Aphorisms: Collection 1

For the past few months, I’ve been experimenting with shorter forms of writing, ranging from one-line aphorisms to shorter 100-200 word vignettes. I find I enjoy the challenge of producing interesting prose at these lengths. My writing seems to exhibit a barbell curve of comfort. The nightmare zone for me is between 500 to 1500 words. Curiously enough, that’s the length that dominates both old and new media. I can do less than that or more than that easily, but staying within that range feels like squeezing blood from a rock.

Anyway, for the last two weeks, on Sunday evenings, I’ve been doing a rather silly “aphorism on demand” thing on Facebook where people throw topics at me and I come with aphorisms on the fly. I thought I’d share the output. Thanks to my Facebook buddies for playing. I might keep doing this on a semi-regular basis, so if you are interested in watching the live show, follow me on Facebook.

Here are the results of the first two shows. I am omitting topics and names of people who proposed them. If you tweet any of these, cc @ribbonfarm

1. Intelligence is the capacity to be exhausted by futility before you even get started.
2. Earnestness is what’s left behind when you subtract humor from love.
3. Love is the capacity to see cynicism as just another kind of naivete.
4. Progress is the heady sense of temporarily outrunning the forces of decline.
5. To construe war as a choice is simply to drive it into the shadows. War and peace are not choices, but outcomes.
6. Peace as a civilizational value is a distant aspiration. Hatred by contrast energizes our present realities. It is by testing our will against hatred, rather than by seeking peace, that we make any progress at all.
7. Science without nihilsm is a travesty on the order of iced coffee. Science for the ‘good of humanity’ is an abomination on the order of frappuccinos.
8. Cynicism is the naivete on the other side of failure.
9. Aging is a process of losing dignity through repetition of increasingly trivial things. First you repeat your ideas. Then you repeat your mistakes. Then you repeat your aphorisms. Finally, you repeat your jokes.
10. Absurdity at its best destroys meaning, rather than merely highlighting the meaningless. A donkey playing an accordion is merely ludicrous. A donkey playing Ode to Joy beautifully on the accordion is absurd.
11. The purpose of cynicism is to find drama in the banal, and banality in the dramatic; that is what allows one to feel with depth.
12. True paradoxes are more than simple contradictions; they are the beginnings of never-ending stories.
13. We crave sharp boundaries because they promise clean breaks from our realities and punctuate our infinities. We need them even after we outgrow parents, gods and newer imagined agencies.
14. We begin our search for meanings where we first run into our limits.
15. We settle to calm our fears and wander to feed our vanities.
16. To truly listen, you must be willing to let disorder and disquiet fill your mind without resistance.
17. Youth gets its abundances for free; growing up is about paying for your abundances with the things you neglect