Is 'super' a level to which we should aspire?
Guess that just depends on perspective.
If my quest involves tramping down my fellow man
Both a judge and a jury I'm detected.
Should every man yield to the yearning unashamed
Without hypocrisy and wastefulness;
Squander the strength he’s been endowed with;
Feign superiority as tunnel vision’s all he sees?
I’m trying to develop a superman;
Dionysus evolving into perfect humanity.
Gadding about helping each other get along
Won’t make us build the kind of man I see.
Inferiors are weak copies of betters
Printed on bad paper from old and worn-out plates now gone.
Selection, survivors mastering;
Bettering the species, irrespective of
Everything you’ve ever learned
About what’s right or wrong.
You hear the word, you’re quoting scripture that you learned
Originating from a deity.
But should that motivate your actions?
Such self-serving rewarding scheme.
Yours or mine, that’s what both seem.
(from https://ineedmotivation.com/45-unforgettable-quotes-about-ideas/)
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
– Oscar Wilde
An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
– Buddha
Good ideas are common – what’s uncommon are people who’ll work hard enough to bring them about.
– Ashleigh Brilliant
Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.
– Howard Aiken
The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.
– Jim Rohn
You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.
– Pablo Picasso
. . . if perfect is what you want. But even if that IS what you want, will you ever achieve it? Is ANYTHING really ever perfect anyway. I practice to develop ideas and to physically workout the fingers. Perfection is much too good in the way that Broadway musicals contain too much singing and dancing. Also, perfection implies objectivity. My music, as I believe of all music, is strictly subjective. So here I go. 'Practicing' again. This time reviewing some (what I think are) interesting changes that comprise my tune 'Wisdom'.
(from xhttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perfection)
Definition of perfection
1 :the quality or state of being perfect: such as
a :freedom from fault or defect :flawlessness
b :maturity
c :the quality or state of being saintly
2 a :an exemplification of supreme excellence
b :an unsurpassable degree of accuracy or excellence
3 :the act or process of perfecting
. . . my personal view is that there is no place for perfection in creative music. This is a refreshing contrast to my 'other' life. Music is too relative, but then so is perfection. But as a creative musician, I do practice, develop, refine, allow for the evolution, or metamorphosis, change at all times in order to best express myself. Yet another version of an original composition which has been 'cooking' for quite a while now, and which is being practiced continuously in the pursuit of 'perfection' (for lack of a better word), is here for a listen . . .
Formulate AND stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture…
Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.
-Norman Vincent Peale
To laugh often and much
to win the respect of intelligent people
and affection of children; to earn the
appreciation of honest critics and
endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty, to find the best
in others; to leave the world a bit
better, whether by a healthy child
a garden patch or redeemed
social condition; to know even
one life has breathed easier because
you have lived. This is to have
succeeded.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
(from wikipedia.com)
". . . (Mitch) Hurwitz was chosen by Ron Howard to create a sitcom about a rich dysfunctional family, which eventually turned into Arrested Development. Hurwitz wrote the pilot in 2002, which was filmed in March 2003. FOX added the show to its schedule in May. Although the show premiered to stunning reviews from television critics around the country, the show was plagued by low ratings throughout its three-season run. In July 2004, the show was nominated for 7 Primetime Emmy Awards and won 5, including Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series.
In the second season, ratings decreased further and the show was cut down to 18 episodes instead of the planned 22 episodes. Nevertheless, the show was still critically acclaimed and was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards.
In the show's third and final season on FOX, Hurwitz tried to keep Arrested Development on the air, but did not have the advertising funding to promote the series. The show was again cut down, from 18 episodes to 13. FOX announced the cancellation of the show before the production of the final five episodes.
After seven years off the air, Arrested Development returned for a fourth season on the online movie & tv streaming site Netflix on May 26, 2013. . ."
(more from Christopher Hitchens circa 1998 http://www.american-buddha.com/material.high.htm)
". . .The Dalai Lama has come out in support of the thermonuclear tests recently conducted by the Indian state, and has done so in the very language of the chauvinist parties who now control that state's affairs. The "developed" countries, he says, must realize that India is a major contender and should not concern themselves with its internal affairs. This is a perfectly realpolitik statement, so crass and banal and opportunist that it would not deserve any comment if it came from another source.
"Think different," says the ungrammatical Apple Computer advertisement that features the serene visage of His Holiness. Among the untested assumptions of this billboard campaign is the widely and lazily held belief that "Oriental" religion is different from other faiths: less dogmatic, more contemplative, more ... transcendental. This blissful, thoughtless exceptionalism has been conveyed to the West through a succession of mediums and narratives, ranging from the pulp novel "Lost Horizon," by James Hilton (creator of Mr. Chips as well as Shangri-La), to the memoir "Seven Years in Tibet," by SS veteran Heinrich Harrer, prettified for the screen by Brad Pitt. China's foul conduct in an occupied land, combined with a Hollywood cult that almost exceeds the power of Scientology, has fused with weightless Maharishi and Bhagwan-type babble to create an image of an idealized Tibet and of a saintly god-king. So perhaps the Apple injunction to think differently is worth heeding.
The greatest triumph that modern PR can offer is the transcendent success of having your words and actions judged by your reputation, rather than the other way about. The "spiritual leader" of Tibet has enjoyed this unassailable status for some time now, becoming a byword and synonym for saintly and ethereal values. Why this doesn't put people on their guard I'll never know. But here are some other facts about the serene leader that, dwarfed as they are by his endorsement of nuclear weapons, are still worth knowing and still generally unknown.
Shoko Asahara, leader of the Supreme Truth cult in Japan and spreader of sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway, donated 45 million rupees, or about 170 million yen (about $1.2 million), to the Dalai Lama and was rewarded for his efforts by several high-level meetings with the divine one.
Steven Seagal, the robotic and moronic "actor" who gave us "Hard to Kill" and "Under Siege," has been proclaimed a reincarnated lama and a sacred vessel or "tulku" of Tibetan Buddhism. This decision, ratified by Penor Rinpoche, supreme head of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, was initially received with incredulity by Richard Gere, who had hitherto believed himself to be the superstar most favored. "If someone's a tulku, that's great," he was quoted as saying. "But no one knows if that's true." How insightful, if only accidentally. At a subsequent Los Angeles appearance by the Dalai Lama, Seagal was seated in the front row and Gere two rows back, thus giving the latter's humility and submissiveness a day at the races. Suggestions that Seagal's fortune helped elevate him to the Himalayan status of tulku are not completely discounted even by some adepts and initiates.
Supporters of the Dorge Shugden deity -- a "Dharma protector" and an ancient object of worship and propitiation in Tibet -- have been threatened with violence and ostracism and even death following the Dalai Lama's abrupt prohibition of this once-venerated godhead. A Swiss television documentary graphically intercuts footage of His Holiness, denying all knowledge of menace and intimidation, with scenes of his followers' enthusiastically promulgating "Wanted" posters and other paraphernalia of excommunication and persecution.
While he denies being a Buddhist "Pope," the Dalai Lama is never happier than when brooding in a celibate manner on the sex lives of people he has never met. "Sexual misconduct for men and women consists of oral and anal sex," he has repeatedly said in promoting his book on these matters. "Using one's hand, that is sexual misconduct." But, as ever with religious stipulations, there is a nutty escape clause. "To have sexual relations with a prostitute paid by you and not by a third person does not constitute improper behavior." Not all of this can have been said just to placate Richard Gere, or to attract the royalties from "Pretty Woman."
I have talked to a few Dorge Shugden adherents, who seem sincere enough and who certainly seem frightened enough, but I can't go along with their insistence on the "irony" of all this. Buddhism can be as hysterical and sanguinary as any other system that relies on faith and tribe. Lon Nol's Cambodian army was Buddhist at least in name. Solomon Bandaranaike, first elected leader of independent Sri Lanka, was assassinated by a Buddhist militant. It was Buddhist-led pogroms against the Tamils that opened the long and disastrous communal war that ruins Sri Lanka to this day. The gorgeously named SLORC, the military fascism that runs Burma, does so nominally as a Buddhist junta. I have even heard it whispered that in old Tibet, that pristine and contemplative land, the lamas were the allies of feudalism and unsmilingly inflicted medieval punishments such as blinding and flogging unto death.
Yet the entire Western mass media is uncritically at the service of a mere mortal who, at the very least, proclaims the utter nonsense of reincarnation and who affirms the sinister if not indeed crazy belief that death is but a stage in a grand cycle of what appears to be futility and subjection. What need, then, to worry about nuclear weaponry, or sectarian frenzy, or the sale of indulgences to men of the stamp of Steven Seagal? "Harmony" will doubtless kick in. During his visit to Beijing, our sentimental Baptist hypocrite of a president turned to his dictator host, recommended that he meet with the Dalai Lama and assured him that the two of them would get on well. That might easily turn out to be the case. Both are very much creatures of the material world. . . "
