Some observations on life

A few thoughts that have come to me over the years, some of them perhaps obvious, others not.  I hope some will be found of interest or worth thinking about.

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It's usually best to judge the actions of others by their intentions, insofar as you can tell what their intentions are.  But when you act, assume that others will judge your actions entirely by their effects, without bothering to try to understand your intentions.

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Non-wasted time is when I'm doing what I want to do.  Wasted time is when I'm doing what somebody else wants me to do.

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In a conflict, the blame almost never lies all on one side. But it also almost never lies equally on both sides.

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Disliking things that are popular with the crowd doesn't make a person sophisticated.

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I don't "hate God" for the same reason I don't hate Darth Vader or Count Dracula.  I'm not afraid of going to Hell for the same reason I'm not afraid of going to Mordor or Azkaban.

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There are two kinds of people -- those who always have a reason why they couldn't do what they promised, and those who do what they promised.

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All the great atrocities of history would have been impossible without obedience.

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No one ideology or philosophy has all the answers or even most of them.  I'm a pragmatist.  The focus should be on the goal, making use of whatever works to get there -- not on the road, following it with blind loyalty whether it goes where you really want or not.

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If you claim that you support free expression even for people you disagree with, but in every actual specific case that comes up you find some excuse for doing otherwise (calling it "incitement" or "hate speech" or whatever), then you are not a supporter of free expression.

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I don't feel any concern about becoming a "burden on society".  Society has been one hell of a burden on me.

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There are few things more disappointing than offering an idea and having someone quote a cliché in response.

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I don't hold anything to be holy or sacred, because those concepts are religious and therefore meaningless to me.  The only thing I feel any reverence for is human achievement.

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People in groups are almost always stupider than the same people as individuals.

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If you believe that evolution is a "random" process, then you don't understand it.

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The minimum qualification for being a strong person is the ability to control one's own impulses.

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Ideology is even more deadly to art than capitalism is.

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If a person uses terms like "sheeple" or "the herd" to refer to the broad mass of people, he's almost certainly in some kind of cult.

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I think most intellectually curious people go through a period of taking Ayn Rand seriously.  I certainly did.  If someone reaches the age of forty and still takes Ayn Rand seriously, that's probably evidence of arrested development, mental deficiency, or worse.

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If you can call the country you're in "fascist" in public and not get arrested, it almost certainly isn't fascist.

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Taking any holy book as eternal and absolute truth traps you at whatever stage of scientific and moral development had been reached by its authors.  Fundamentalist Christians are stuck with creationism, homophobia, subordination of women, etc because that is what the Bible's authors knew.  Even if a new religion were established today, accepting all of 2026's scientific knowledge and moral values as part of its dogma, within a century or two it would seem hopelessly outdated because that dogma could not assimilate the further progress made since its foundation.

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Any shouting person is boring.

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Freedom really is one of the most important things in life.  Never let the enemy take away that word.  They've twisted it to mean the "freedom" of the economically powerful to dominate everyone else without government "interference".  That isn't freedom.

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A response consisting of "You are a [word ending in -ist]" or "This is a form of [word ending in -ism]" is not an argument and does not refute anything.  It's just fancy name-calling.

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Sometimes the greatest form of bravery is that which is the least respected.  To defend yourself or a weaker person from the mob takes courage, but to do so when that "mob" is most of the society you live in, enforcing its taboo system, and when you receive only contempt or ridicule for what you are doing -- how much more courage that takes.

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It's nonsense to say that all cultures are equal.  I accept no man as my equal who does not accept women as his equals.

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They can ban whatever they want to, but they cannot see inside your head.