“Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?” ~Diogenes When you’re outflanked by people who can’t think outside the box of their political beliefs, you must be capable of being the bigger person and detach yourself from the box of your political beliefs. Otherwise, you’re just another run-of-the-mill, closeminded, political sycophant. Your worldview is your box. If you really want to think outside the box, it’s time to walk the walk rather than talk the

“As anywhere else in the world, the unwritten law defeated the written one.” ~Herman Hesse The unwritten law will always defeat the written one. Why? Because written laws are written by imperfect, fallible, biased humans who are usually wrong about a great many things. So it stands to reason that the written “laws” of society, of religion and politics, are utterly defeated by the infallible unwritten law of an interconnected cosmos. Let’s break it down… Unwritten laws (univer

"Philosophical thinking that doesn’t do violence to one’s settled mind is no philosophical thinking at all.” ~Rebecca Goldstein In the spirit of unleashing the mind and generating new ideas, you must be able to drop question marks like thought-bombs into the overly secure, blatantly safe, and all too comfortable ramparts of your worldview. In order to think outside the cliché box, you must at least temporarily obliterate the box. If you don’t strategically set up tripwires fo

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” ~Mary Oliver You are a naked ape. This one is painfully obvious, but you probably need a reminder. You are an animal first, a person second. You are paradoxical, a creature of opposites, torn between spirit and flesh, between civility and wildness, between the knowledge of life and death. These all wrestle together inside you in a cacophony of confused cognition. As Ernest Becker poignantly stated, “Man i

“We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.” ~Ludwig Wittgenstein What does it mean to wake up just enough to know that we are dreaming? It means that the “Truth” is out there, but it is not necessarily ours to grasp. It means we are “asleep” to how the universe really works. We are “asleep” to knowing why we’re here or what it all means or how we can even begin to figure it out. Knowing that we’re dreaming is reali

“It ain’t about how hard you can hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” -Rocky Balboa, Rocky Shadowboxing is sparring with an imaginary partner as a form of physical training. Existential shadowboxing is sparring with imaginary aspects of yourself as a form of spiritual training. Spiritual training is vital to achieve heightened awareness. It is essential to build character. In the boxing ring of the soul, the individual who can handle the most adv

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” ~Nassim Taleb Think of the human soul like a muscle. When you go to the gym to work out your muscles, you tear them down to build them up. This tearing creates scar tissue that increases blood flow to the muscle and makes you stronger. Similarly, the human soul (or character) can be torn down and built back up. The soul becoming stronger is the ide

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” ~Mahatma Gandhi Usually, a glitch is a problem, a bug, or a hiccup in the proper order of things. But what happens when you are living in a profoundly sick society? What happens when the “order of things” is unhealthy? What happens when the machinery of culture is outdated and found wanting? More importantly, what happens when you rebel against it? The answer: you become a healthy glitch. Moreso, you become a necessary glitch, a v

“There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” ~Roger Staubach 1.) Live a courage-based lifestyle: “The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche Courage is foremost. Before any other virtue can be actualized, courage must be self-actualized. There must first come a courageous deviation or there is no “first.” Period. Maya Angelou said it best, “Without courage you can’t practice any othe