New Aphorisms

Abstract

New Aphorisms Aaron Haspel (bio) Do what you love for a living, and learn to hate it. Love is often cured by acquaintance. A civilized man will sometimes go native; but a native, except under extraordinary duress, will never go civilized. We are regularly informed, by people with talent for a discipline, that nothing is required to master it but effort. The consolation prize for being out of power is unswerving commitment to timeless civic principles. The stupid kids turned out to be not quite as stupid as we thought, and the smart kids nowhere near as smart. The greater good is distant and speculative: the lesser evil required to achieve it is immediate and certain. Capitalism is a daily exercise in getting what you want without knowing what you want. Imbecility, like many infectious diseases, has asymptomatic carriers. Equality is the expression of envy, not the cure: there is no cure. Covers are to judge books by. Ideologies overtly hostile to civilization are among its less fortunate byproducts. [End Page 227] Today we publish all of our thoughts, except the interesting ones. We admire success, and deplore most of the qualities and behavior that produce it. The dots are mostly real, the connections mostly imagined. We rarely absorb ideas; they settle on us, like dust or ash. Written history is mostly war, and the surest way to be remembered is to start one. Secret police at all times and places have been delighted by the size and enthusiasm of their volunteer auxiliaries. Better than nothing is an exacting standard: medicine has met it only recently, and to many prestigious and lucrative occupations it remains a fond hope. A government of laws, not men, requires suitable men. Unable to reach the grapes, we conclude first that they are sour; and later, after meditating deeply, that sweetness is not worth having. Only atheists take the Bible literally. Depth is the desire not to be judged by surface. Language is viscous, it resists: one thinks in words as one swims in water. Genuine error increases with spurious precision. Whatever the fanatic permits himself is a duty: whatever he denies himself is a crime. Those who disagree with us used to be evil, and then they were stupid: now they are ill. Understanding looks, to others, like forgiveness; and forgiveness, to oneself, like understanding. [End Page 228] Man is the only animal that cheats at solitaire. The stupider the idea, the more intelligent you have to be to believe it. Things are so much as they seem that good-looking people really are more virtuous. Progress: n., the gradually increasing belief in the stupidity of one's ancestors. Community college used to be high school with ashtrays, and then that was college, and then they took away the ashtrays. In order that our boys shall not have died in vain, a great many of our boys die in vain. We call ideas pretty when they are false, and ugly when we do not care if they are true. You can't tell a man what he doesn't know he doesn't know. The desire to rule would be impotent without the desire to be ruled. People resent being told what to think, but they scarcely notice being told what to think about. We are asked to be tolerant when we are expected to approve. The feeling that one has narrowly escaped punishment is the sign that it is preparing. Men first lie and cheat for sport, then for trinkets, and finally for great ends, having formed the habit. A suppressed idea mutates into ever more virulent forms, which are then invoked to justify its continued suppression. When we adhere to convention in appearance, we show that we care what others think; and we show that we care deeply when we depart from it. [End Page 229] It is the work of art to conceal art, and of criticism to reveal it again. The two great moral lessons of our time: we must celebrate our differences, and we are all the same. Feelings can be every bit as wrong as thoughts. When one hears that a public figure hates journalists, it may be...