Aphorisms by Christopher Fulkerson
The well-known aeronautical incidents known as "9/11" are but a footnote in a proper study of the musical science of counterpoint. On that day, America, and probably the whole world, was forcibly enrolled in counterpoint class. Though it was served a notice of academic delinquency, it has failed to show up for the first day of class.
Where the spirit of the law is ignored, there is no law at all, or worse: where the spirit of the law is ignored, even the literal meaning of the law can be circumvented.
Absolute popularity corrupts absolutely.
Democracy is socialism without historicism, but in practice, historicism is often applied, especially by religious millenarianists. Since there seem to be no democracies without religious factions, democracy probably doesn't exist in practice. Capitalism is socialism without compassion.
If, as is the case in the United States and no doubt elsewhere, corporations have the status of "personhood," then there are "persons" who are corporations who are voting and acting in favor of the interests of the corporations... in contradistinction to what humans understand as "persons." Let us keep in mind the Russell-Einstein Manifesto summarized by the words, "Remember your humanity, and forget the rest." Corporations may legally have the status of persons, but they remain non-human. When a corporation votes as a person, is it voting once, twice, or more than that? When a corporation as a person represents a point of view, surely it cannot be that of a person, but of the parties with an interest in the corporation. So when a corporation seems to speak for a person, it is speaking for a number of persons. This is a capacity beyond the range of a "person." Corporations cannot be persons; defining them as such by fiat cannot make them so; and it is being amply demonstrated that their interests cannot ultimately coincide with those of human beings. Legislation by fiat is tyranny.
Multitasking is an indicator of the state of war. Multitasking is not new. Around 500 BC the Athenians were accused of it by the Spartans. MORE
The essential work of a computer is performed by either changing the present nature of other work, or by changing the point of reference of other work. In either case, the effect is across time. MORE
In any economic system, unless all workers are equally regulated, the workers who are most severely regulated are the ones most unfairly treated, and the ones upon whom the economy actually rests.
Science is not about proving theories. Science is about making predictions. If you ask for proof, or are having to provide it, you are not doing science, you are in a court of law. If you are trying to learn how to predict the future, you are doing science. The scientist who does not waste time proving anything gets the farthest. Don't prove something, do something. Rather than convince anybody, create an invention that makes use of your knowledge. To prove something, you have to take time out from action. Why bother?
Proof is best offered in a spare moment, in an elevator; or casually, over coffee.
It is clear from simply looking at them that Newton is the chicken, and Leibniz is the egg. Hello, you are supposed to "get it" just by seeing their portraits. Even their philosophies compare in this way: Newton, who strayed from his apartments as little as possible, picking out bits of fact from books on hand; Leibniz, who thought tiny living monads were the basis of the universe. A vast amount of imagery and data, both iconographical and scientific, can be reckoned and projected from this simple fact.
Since the American dollar is now based on belief in the United States and nothing else, it must be admitted that the US has a faith-based rather than a fact-based economy. There is a problem: faith-based economies repulse fact-based economies.
When drinking alcoholic beverages, time should occasionally be taken to feel the exaltation. Before long, drinking any more just ruins the effect of drinking. If this is never done the act of drinking is truly an abuse. When drinking, more is not necessarily more. Apollonians best savor the gifts of Bacchus; it is ironic that simplistic Bacchanalians miss the full experience. The same can be said for how to appreciate the two different types of music, Classical and Popular, and who really appreciates either. One of my favorite things to do is to sip vodka (very slowly, and straight only, so as to be best able to control my intoxication) and read ancient Greek texts out loud, in the original. The combination of Homer and Citroen is splendid. Doing them in tandem, you can experience true exaltation.
Be aware that a huge wave of bad science is coming over the next few years. The partisanship of the bad science will be much easier to sort out if you keep in mind Al Gore's remark that "clean coal" makes about as much sense as "healthy cigarrettes." MORE.
The only reliable characteristic of democracy is that it can temporarily diffuse revolution. As Americans understand democracy, it has never existed. In general, the system is simply finessed by those who understand the nature of things, including how to be evil, better than others.
February 29, 2000 was not supposed to occur. The "adjustment" that requires an extra day every leap year is supposed to be skipped every 400 years, in order to re-adjust, due to the innacuracy that accumulates every four centuries. When the Gregorian calendar was established, it was decided that the readjustment would be made in years divisable by 400. Since 2000 is divisable by 400, "leap year" was not supposed to be observed that year. According to the original plan, we have been off one day ever since the year 2000.
If America is so separated from England, and if the Church is so separate from the State, how can it be that there is a National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and how can it be that it is a cathedral of the Church of England? Americans are encouraged to believe that since it is paid for with private funds, it does not violate the Constitution's First Amendment. But in this supposedly independent nation, where the Church and State are supposedly separate, the official head of the denomination that runs the National Cathedral is... the Sovereign of England!
Properly, a Prime Minister is an initiator; he is a "facilitator." A President maintains a position; usually the point of this position is its temporal significance; he is a "mind." Expressed in modern physics, a Prime Minister is the moment at which a wave begins; a President is an identifable particle. Of course it is possible to perform both tasks simultaneously. If he is thought to derive his power from a monotheistic deity, a king marks the position that every one of his subjects is dead. To "survive" a king is meaningless, if his significance is defined by a supreme deity. Expressed in modern physics, a king is the entirety of all particles along a wave, and the authority over all these elements. Such authority only exists if there is no further life in the wave or its particles. Belief in a supreme deity is fatal. Better to ask for less certainty, and be willing to do more work.
Knowing that the world is an hallucination makes every action far more effective than any prayer said in ignorance of the nature of reality.
"Thought experiments" are real events, whether or not they are real experiments. Don't worry, there are already thought police, and dream police as well... to protect you.
It is easier to read minds than to figure out what a stupid person thinks he's doing.
You can have pretty much any type of initiation you like, into any open or secret society or mystery cult you can find or think of, and you probably already have had very many such initiations. There are no genuine boundaries or requirements: every orthodoxy requires a left hand in order to function properly. Gowns, vows, smells and bells - these things are to initiation what a pyramid is to a geometric point. If you require a pyramid to make the point, you will not get the point very often. MORE.
Those who will not listen to the music will have to face the music.
America is not about people. It is about cars. MORE. STILL MORE.
It is unethical to use wealth to block the redistribution of wealth that will result from the economic changes caused by the ordinary business activites associated with an extenuating project necessary for a society's existence. MORE.
Many Americans do not suspect that not all science is good. There is also bad science that causes harm. MORE.
America has become culturally, and in important ways politically, the very same monster that during the Cold War we were told the Soviet Union was.
There is no law of the sort which the various authorities - temporal or spiritual - would have us believe in for their convenience, or even for the compromise of the "social contract." You can try to change the fact that "law" does not exist, but effecting such change is a project no one has ever yet succeeded in. Or you can act according to the way things really work. MORE
Monotheistic religion makes life a near-death experience.
Except for the cult in which I am God, monotheism cannot exist, since it does not represent the nature of things. For its supposed creator, Akhenaten, monotheism was not a religion, it was a successful gambit.
Beware the Tao. Dualism is a two-edged sword.
Some acts of translation are from nonsense into sense.
Freedom is sweet.
No society can provide both freedom and equality for its citizens.
Life defies entropy. Since entropy is a law of the universe, it may be that life itself is a crime against the universe. If this is so, I have no intention of obeying the law of entropy insofar as it may require the dissolution of the forces that encourage me to florish.
A military action is successful only to the degree that its meaning is understood and translatable into everyday terms. The attack of 9/11/2001 on the United States said clearly "we hate you," and may be one of the clearest messages ever expressed militarily. The United States has not responded with an equally clear message; it is likely that the United States cannot, in fact, reply to the attack of 9/11/2001.
Tradition is a history of error. MORE
In music, you never want just two violinists playing a single part together. You want only one, or at least three, because whenever two fail at playing a single part perfectly, and this is always, there is the question of who is correct, and who is wrong. With three or more, there is a group effort. This can be generalized into a philosophy of life.
The ignorant person believes and speaks the expression "If I give you a fish, you have food for a day. If I teach you to fish, you have food for a lifetime." The enlightened person knows that if I give you a coin, you have money for a time, but if I teach you realization, you have gold for eternity. MORE
In a free world, everyone is out in the provinces of someone else's empire. Life in the modern world consists of voluntary participation in any number of empires. In an unfree world, the number of empires you can choose to exist within is limited and involuntary, giving your superiors greater resemblance to tyrants.
Every pessimist thinks he's a realist.
Every nag thinks she is "honest."
Ugly women are always the most difficult, and they are usually the most vain.
The arts in America have, since World War II supposedly ended, been part of the external - and continuing - empires of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. Indeed, those supposedly defunct empires exist in a more robust form than ever before in the concert programming of the United States. This is why there is so much music by German and Russian composers, most of them safely dead. The situation is quite comparable to the relation between ancient Rome and Greece. The Romans seemed to conquer the Greeks, but in fact the Romans adopted the Greek religion, much of its political structure, spoke Greek the way Nineteenth Century Russians spoke French, sent their children to Greece for their education, and often even exported their otherwise civil wars to Greece.
The fairest, most effective way to bring about globalization is for nations to allow multiple citizenship for selected individuals. During its Revolution, which was defended by, and then betrayed, by Napoleon, France issued citizenship to persons it thought friends good enough for this honor. This practice needs to be revived. In this way, persons deserving such honor would participate in the life of more than one nation. Such persons would act as bridges between nations.
A medical professional who cannot speak genuinely satisfactory English is in gross violation of the spirit of the doctor-patient relationship, it being universally understood that proper doctors communicate effectively with their patients. Further, no medical professional may be less intelligent than is necessary to understand a patient's ignorance of what they are doing to them.
The planet is in the position of a person committing suicide by asphyxiatingfrom car exhaust. Therefore, world politics are the politics of a suicidal species. Humanity has never resembled the lemming more than it does now.
Tolerance facilitates taxation. Tolerance erodes black markets. It is in the interest of governments to encourage tolerance. From this point of view, America's greatest enemy is its own intolerant Puritan element, for some time identified with the Republican party.
Republicans are heartless, and Democrats are mindless.
A simulation is neither a test nor a proof, least of all, if it is being observed. Therefore, simulations are merely secret formulas for their creators. And therefore in turn, they are not simulations, but only the appearance of simulations, simulacra of simulations. Not only are simulations not real, there can be no such thing as an observed simulation.
It is not true that money is completely negotaible. Money not only talks, it has memory. MORE
A requirement to have faith in any God who delivers as little as any we have yet known is like being forced to loan money to an employer.
The best evidence that Shakespeare was Catholic is that he was involved in the theater. The Jesuits made a practice of teaching through theater, and this may account for the Italian project that developed simultaneously with, and parallel to Shakespeare, which resulted in the creation of the musical genre called Opera.
Polygamy involving one male, and polyandry involving one female, are most compatible with current morals if the one male in polygamy, or the one female in polyandry, are in charge in their respective groups. MORE
There is an answer to most or all of the anomalous phenomena we witness or hear about, and that these phenomena are due to the fact that we are not actually in a world we imagine we are in. If "reality" is realized to be an illusion, many explanations fall into place.
Religion is a permanently fixed and dogmatic method of working out differences without compromise; it produces the best results for the leadership, the worst results for its followers, costs little money, usually takes the longest time - often many centuries - and involves the great secret that every religion is a system of world conquest. MORE. Politics is a temporarily fixed and negotiated method of working things out with compromise; it produces unreliable results for the leadership, unreliable results for their followers, costs a lot of money, usually takes less time than religion to accomplish its goals, and its openness depends on its methods and aims. Popular art is like religion, classical art is like politics. However, once the cultural artifacts are created, Classical art can become the center of a religion. Once it does, it begins to lose its standing as a Classical art form.
Jesus was wrong when he said there is no greater gift than to lay down one's life for a friend. It is a much greater gift, and one that is not advisable to give, to lay down one's life for an enemy. MORE.
Moses was a prophet, Jesus was a loss, Mohammad was a success. None makes fullest sense without both of the others; all are dispensible. And, there are others, and they too are dispensible.
Christianity is the religion of the Pax Romana. It is probably Rome's version of conveniently emasculated Judaism.
If you haven't done anything to merit the death penalty, you don't need Jesus to die for your sins.
Obeying the law is the minimum, not the optimal, degree of social cooperation. MORE.
If a conflict doesn't eventually result in peace at home, then you lost the war. Winning the peace can be much harder than winning a war. A war plan without a peace plan is a plan for national suicide. The best war plan avoids the part about the warfighting.
The iliad is about winning the war; the Odyssey is about winning the peace.
Every religion is a world conquest effort. MORE.
Monogamy is a detente.
You need your teacher until you realize your teacher is your warden.
Physical fighting is far from being the optimal way to defeat an enemy. The best way to defeat an enemy is simply to make them wrong. (Overall, this was the approach the U.S. took against the Soviet Union. And, this is the approach China is now taking against the U.S. This time we are truly vulnerable, since we owe them money.) Unfortunately this method usually takes time. But your chances of eventually being made wrong yourself are much greater if you engage in warfighting. Nowadays, at least in Democracies, this is largely because your successors are usually responsible for winning the peace.
Homer is both greater, and more important, than Shakespeare. Shakespeare is the most successful writer of all time. If these two statements seem contradictory, give some more thought to what may be meant by "greater."
Time is too short to waste very much of it studying what is known and permitted. There is really only time to study what is unknown and forbidden.
When thinking about any alleged distinction between good and evil it is best to remember that it is a big planet, and most of it is dirt.
It is easy to be prolific in an old style.
Any time anyone advocates to their own advantage the idea that another person should work alone to deserve respect, they are promoting tyranny. The chiefest tyanny artists face today is due to the lack of patronage. The notion that to be credible an artist must make his own money is perhaps the crudest notion artists have to face on a regular basis. MORE
Avoid giving anybody special thanks until the final goal is achieved and everything is working. If
you thank people too early on, they will think their work is done.
A dispossessed worker who believes he should follow all the rules is like a wounded soldier in a foxhole who believes in faith healing.
There are no independent, objective ethics. There is only point of view.
It is too much to ask humility of the humiliated, until they heal from their humiliation. Until then, one can only be patient.
In a free market economy, faithfulness of any kind will be punished, most often in the form of a fee, or with a loss of earning opportunity. Adam Smith was wrong when he taught that the market would improve people's morals. The market only improves people's acting skills. It is no coincidence that the American president who most advocated the free market was a former actor.
Religion is to an adherent's intelligence what a bandage is to a wound inflicted by the conqueror who inflicts it. If you think you need the bandage you are probably right, but you should try to realize that it is an expedient administered, or made to seem necessary, by those who have defeated your will. MORE
Never let your honesty exceed your listener’s liberality.
Marriage is a social convention intended to control the opportunities for, circumstances, and outcome of procreation. Only the emotionally underdeveloped engage in it. In other words, in at least two senses, marriage is for children.
Sex without religion is like wealth without taxes.
To forgive is human, to err is divine.
For as long as she can give birth, a woman is more important than any one of her children.
When Jesus was asked about which husband the woman who married each of seven brothers successively would be with in heaven, he didn't give a direct answer, he only called the questioners "hard of heart." This suggests that a good-hearted person has no problem with polyandry, and by extension with polygamy.
Never let your public expressions exceed the understanding of disinterested bystanders.
The lights in the night sky are waiting for you to look up and see and communicate with them, which they are eager to do. You have always been allowed to observe the moons.
We all work well with others who do what we ourselves want.
You have what it takes to be who you are.
Some people think I'm confused, but I don't know what they're talking about.
When I was a young boy I noticed there were more spiders than before. These were the harmless spiders that were easy to kill, called "Grandaddy Longlegs." I asked my mother where they came from. She told me they came from the computer. This was around 1960, and was the first time I remember ever hearing the word "computer." She made her reply simply, but in a way I was to understand that I wouldn't comprehend the long answer, and since we were talking about something that didn't seem dangerous, and since I was too young to sustain an inquiry, I didn't ask after her reply. That incident may be the earliest memory I have that is proof to me of the enormity of the illusion in which we live, and of the involvement of technological devices in that illusion. I have lived to an age to resume that inquiry, and my every action sustains it.
One way to understand my suggestion that the world is an illusion generated by a computer is to understand Thermopylae as the firewall.
"In the last resport, all government means control by a minority - for only a minority can produce that unity of directive which the word 'government' implies." - John Warry.
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First posted 10/18/2009. Last Updated 6/7/2010.