Some Fruits of Solitude: Part 5 Disappointment And Resignation (32-37) and Murmuring (38-40)

Some Fruits of Solitude: Part 5 Disappointment And Resignation (32-37) and Murmuring (38-40)

Bonus: 

Apparently superdickery.com is gone. Luckily, Archive.org has it.

Summary: You should be grateful God only makes your like as shitty as he does!

Commentary: 

Disappointment And Resignation

32. Disappointment that aren't our fault are trials, and we should make sure we benefit from them.

33. Don't whine at God about your problems, turn them into blessings.

34. We deserve so few good things, and we should be thankful for them.

35. We'd go bald if not for God.

36. No matter how bad you are, you're not too bad for God.

37. Jesus is dead, but his love lives on. Turn to him and you'll gain more than you lose.

Murmuring

38. Everything we have (including ourselves) is really God's.

39. Don't be ungrateful for the time God gives you.

40. It's hard to keep an appropriately God slobbering perspective, but do it anyway.

This is something that I dealt with a lot in the original 15MAD entries. Long story short, a lot of Christian authors like to go on and on about how terribly humanity is, how great God is, and how we should all be grateful he doesn't torture us more, or he's not really torturing us, or whatever.

On the whole, I find it pretty incompatible with the base idea of a liberal education, which is that anyone who puts in the time, work, etc. can learn to be a good, thinking person. The "liberal" in liberal education means "free", it's the education that you need to be responsible and effective with your freedom. I don't really see how you can argue to that someone is free if you go on for a couple pages about how God controls anything and we're all pieces of shit.

Not dropping this yet, but thinking about it. If I slogged through every book in the T5FSOB that I hated, I'd have a couple miserable years (and lousy blogposts) ahead of me.

Topic List: Ignorance, Education, Luxury, Inconsideration, Disappointment And Resignation, Murmurs 

Some Fruits of Solitude: Part 4 Inconsideration (30-31)

 Some Fruits of Solitude: Part 4 Inconsideration (30-31)

Bonus: 

One time, a lady drove by while I was working in the yard, and told me to chain my car to a stump.

Summary: Measure twice, cut once.

Commentary: The two weeks of hell are almost over! So hopefully less bullshitty entries again starting tomorrow.

30. Not thinking things through is the cause of all unhappiness. Our second thoughts are usually different than our first, but we rarely remember that.

31. It's our own fault we're unhappy, since we do things we know we shouldn't.

Topic List: Ignorance, Education, Luxury, Inconsideration  

Some Fruits of Solitude by William Penn: Part 3 Luxury (28-29)

 Some Fruits of Solitude by William Penn: Part 3 Luxury (28-29)

Bonus: 

Gamefreak actually trying for the first time in a decade.

Summary: Don't put the house before the jewels.

Commentary: Very busy day, so copping out a little with only two.

28. Materially, we want only the best of the best. Spiritually, we'll any garbage.

29. A bunch of analogies: Spirit : Body :: Furniture: House :: Jewel: Cabinet :: Lease : Inheritance

I think this is the most cliche classical ed position. "WE INSIST ON FANCY X, BUT WE CONSUME SHITTY MEDIA"

Topic List: Ignorance, Education, Luxury

I won a Chess Game

 Way back at the beginning of they year, I talked about getting my chess rank up as one of my goals. I've been playing more this year, doing puzzles, etc. Earlier this week, I joined a new league and won my first game.

I'm so tired.

Some Fruits of Solitude by William Penn 3: Pride (18-27)

Some Fruits of Solitude by William Penn 3: Pride (18-27)

Bonus: 

Daycore>Nightcore

Summary: Pride=Ignorance

Commentary: 

18. We take a lot of pride in ourselves, but we're only temporary.

19. No one has a good reason for being ignorant of themself.

20. The value of a gift determines how we should respond to it. If you're ignorant of the worth, you can't respond properly.

21. If you don't know yourself, how can you know you creator? Think of how amazing and complex you are, how all the body parts fit together, how your soul animates and lives in them. We should appreciate God more for how well designed we are. But we don't, because we don't.

22. We want people to obey us, but won't obey God. And God is much more above the highest man than the highest man is above the lowest.

23. Humans are cruel and impatient with each other, but God is infinitely patient. (Except all the smiting...)

24. We try to make our bodies pretty, but not our souls.

25. We get nervous and try to show respect to important people, but not to God.

26. When we pray "thy will be done" we mean our own. Or at least act that way.

27. Instead of beginning with God and ending with the world. God should be both Alpha and Omega.

Ignorance of God=Pride isn't indefensible, it's just super specific. I guess you could mostly expand these to a broader concept of "creation" or "order" or something.

26 is the best one. In the original:

26. In his Prayers he says, Thy Will be done: But means his own: At least acts so.

Definitely acceptable as background narration while your warrior monk, holy assassin, etc. preps to go murder heretics or whoever.

It's definitely one of the weird parts about praying, and something I remember struggling with some in my Sunday school days. "Hey God, please do this thing. If it's what you were going to do anyway, omnipotent, omniscient, dude who sort of listens to me."

The standard response is that God works in mysterious ways, and you just thought you wanted God to grant your prayer, but it'll be worth it when the opposite happens in the long run.

You're just a cosmic child, you don't know any better. 

Topic List: Ignorance, Education, Pride

Some Fruits of Solitude by William Penn: Part 2 (Education

 Some Fruits of Solitude by William Penn: Part 2

Bonus: 

This is some weird education.

Summary: We do education wrong. More nature!

Commentary:

I did not realize how much these flowed from one to another. But I don't really want to do one whole "part" (by his organization) because that's 80+ at a time, and that feels like too much to digest.

4. We teach people to be scholars, not people. To talk about things, not know them.

5. Children know what makes sense.

6. We rush to make kids memorize things they won't use, instead of helping them gain the practical knowledge they have natural interest in.

7. Language is good, but "things" are better.

8. Children would rather make something than memorize.

9. We should study and act according to nature.

10. Follow the pace of nature, and you'll learn at the right pace.

11. The world would no longer be a mystery to us. God set us up to understand nature.

12. People would make better decisions if they studied the world and how it was made.

13. Who would abuse the world if they saw how God is in all of it?

14. Ignorance is what makes us abuse the world.

15. It's a shame we don't have school books about nature written in Latin, so kids could learn both at the same time.

16. Many people in all jobs are ignorant of why they do their jobs. You can only be a master of something if you know both why and how it's done.

17. If man is really the apex of evolution, we only have to know ourselves to know the world. But we are unconcerned with what made us.

Obviously, Penn is very religious. For a lot of these, you can make it work in a more generalized form without religion, but it's pretty hard to twist it out of some. I like the idea of making them more generally applicable, but not overly changing them just to take out God.

Topic List: Ignorance, Education

Some Fruits of Solitude by William Penn: Part 1- Prologue, Ignorance (1-3)

Some Fruits of Solitude

Bonus: 

Weird, and also looks like a scam

Summary: William Penn wanders around in his woods (that's what the name of the state means) and thinks stuff. Some of which he hopes you will find helpful.

Commentary: Penn wraps up the trio of colonial Pennsylvania adjacent authors in volume one. While older than either, I wonder if he might form a kind of link between Franklin and Woolman, being Quaker like the latter and a statesman like the former.

He appears to have grouped his thoughts in groups by topic, which are:

Ignorance, Education, Pride, Luxury, Inconsideration, Disappointment and Resignation, Murmuring, Censoriousness, Bounds of Charity, Frugality or Bounty, Discipline, Industry, Temperance,

Nevermind, I'm not sitting here listing all these or all be here all night. I'll update a list later.

My plan is to take a chunk each day (probably two or three topics) and rewrite them here. Putting something into your own words is a good way to make sure you understand it, and these should be pretty short and manageable.

Off the top of my head, it's interesting that he seems to have primarily chose negative things to write on, as opposed to Franklin's Virtues, Adler's Great Ideas, etc.

Ignorance:

1. It's amazing how many people are totally ignorant of themselves and the world.

2. People take in the beauty of great buildings and works of art, but don't try to learn about themselves. They would benefit from doing so.

3. The world is beautiful, but we know so little about it. That should be the main thing we education children in until their 20s.

I think this is really what this whole project is about. Trying to learn more about myself, humanity, and the world. As I've said before, I don't feel like I got the education I would've hoped for. Some of that is my fault, but I'm trying to correct all of it now. Speaking of, education is the first topic for tomorrow.

Penn's Topics so far: Ignorance