On virtue: Fragility of meaning. Inevitability of humility. What does it mean to be virtuous? Can holding virtue be a vice, and vice versa? (No pun intended). Do you consider yourself virtuous? What is your criterion for virtue? Why are you virtuous and others aren’t, according to your criterion? Do we choose to be virtuous, and others don’t? If so, do we also choose what skews our preference towards virtue, thus facilitating our choice? I am reminded of a quote from Mary…
How to Be Liked 2: Connecting with people, effortlessly You find yourself at a party, social gathering, work environment, or even simply in a group of friends, and can’t help feeling like you have nothing of interest to say. Even though you’d like to connect with the people around you, you don’t believe you have anything of value to say, and so you say nothing to spare yourself the humiliation of saying something forced, incongruent, or disingenuous. Still, when you see a…
How to build your children's self-esteem: A leap of faith of trust in souls that are innocent Children can be much smarter than adults in so many ways. They generally don’t yet carry the trauma that blocks their intellect, the self-deprecating voices from naive conclusions constructed by our innocent inner child whenever we are shamed, guilt-tripped, intimidated, rejected, smothered, enmeshed, and physically abused. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-2…
Stop using the words "anarchy" & "capitalism": Cut your losses from terms with loaded meaning The words “anarchy” and “capitalism” don’t mean anything anymore. We can appeal to their etymology or definition all we want, but the fact remains that they mean vastly different things to so many different people. This makes it impossible to communicate what you truly want to communicate whenever you use them. These words carry such subjective, arbitrary, and fluid meaning that any…
Holding God Accountable: What does your image of God say about you? We are taught self-accountability from the example of our parents. Parents who hold themselves accountable for their children provide a solid example for those children to become responsible and self-accountable themselves. When parents absolve themselves of all responsibility for the well-being or distress of their children, then they teach those children, through example alone, that accountability can be…
The Evil of Abraham: An ideological plague on humanity When you tell yourself your abuser is virtuous for being powerful enough to abuse you, you lose sight of what is virtuous. **Hebrew mythology** It is blindingly clear that Jesus was trying to break people free from the shackles of the ghastly Hebrew religion — of all religions in general. When **the cult of** **Abraham** **treated children as sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered just to appease the crazy voices in some…
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