Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term. Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.

— Applied Murphology

Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.

— George Burns

So Social Security will be broke in seven years. First Bernie Madoff, now this. It’s like Ponzi schemes don’t even work anymore.

- Bill Muse, Top 5 Rumination

To be is to do — Socrates
To do is to be — Jean Paul Sartre
Do be do be do — Frank Sinatra

I posted this quote for the sole reason that it always makes me smile. But as I looked at the list of names, and their sequence, I realized that, in a simplistic way, these simple words also reflect our evolution of philosophy and thought. Socrates lived more than 2,400 years ago and his influence on thought is legendary. Jean Paul Sartre was a prominent French philosopher at the peak of the twentieth century. Frank Sinatra was born only ten years after Sartre but has come to embody a later generation.

In one of my marathon runs of post-graduate education I took a several courses in ancient, medieval, and modern Western Philosophy. Socrates and Plato were the superstars of the ancient period while St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas formed the cornerstones of Medieval Philosophy. Then came Immanuel Kant, and John Locke, and David Hume and a flood of other amazing thinkers who ushered in the period of Modern Philosophy. As I studied these philosophers and their periods in history I was struck by their role as the official thinkers for society. It was as if the masses had entrusted the responsibility of defining “what we think” to a small cadre of professional thinkers. They wrote prodigiously and defined their era with their ideas.

The printing press, the vast expansion of formal education, and now the Internet, have democratized thinking — and this is undoubtedly a good thing. We no longer look to the philosophers to decide what we think on any particular topic. We take pride in our ability to think for ourselves.

And yet, where has it gotten us? While we seem no less hungry for intellectual certainty, we seldom ponder the deeper questions of life or wonder what it means to just “be.” Instead we consider American Idol “entertainment” and Fox News “fair and balanced.” We align ourselves Democrat or Republican, Pentecostal or Baptist, left or right, as proxies for our own belief systems, relegating the details to the party platform or the church doctrine. In this way, we have not much evolved from our brethren of ancient and medieval times who looked to the intellectual giants of their day for the definition of current thought.

And yet, the world has become too complex and too broad to be captured by a few thinkers, such as Augustine or John Locke. In this way, Frank has, indeed, captured the prevailing thought.
Q: Where has the evolution of thought taken us?
A: Do be do be do . . .

Thanks Frank!

People who drink to drown their sorrows should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.

— Ann Landers.

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

— Goethe

Goethe lived from 1749 to 1832. In the two centuries since his death I am please to report that the planet has made great strides in mental health. At the dawn of the 21st century we have managed to confine the majority of our disordered minds to the executive suites and the board rooms of our largest corporations. A small consolation to the millions of us who must work in these corporations but progress nonetheless.

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

— Douglas Adams

The crows are calling my name, thought Caw.

— Jack Handey

I don’t know why but this line cracks me up every time I read it. Jack Handey is brilliant.

I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and they choose a king, they don’t just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.

— Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

All power corrupts, but we need the electricity.

— Unknown