This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We pay a terrible price for not forgiving. Unfortunately, the people whom we hold responsible for these unfinished feelings usually don’t suffer because of our feelings.
Aubrey de Vere, fully Aubrey Albericus de Vere NULL
It is easy to be honest enough not to be hanged. To be really honest means to subdue one’s prepossessions, ideals - stating things fairly, not humoring your argument - doing justice to your enemies... making confession whether you can afford it or not; refusing unmerited praise; looking painful truths in the face.
Argument | Enough | Ideals | Justice | Means | Praise | Truths |
There is no such thing as ethical truth. However, those committed to humane-egalitarian ideals can make a truth-claim rare and precious: they can look reality and the truths of science in the face and find nothing that makes them flinch.
The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true; It does create a sense of comradeship, which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong. War allows us to rise above our small stations in life. We find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War, for those who enter into combat, has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the "lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.
Alienation | Beauty | Bible | Cause | Diversion | Feelings | Life | Life | Lust | Meaning | Nobility | Self | Sense | Time | War | Bible |
Hard as it is for us to escape the effects of our own feelings, nobody seems to have difficulty in rejecting the feelings of others as merely subjective and vulnerable to interference from the demons of self-deception and self-delusion.
Delusion | Difficulty | Feelings | Self | Self-deception |
Find meaning not in possessions or positions, but in personal commitments to ideals bigger than our own needs. And the ideals that seem to consistently provide this kind of meaning are ideals of service-of acting for the common good and overcoming whatever risks and obstacles may lie in the way.
Good | Ideals | Meaning | Possessions | Service |
When I speak to people about creating a life, they often speak of what they want to "do" – as opposed to what they want to "feel." My recommendation to someone facing your decision is to write down a list of feelings that you're trying to create in your life and use that as the measuring stick to determine whether you're achieving your goals. I post my list right above my desk every day.
Day | Decision | Feelings | Goals | Life | Life | People | Right |
The secular or freethinking humanist looks into the self for guidance; response to need comes from deep human feelings of compassion, concern for others, and a desire to help. The freethinker is not motivated by a divine command to act, but rather by personal humanistic response to pain, loneliness, hunger, and homelessness. Benevolent actions are not accompanied by a need to convert or indoctrinate, but rather flow from deep human wellsprings of empathy and a desire to improve the condition of the world.
Compassion | Desire | Empathy | Feelings | Guidance | Hunger | Loneliness | Looks | Need | Pain | Self | World |
A significant life - one that is more than just happy or meaningful - requires dedication to ends that we choose because they exceed the goal of personal well-being. We attain and feel our significance in the world when we create, and act for, ideals that may originate in self-interest, but ultimately benefit others.
Dedication | Ends | Happy | Ideals | Life | Life | Self | Self-interest | World |
We often use the word "meaning" in relation to personal feelings and emotional significance. It then reveals and sometimes declares our highest values. It manifests ideals that we cherish and pursue.
We are by nature thinking beings, and if we cannot escape anxiety about the inherent structure of our thought processes, how can we hope to creative purposive ideals that are congruent with reality instead of deflecting us from it?
Anxiety | Anxiety | Hope | Ideals | Nature | Reality | Thinking | Thought | Thought |
Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideals is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path of wisdom is a liberal education.
Better | Books | Censor | Education | History | Ideals | Ideas | Wisdom |