Tag Archives: Knowledge

FIVE WISE LINES [August 2026]

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Photograph taken in the desert outside of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

One can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge,
but one cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.

Michel de montaigne

Nothing is lost if one has the courage to proclaim that all is lost and one must begin anew.

Julio Cortázar

Experience is not what happens to you,
it’s what you do with what happens to you.

Aldous Huxley

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

T.s. Eliot

If we do not possess a ‘sense’ for a given energy -form,
we do not experience its existence.

Robert E. Ornstein in The psychology of consciousness [As quoted in the Bihar School edition of Hatha Yoga Pradipika]

PROMPT: Don’t Understand

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Daily writing prompt
What’s something most people don’t understand?
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The substance of financial crises. Not to mention Quantum Mechanics and Calculus. Really, there’s virtually nothing that most people do understand. Have you met most people? They’re kind of dim.

But seriously, the thing that has been striking me lately is how often zero-sum thinking is applied to non-zero-sum games. Put simply, people often believe they are in a situation in which every gain by someone else corresponds to a loss for them, when that is often not the case. Manipulation to convince people otherwise is in full swing. People are being led to believe they have to worry if others are complimented or are doing well because it reflects poorly on them, when — in fact — it does not (necessarily.)

PROMPT: Three Years

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What will your life be like in three years?

I have no idea. That’s the beauty of life, and the curse of living during period in which technology will soon grow completely beyond our control. Life might be an ever-better version of what it is now, or I might be living in a cave trying to stay out of the way of the war between Skynet and our would-be Alien overlords. Or I might be farming in a world that has EMP’d itself back to the Stone Age to avoid being overtaken by technology. Nothing is certain but that change will come.

PROMPT: Everyone Should Know

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Daily writing prompt
What’s something you believe everyone should know.
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While any individual’s ability to substantially change the world is minimal, one’s ability to change how one experiences the world is vast. Cultivate the dispassionate witness. #Sakshi Bhava

Also, how to swim, change a tire, and juggle while riding a unicycle.

PROMPT: Authority

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Daily writing prompt
On what subject(s) are you an authority?
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Absolutely nothing. I’m more of a mile-wide-inch-deep type than a mile-deep-inch-wide type, which is to say a generalist rather than a specialist. So, I do have some insight into how to think about thinking about matters diverse and sundry.

The Curse [Lyric Poem]

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Knowledge can be a wicked curse,
  Like gold coins in a sturdy purse.
 Tied up -- inviolably pent --
  To be rattled... but never spent.

PROMPT: 10 Years

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Daily writing prompt
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
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If there’s anything that I learned in all those years of Social Science education, it’s that forecasting is a sucker’s game.

I don’t know where I’ll be, but I hope it’s someplace I never saw coming. #embracethechaos.

PROMPT: More Every Day

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Daily writing prompt
What do you wish you could do more every day?
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Have epiphanies. They are quite hard come by.

What I Know about Beaches [Free Verse]

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On a sandy beach,
 I think of each grain
    of sand as being
    the same.

But on a pebble beach,
 Each stone has its own
    color, texture, size,
    and shape.

It's made me second guess
 What I know about beaches.

“The Secret Sits” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

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We dance round in a ring and suppose,
 But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.