowd of people: People, when moving in an aggregated mass, tend to "go …
Rise and Shine or Rise and Whine?
Every weekday afternoon from 1952 to 1970, millions of American viewers tuned into the televised comedy "Art Linkletter's House Party." Years later Bill Cosby hosted a show inspired by Linkletter called "Kids Say the Darndest Things." The format was simple and thoroughly entertaining: the host would ask unscripted questions of children and the answers were …
It takes two to tango.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~Eleanor Roosevelt You have no doubt heard it said that "it takes two to tango." Offense offered need not become offense taken. Your life is charted by virtue of your consent. To what and with whom do you give your consent? As you move through …
A Father’s Gift to Humanity
I read a lovely tribute in the New York Times yesterday to Ladis Kristof by his son, columnist Nicholas Kristof, in celebration of Father's Day (http://tinyurl.com/249f2qq). Nicholas recalled a profound statement his father, a Slavic immigrant and concentration camp survivor, had written that impacted him for years: War, want and concentration camps, exile from home …
Gregory Hake 