Power, Reality, Truth, and Honesty

Maybe I am mostly different from others after all. Maybe I am a bit more fearless in pursuit of truth behind the surface reality. Maybe I am a bit more honest with myself and with others.

It's hard to restrain oneself if one has power. One tends to want to have a monopoly on what one thinks is the correct and right view of things. A strong and intelligent man welcomes dissent, holds a decorous discourse with dissenters, and benefits from the diversity of opinions.

Some people want to go through life without chaos. They want things to proceed smoothly, without discord. Others sees chaos is room for growth, opportunities for better things to come

There is a test to determine if a person values truth over sophistry. It involves a determination if a conviction that one has is grounded on solid reasoning and facts, not compromises with conscience so one can sleep better at night. It is dishonest to embrace something as true because it gives us comfort and does not threaten our life while in the back of our head, we know we are fooling ourselves.

A person can live to ripe old age and die as a respectable member of society and is still a fraud, even if he is the only one who knows about the fraudulence. Conscience, that moral compass, has to be functional at all times. Without it, man is no different from lower forms of life. Since I was fortunate to be born as a human, I have struggled to stay true to my human roots and potential although there have been so many times I regressed and fell back, but each time, I forced myself to get up and crawl back to the path of righteousness, because pride is all I have, pride in my ability to actualize my human potential.

The lesson I have learned in the past few days is that I have to be cordial, pleasant, reasonable in tone of speech and forgiving in action. Self-righteousness is the seed of destruction, the reflection of blindness. Persuasion is an art, started with putting oneself in the heart of the opponent. I have to really listen to what he has to say to me, instead of just being preoccupied with what I want to say to him. In saying I have the capacity for love, I have to show it. Love is action, not talk.