December 2007 Archives
The gnomic act, gargled mutterings, groaned maxims. Self-decorated wisdom, pithy clichés, contained silences, characterized glances. Lacking in verbs. Unfinished pronouncements. Long and short sentences without meaning. Strange gurgling noises. Short grunts. Scared glances.
Ruined, bonsai'd thoughts.
The lies will not sustain. There is no support, the supplies have been cut, the charade cannot continue, such mendacious existence shall not keep. Immorality fatigue is setting in.
The unproclaimed hermitage is self-imposed. The habitations are expensive. The office, too, shielding a whole group. It doesn't feel like a monastery, because of hideous idiots shouting into phones. Some giggle while spitting at screens. It does have the lack of amenities of a ruined abbey. No running water, no usable utensils. The operation is a hideaway, in retreat from any meaningful activity. The seclusion is self-generated, by offensive residents.
By what criterion do they get raises and bonuses? what's the basis for their evaluation? what happened to past, failed benchmarks? oh, I see, the standard of measurement has been reversed. The judgment call is not whether they achieve certain objectives. Anything goes as long as they can keep their immoral claws around the loot a little longer.
The ultimate benefaction is to teach to think in principles. The benefits are endless, because a life lived in principles confers no limits other than the laws of nature.
Doing such good is not in essence a charitable, altruist action -- there are very concrete, selfish benefits in having others lead more rational, productive lives.
The anomaly is not that their behavior is atypical. All of the insane activity is customary, designed to extract more money from Sugar Zombie. It only appears bizarrely different if you forget that their goal is not to build a business but to emulate leeches. That last purpose is anomalous, for humans.
Découverts via l'émission "Rock et belles oreilles" sur TSR de Patrick Allenbach et Yves Ménestrier, aka Docteur Minestrone.
Your attempt at amity rings false. I know that amicus is not to be taken lightly. Love is not a fleeting state. Friendship requires a meeting of values, a certain mirroring of souls. Relations wouldn't be truly friendly unless there was a sharing of specific virtues (the systematic pursuit of particular values).
Filled with adulation, we experience extreme admiration for you. Yeah, right! We idolize your nothingness, we indulge in the admiration of your inanity.
Unrelenting, somber persiflage has invaded all subjects. The raillery is intended to hide wordless panic and utterly in-amicable tenets. Light rancor seeps into unresponsive banter. They can't treat anything seriously, because that would require some standards instead of brutally fake, hissing charm.
Ostentatiously loud, badly dressed (green jeans! unbuttoned shirts! fake diamonds!), overly faking the smiles, they're showy in a bizarre stuck-in-the-70s way.
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.
-- Hamlet (Shakespeare)
No sooner have you turned your back that they indulge in calumny. Someone leaves them and they immediately launch into false accusations (I witnessed it). The accusations serve no purpose other than to injure one's reputation. They're not only false, they don't solve any problem, they're evil for its own sake. They spring from a malicious core, a mind so steeped in misrepresentation, that deceit and slander are its coins. The character that permanently intrigues against others is inhuman.
Being prolific in that which the very few like; being elitist and full of contempt for all others; producing and creating and springing that which is boring; none of these will lead to abundance or satisfying fruits.
Such is the fate of drug-induced senility, marked by giggling incompetence. First thought, best thought
is its mark, best captured as Thinking be damned.
The finical so-called manager exhibited extreme particularities, as if wanting to emulate a recluse maniac. The finicky obsession with undue standards of performance, the thorough reviews of colours and spacing, all of these fell apart under the random and capricious decisions that she needed to make in order to feel her position of power. Arbitrary statements undermined the particulars of incompletely described standards. It was all mindless, predictable, fussy, and compulsive. Finely foolish.
Reckless action is not audacious. Bold, daring, adventurous steps must be mixed with thoughtful fear and an awareness of real risks --as well as a concrete purpose-- in order to qualify.
When spam met machine translation, the Web grew more hospitable to Google ads.
Light Blue Touchpaper: made for adware (MFA) websites [are] those parts of the web that are created solely to host lots of (mainly Google) ads, and thereby make their creators loads of money. ... they take existing content from other sites and do word substitutions on sentences to produce what they clearly intend to be identical in meaning (so the site will figure in web search results), but different enough that the indexing spider won’t treat it as identical text.
Jelly is a fortnightly, casual work-together, and you're invited!
We invite people to work from our home for the day. We provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of. You bring a laptop (or whatever you need to get work done) and a friendly disposition.
D'un regard mutin tu invites mes yeux à parcourir ta peau si libérée, à évaluer sa couleur brune, chaleureuse, laiteuse, et je devine sous ta petite robe que tes tétons sont dorés, tendus, ardents, déjà assoiffés de mes lèvres -- puis tu caresses tes longs cheveux qui ne sont ni bruns ni blonds, pour marquer ta cambrure et laisser courir mon imagination ravagée. La seule pensée qui puisse nous préoccuper, qui donne un sens au monde, est de couper court, de laisser nos yeux, bleu-vert-gris-tendres, s'enlacer comme tes longues jambes musclées le feraient, le feront avec les miennes. J'entends ton souffle, je sens ton odeur, je perçois ta sueur, je fusionne, déjà, avec ton âme, avec ton corps, sans retenue.
The goal is to take capital and labor and convert them to productive output. That's where profit comes from.
Paying people more for their labor than what you earn by selling their product is not business, whether what these people do is punching strategic holes, writing elaborate code, or pumping out semi-literate articles.
Constant recourse to the tocsin betrays a senile lack of clarity, or a purposeful mental fog. Bystanders should be warned against the bell-ringer. His activity may be a sign other than what he claims it touches.
The scammer's art is to pretend that he is divulging a vital secret. Pay attention to what they don't make known, it exposes them for what they are: frauds.
Let's imagine a company where executives never want to understand costs and always change their mind at a drop of the hat. They ask for a certain feature, then they complain that it takes effort to design, implement, test, launch, and maintain (why can't it be done in one hour?). They ask for (and confirm when explicitly asked) a limited feature set; then, after key design choices have been made, and well after implementation has started, they return with demands for a wildly expanded notion.
Tumbling from one topic to another, passing over intuitions, endlessly digressing, ranging over a wide field as if it were a virtue, the discursive bore knows no limits. He'll protest that he utilizes reason, that his unfiltered stream of words features analysis. He marks time with contrasted word salads. Like a frog, he thrusts here and there, makes a bit of noise, and awaits a dawn of circuitous clarity. He runs about, scatters his mind apart, pretends to meaning while being an incarnation of the void. He remains a rambling bore.
The fool! he perseveres -- despite enormous difficulties in dealing with facts, no actual prospect of success, doggedly persisting in the face of a string of self-contradictions, enduring the unending ridicule of all, dimly aware of his own inadequacy, exemplifying the human ability to remain in existence for a little while despite being a total failure. The fool dysfunctions and continues! he may even perversely giggle and unwisely shout, "It's all theater, and it must go on!"
All else being equal, pari passu, the pace of an idiot doesn't vary much. After all, there is a constance to stupidity, otherwise it would simply be temporary lack of judgment, possibly excusable, or permanently self-inflicted brain damage, laughably eccentric. When the irrational activity recurs at a stable daily rate, you know you've got a true idiot goose-stepping along with his inner cacophony.
The pretense of benevolence, the bizarre wish to appear to be doing good, the false inquiries into your health, the forced smiles, the clichés substituting for reason, as if a veneer of altruism were a sign of generosity, and as if altruism (sacrifice) were generous (being nice). It accumulates. It wears thin. It's a pattern.
The fearless investor was unfledged. His selection for leadership was deeply immature, his plans weren't fully developed, he took flight whenever a strategic decision loomed. He and his lackeys lacked both feathers and balls.
Complete failure, consummate atavism, exquisite incompetence -- true to their petty selves to the finish. Thus it concludes and hence the general lack of achievement.
Needing an intensive complement for my empty tank, I sate and complete myself with any available liquid. Then I feel whole, as required by my counterpart. Mutual completion involves two parts, like the lanes of a two-way street, one supplies the supplement the other is lacking.
I'm discomfited, because my plans for world-domination have been frustrated. It's embarrassing to think I had a complete design and plan to offer the best coverage of the most important entertainment programme of the century, but nothing was done. Rather, what was done was to strangle, sabotage, sunder, and sink it.
Disconcerted by plans, flustered by initiatives coming from other than themselves, they deliberately killed it. Then when they had two more chances to revive the beast, they so twisted its neck that the entrails squeezed themselves out, with sheer disgust.
The mendicants never wanted to achieve something if the price to pay was to uphold responsibility, autonomy, and accountability. Faced with the choice of either stealing or producing, they went with their lazy habit of the first. Meanwhile, everybody else has been jumping on the opportunity for mass entertainment and real revenue.
Don't buy insurance you will never need. Keep your resources available for the highest priorities. Stay light, so you can move nimbly when necessity commands. Don't generalize hastily, lest you end up with vast, empty conceptualizations. Let yourself refactor when it serves several specific purposes.
You Ain't Gonna Need It (YAGNI): Always implement things when you actually need them, never when you just foresee that you need them.
Even if you're totally, totally, totally sure that you'll need a feature later on, don't implement it now. Usually, it'll turn out either a) you don't need it after all, or b) what you actually need is quite different from what you foresaw needing earlier.
Ce ne sera pas une nuit blanche. Je finis mon verre de rouge et je me couche!
Owls are nocturnal. C'est autant la chouette que le hibou, une distinction qui n'existe qu'en français? moi qui pensais qu'il y avait quelque chose de profond dans leur différence.
Parfois je m'active la nuit. De nuit. En veillée. Nuitamment. En nocturne. Dans le noir. Caché par les ombres. En attendant que le soleil revienne.
The two basic uses of social networking sites are : a) to promote your art, professional services, or business, and b) to fill your existence with ego-stroking, attention-whoring frenzy. Some people already succeed at b) with constant email, talking loudly in their cell phone, and dozens of IM windows -- such is the best hope of the has-been, the jock, and the cheerleader.
OK, there is a third use, for those too afraid to make acquaintances and find friends in person, or who live in a car culture, where you live in a concrete box, move around locked inside a steel box, and spend the day in an air-conditioned cubicle. Such people may find online someone to share an interest or value with. Because approaching the girl you fancy at the bookstore is too scary, talking to strangers at a tennis club is so difficult, and striking a philosophical conversation in a bus is unheard of.
OK, there is a fourth justification, finding some half-way path between professional and personal connections. Especially important when the only word one knows to describe a human relationship is "friend".
All in all, pathetic.
But wait, there is worse.
All social networking sites are driven by fads. The people who frequent such places are addicted to change for its own sake. No matter how successful they (Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, ...) become, any new, fun, cool social tool will attract the exact same crowd. Unfortunately for Facebook (in particular), the type of audience that has given that company the appearance of being wildly successful is precisely the type lacking in depth and loyalty. Further, such networks' very need for continual, exponential growth is going to strangle and kill them, the same way the mortgage crisis is about to crash the entire real estate market -- because they based their survival on the notion that everything (number of customers, price, demand, income, real estate value) will trend upward forever, and so they leveraged themselves by running to the end of a very very thin stick.
On a tangent, how anyone can believe that houses all go up in value over time, that is a question nobody dares to ask. Nobody holds such beliefs about shoes, cars, food... not yet, not yet, I suppose.
Western culture has become frangible because we have allowed collectivists and materialists to rule universities. They know how to break the rule of law, and they systematically seek to destroy free markets.
The more advanced our civilization has become in technical and scientific achievements, the more brittle our intellectual atmosphere, easily undermined, the more fragile our cultural spirit, easily broken.
It doesn't help that mankind remains mired in the most primitive and barbaric conceptions of morality.
Well, you hoped that confessing your sins would exculpate you. Would that it were so easy! Causes have effects, guilt is the price you pay for your actions, and blame is its proper social expression.
Causality cannot be lifted or abolished. Carry your burden and quit hoping for forgiveness. Nobody will clear your moral bankruptcy.
Harsh groans, discordant giggles, spitting coughs, incoherent mumblings, composed obscurantism, uncontrolled shouts, ungrammatical lucubrations, these are all the cacophonous contributions of the phony leader.
Why is it that I don't reciprocate in some circumstances? I'll gladly barter, reasonably exchange, but sometimes will hesitate to retaliate.
On the one hand I'm disgusted by the perpetrators and would rather avoid further contact, on the other hand I'd rather not stoop to their inhuman level.
In another almost-naked display of careless language distortion, Americans use the word "dishabille" as if they can take any foreign word and part-dress it with bad pronunciation --plus eye-gouging spelling-- to appear intentionally casual. Their punishment should be to eternally lounge naked at the front-desk of the Tower of Babel.
The word hiding in the above atrocity is déshabillé, from the verb déshabiller which in France is commonly and easily done with one look.
Leave it to a casually puritan culture to savagely disfigure and carelessly mispronounce such a fundamental element of life.
Mutable goals, shifting from day to day, likely to reverse direction, don't represent a laudable capacity to change but illustrate permutations of degrees of latent idiocy and deteriorating neuron layers.
Soon, vast data, intense processing, and rapid connections will accompany us everywhere, all the time. It will all be part of the Internet Cloud. Gone will be the concepts of work station, laptop vs desktop, screen and keyboard, and cables. These refer to transitory artifacts of the technical curve towards seamless, ubiquitous, pervasive computing.
Cloudware: Apps and services that once would have run on a desktop operating system now run in the cloud: the unbounded, ever-shifting, intangible collection of servers that make up the Internet. Go to Google Maps, Yahoo Mail, or MySpace — most of Web 2.0, in other words — and you're using cloudware. (In the enterprise market, it's called software as a service.)
Some people, often those who have spent their life in Hollywood, believe that all life is artifice.
They think --and say-- it's all theater, because they can't conceive of people with integrity, of a focus on facts, of a primacy of existence approach to life.
So, their cleverness consists in tricking others. They appreciate the skills of a liar. They applaud the ingenuity of the trickster. They seek and see inventiveness in dictatorship. Any expedient method, any artful device, any stratagem, any craftiness, any trickery, will be their tool of choice.
The lack of sincerity and deceptive behavior are core elements of their personality. They live by lies and cannot imagine that others don't. For them, there is no truth, just illusions sustained by master performers. Hence their attraction to politicians rather than statesmen.
Representative government needs more than being refurbished. Dynastic power cannot be fixed up, renovated, or reconditioned. It must be eliminated.
First step: apply term limits to all government branches, functions, and positions, not just the President. Examples: representatives, senators, and judges who have been in power for decades.
Second: introduce role limits; no person who has served government in one branch or level may serve in any other role. Examples: governors and senators cannot become president; soldiers cannot become representatives; mayors cannot become governors. Serve honorably in one role, then return to a normal citizen's life, with our appreciation.
Third: establish relationship tests; no person who is a sibling, child, spouse, or parent of someone who has served in government may serve in any government role -- and no sibling, child, spouse, or parent up to two steps removed from one of the above may serve either. Examples: senators Ted Kennedy (his brothers) and Hillary Clinton (her spouse), current president Bush (his father and brother), governor Schwarzenegger (his wife's uncle).
Somewhere along the way we probably also need to reject and abolish the neurotic notion that a corporation is a person and can thus be used as a vehicle to finance political campaigns.
In his 1981 definition of the Transmission Control Protocol, Jon Postel stated:
TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.
The second clause has been generalized into the robustness principle (aka Postel's Law):
Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.
The long-term impact of that law is to reduce the impact of bad behavior as long as there is a large and varied number of machines that keep things flowing. Every step of the way, each machine filters out or fixes invalid input, to the extent it makes sense. If errors are logged, and used in a feedback loop to the offending data sources, we witness an average trend towards increased tolerance and positive self-correction.
With perspicacity comes clarity. One with real powers of discernment does not need to shout "I already know that!"
Penetrating insights feed on understanding not hubris.
Our freedoms are being abridged. Words can be visually compact, too. WTG being concise. WTF is a succinct expression, reaching for the essence. Simplicity FTW!
When someone gets upset or otherwise irritated by good advice, chances are that the good ideas are perceived as a threat because their self-esteem is rooted in the delusional notion that they are better than the rest of mankind. First, they'll act as if nothing was said. Then, they'll turn on those who offered better ideas. If you consider their real stature, you'll see that they're mere ankle-biters, often proud of their loud barking and prone to senile chest thumping.
Dave Winer: Now, since this is my blog, and the rules are that I say what I think here, let me say that there's something really obnoxious about a culture that penalizes people for trying to help them.
My brother is a real mensch:
[A] mensch is someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being "a real mensch" is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous. (Rosten, Leo. 1968. The Joys of Yiddish. New York: Pocket Books. 237)
The direct opposite is the un-mensch: ignoble, lacking in character, stench oozing out of the brain, crooked in behavior, undignified in public, no instinct for what is right, irresponsible and enjoying it, hurting people's eyes whenever you show up, dressing inappropriately.
[quote found via Wikipedia]
The software industry, and the Web, have been crawling and suffering because too many people are trying to seize pieces of locked estates, instead of opening up access to new lands and enabling everybody to act similarly. You can't enjoy vast vistas, tall mountains, deep oceans, lush forests, cool meadows, and colorful lakes, if you are locked into a walled garden, for instance.
Listen to and learn from Dave Winer, doing his part on 1996-Oct-24:
here's an invitation to truly embrace the creativity of others. Instead of beating your breast about how great you are, try saying how great someone else is. Look for win-wins, make that your new religion. Establish a policy that nothing will be announced unless it can be shown that someone else will win because of what you're doing. How much happier we would be if instead of crippling each other with fear, we competed to empower each others' creativity.
Not only should you say such things, and maintain creativity-friendly policies, you should also walk the walk. I've seen too many so-called leaders who undermine the principle at every twist of the road, every single time they make a decision. Example: you have a stream of useful, realtime information that could help others understand what they do, and what they could do better; you choose to hide it from them, and when asked to share you refuse, without even thinking about the lost opportunities.
Can you find the "ad" in rapprochement? the state of cordial relations between the English and French language established a large presence of Latin roots in our daily life.
For instance the preposition ad, the comparative propius, and the verb ire found a way to merge, coalesce, and assemble: to go towards being more proximate, i.e. to approach.
Do it again, keep redoing it, and there you go, a reproach-less rapprochement is at hand. Ad transmogrified as ap.
The ad in advertisements tells us that we are expected to turn towards something, to aim ourselves in a specific manner. What we really need are automatic filters to devertise, exvertise, and abvertise. A human life cannot be lived well when constantly told to divert attention away from itself.
The preamble to the Declaration of Independence is a concise statement of purpose for the Declaration it introduces:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Can we agree that foreword is not spelled "forward"? and that a prelude is not an allusion?
There are beggars in Los Angeles. Some mendicants run a business by tricking the wealthy into giving them money, begging for more by offering the illusion that something new is about to happen, and that the donor will be universally recognized as a genius.
A straightforward beggar will say he needs food, the cunning mendicant will tell a tale of assistance urgently needed to fix the world, so open your purse right now!
Both live on alms, both practice beggary, one is more honest than the other. If there is such a thing as degrees of honesty. Some hold that once a liar, always a liar. Something the liar hates to hear.
Collaboration requires cooperative individuals. Coming together works when goals are closely aligned. Integration and union lead to long-range success.
The surly autocrat does mean to appear threatening. The clouds in his eyes betray an ominous condition, a sullen menace, the domineering ambition of the inadequately bred. Ill-humored, he often giggles when he forgets the presence of others. He grunts gruffly when unable to form a full sentence, lacks table manners, and always shifts his eyes sideways. Eternally churlish, he delights in launching attacks, unless he fears someone around the table. Prone to mood-swings, as a lunatic would.
There is a peculiar kind of parasite on Earth, one that lives as a derivative off the mind of others. All it does is take from those who come up with ideas, those who can and do think. It won't think on its own, that would be the life of a first-hander. It lives on borrowed thought, seethes when someone expects it to reason, and wraps itself in a mantel of "achievement" and "originality" when it obviously has nothing to contribute.
Just as the zeros of mathematical derivatives indicate fundamental inflection points of their underlying functions, the zeros of speech from mind-parasites highlight the regurgitating ins and outs of their stunted brain.
Conversely, trying to integrate the word-salads made by such parasites leads to a flat line, never taking off from the observable activity of a vegetable. Second-handers are bores, as interesting as a constant function.
To abbreviate the pain, no need to shorten the fuse. To cut back, make either goal or body briefer. Repeat until dullness reigns.
It's useful to deracinate oneself from time to time. It helps realize how much one relies on the context, how rapidly accustomed we become to a given environment. Displacement from the native location is irrelevant per se. What matters is where our roots are allowed to grow and how deeply they reach. Distant wanderings strengthen the awareness of what can be plucked up, uprooted.
Stay away from those who indulge in tarradiddles, petty falsehoods, fibs, rubbish, pretentious nonsense, poppycock, or self-aggrandizing whoppers. They trade in deceit, mendacity, fabrication, manipulation -- the tools of dishonesty.
Their survival rests on making you blind, and keeping you that way. Truth is a fundamental threat to their self-esteem, because it undermines the very structure of their mind and life.
A corporate culture of nurture encourages employees to be at their best and to contribute to business growth. It nourishes them, accounts for and satisfies their wants, and helps them grow. If you care about your employees, if you sincerely wish them well, you'll cultivate a rewarding relationship.
On the other hand, if you shout at them, deliver obviously manipulative compliments, hide plans and motivations from them, take away benefits, ignore them until and unless you micromanage their activities, belittle their proposals, display and encourage offensive behavior, play favorites, denigrate former employees, refuse to put anything in writing, wantonly change task assignments, understaff all efforts, hire based on looks and nepotism, pretend that skills and experience are irrelevant, give yourself unwarranted raises and bonuses, rejoice in undoing contracts; well if you do these things, you're nurturing neither employees nor corporation.
Whatever the incline is, it is of your making.
The human mind cannot perceive a ratio of one billion. Let one million billions. Maybe what we can sort of perceive is that every 10 years, computer power increases a thousandfold. Though I doubt most people can imagine what that power increment would mean. Nor can they picture what new avenues will open up.
In 1957 ... there were fewer than 2,000 computers total, and they were essentially used to crunch numbers. They were huge, expensive, and unreliable; sometimes, they caught on fire. There was no word processing, no spreadsheets, no e-mail, and no Internet. Programs were written on punch cards or paper tape, and memory was measured in thousands of digits. ... Moore’s Law predicts that in fifty years, computers will be [correction: one million billion --ed.] times more powerful than they are today. I don’t think anyone has any idea of the fantastic emergent properties you get from a billion-times increase in computing power. ... But I can guarantee that it will be incredible, fantastic, and mind-blowing.
Refuse to be terrorized.
By either party.
Everything we've done in human culture to tell stories, and share them, is being undermined. Everything you've done, and rightly assumed you could do, with books is being destroyed with e-books: The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts).
Ever heard a profuse string of profanities in a business meeting?
It pours forth, incongruously extravagant due to the sudden fullness and exuberance of ill-spoken words. And when the shouter quiets down, there is no sense of relief, because liberality and abundance in swearing never reflect well on their soul. Rather, it exhibits copiously hidden meanness, bountiful hostility.
There is no pleasure in observing an ugly soul reveal its stench.
When a body engages in gratuitous demeaning actions, their object is not to be generous or randomly kind. The bonsai maker is not setting the tree free, nor offering complimentary support.
An intoxicating concept.
As soporific as that leader is, his lack of charm would neither tend to nor actually cause deep sleep. His demeanor is too obnoxious for that. He does succeed in producing an appalling form of lethargy -- that of not acting according to plan, instead slowly whirling like a lost, starving dervish high on narcotics.
The barely literate who engenders confusion is able to survive because he deliberately creates, develops, nurtures, and brings about a fog of business. His sugar-daddy either looks the other way, or is similarly anti-literate.
The vicissitudes of our daily life are subject to successions of inanities, regular changes caused by the purposeless. The ones who pretend to themselves that demanding immediate change without thinking is a proper substitute for long-term planning, as if random strings of daily actions could lead to fundamental success. But it's no more than a pretense of progress. When you see that they lack purpose, you know their essence if a vast abyss.
Unlike the alternation of night and day, the succession of seasons, the interchange of alternating current, these weathervanes are aimless, evanescent shadows without lasting effect. And no revolution is in sight. The weathervanes are random human mutations, irregularly popping up in our midst, dragging us all down.
An interesting change is one of condition or fortune. It doesn't alter life, or our fundamental nature, but its mutability and turns is caused by character. Change for its own sake is moronic and by necessity autocratic. Change for the sake of fundamental goals is reasonable and welcome.
One cunningly pretending to be guileless, would have to truly appear innocent. But any act of dishonesty demonstrates the lack of genuine intentions, the absence of straightforward humanity.
You must know that the cavalcade will stop, abruptly.
As you ride into town every day with a new horse, a series of disasters unfailingly follow. There is no sequence to the choice of horses you hitch to your ill-conceived carriages. You foolishly hope there is no consequence, either.
When you fall, a procession of riders will come and deliver no salute to your cabal. Some crows may pick the eyes of those corpses in carriages you regularly crashed on the side of road.
You must be dimly aware of the hyenas who surround your cavalcade, because they sense a kindred spirit. A depth of darkness, infused with parasitism, protected by snarls.
The manager who competently spends all her time treating an employee like a bonsai -- clipping his initiative, his responsibilities, his thoughts, and his contributions whenever she notices something growing -- that manager is able to destroy a business. She's not a capable manager in the usual sense of the words, but she exhibits a systematic ability. On the other hand, the managers who know about her bonsai work, and let her continue with it, are incompetent spectators -- unless they do more than cheering. For instance, they could delight in possibly screaming or, better yet, giving conflicting, illiterate instructions.
Achieving competency in persistent evil behavior takes a lot of dedication.
