Cloud Poetry

A short code of behaviors and rules to go by: - Noninterference is the highest ideal

- Nobody owes you anything: time, money, sympathy, attention

- Learn your own history and the history of the industry and country in which you are operating within.

- Just because you are dissatisfied with current circumstances of reality, it doesn’t deny the fact of those circumstances or the fact that you must live with reality. If the circumstances are abhorrent to you, take steps to change them - otherwise, you are proving that you are able to live with the fact of their existence.

- When ethnic cultural traditions and gestures conflict against your feelings or current beliefs regarding conduct, it is best to go by your own instinctive guidance.

- When there is nothing to say (good or bad), don’t waste your breath or time

- Devote all your time to improving your skills and knowledge

- Time away from improving skills and knowledge is time (and life) frittered away.

- Time is the most valuable resource we have.

- Resist the urge to correct people on their beliefs and delusions. You do not know everything either, and people need their self constructions to survive.

- Do not get bogged down in pointless arguments of reality or taste interpretations. Most likely, you will be unable to influence the other person’s perceptions and at worst you will lose an acquaintance or friend.

- Be kind to those you have nothing in common with. Be brutally honest with those you love.

- You are most likely just Average (across all indicating points), not exceptional, not a leader in your industry and not ever likely to become famous or wealthy (unless you were born in fortunate circumstances, i.e. to wealthy parents) because most people on Earth fall within opposite extremes, in the median. This is fine and does not make you any less special to yourself or your friends and family. Narcissism and/or a sense of exceptionalism does not change the fact of your basic-averageness. You are also not the biggest victim by not being wealthy, famous, or exceptional. - Escapism and profit-seeking are the tenents by which American culture runs

- If it’s not your fight, it’s not your fight. Do not risk life and limb trying to be the hero/savior or, even worse, offer empty gestures and signal virtue without putting time and money behind those gestures. Prayers, thoughts, and social media posts are free and corrosive: giving people a false belief in their own effectiveness and goodness. Most aspiring heroes are signaling for their own self-serving ends or trying to claim moral superiority. - Being involved in charitable work or philanthropy does not necessarily make you a better or moral person. - The days of Kant’s Categorical Imperative are over: he himself never traveled more than 16 km from his birthplace, so it was easy for him to believe that what he applied to his life could be the universal guidelines for everyone else on Earth. So much for “Enlightenment” and tolerance of other cultures (it is easy to think you have all the answers if you are ignorant of other systems and cultures!) As far as self-absorption goes, philosophers beat artists and even politicians in this regard. - For those who are convinced of their own “purity” and others’ “corruption”: take a look in the mirror and see if you might have some blind spots yourself. Who made you the judge of morality? - Take these and every other guideline with a grain of salt: circumstances are ever-changing and in flux; nothing is absolute!

---

This episode is sponsored by

· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Excerpts from “Caste: The origins of our discontents”, in which Wilkerson gives a masterful portrait of the hierarchical caste and racial ranking divisions operating invisibly throughout American society.

---

This episode is sponsored by

· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Spanning two thousand years—from the Book of Songs (circa 600 B.C.) to the chü form of the Yuan Dynasty (1260–1368)—these 150 poems cover all major genres that students of Chinese poetry must learn. Correcting more than a century of distortion of the classical Chinese by translators unconcerned with the intricacies and aesthetics of the Chinese language, these masterful translations by Wai-lim Yip, a noted and honored translator and scholar, allow English readers to enter more easily into the dynamic of the original poems.

A follower of Epicurus, Lucretius believed the world to be composed of tiny atoms moving in a void and viewed life in terms of pleasure and pain, representing good and bad.

---

This episode is sponsored by

· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Selected poems of Edith Wharton, the first female writer to win the Pulitzer Prize.

---

This episode is sponsored by

· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Selected writings and testimonies of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BC) who founded a school called “The Garden”. He taught that the root of all human neurosis is death denial and the tendency for human beings to assume that death will be horrific and painful, which he claimed causes unnecessary anxiety, selfish self-protective behaviors, and hypocrisy. According to Epicurus, death is the end of both the body and the soul and therefore should not be feared. Epicurus taught that although the gods exist, they have no involvement in human affairs. He taught that people should behave ethically not because the gods punish or reward people for their actions, but because amoral behavior will burden them with guilt and prevent them from attaining ataraxia.

---

This episode is sponsored by

· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Short stories from Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Widow Ching - Pirate”

---

This episode is sponsored by

· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Songs

---

This episode is sponsored by

· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Daisy

The Science of Sacred Sites by Brian Fagan describes how archaeologists use modern science to study ancient cosmologies and religious beliefs. All archaeologists analyze the material remains of human behavior in the past using such durable funds as pottery, stone tools, building foundations, and food remains. In recent years some scholars have turned from the material to the intangible. They ask a question that was unthinkable even 20 years ago: what can archaeology tell us about the relationships between ancient cultures and their world as the perceived it?

---

This episode is sponsored by

· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app