We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
MORNING ON THE HOLLYWOOD BROADWALK
Build wealth and happiness!
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Category Archives: philosophy
We live many lives
One week after I started this blog I published a post “We live many lives”. Today I decided to copy it here because it is a central post to my understanding of life and pursuit of happiness.
I want to stress that life always requires to make risky choices. When you decide to marry or not to marry it is one of the riskiest choices in your life.
I also want to stress one sentence in the post below:
“a human being is born for happiness but happiness is notquaranteed, it must be achieved!”*
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- ” Man is born to be happy as a bird is born to fly”.
V. Korolenko
First of all, what is life?
There are different definitions of it.
Here are some of them:
-sequences of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual
– spiritual existence transcending physical death
– the period from birth to death
– a specific phase of earthly existence.
It’s easy to see that they have different meaning and some of
them are contradictory.
If life is “the period from birth to death” how can it also be “spiritual existence transcending physical death”?
If life is “a specific phase of earthly existence” it definitely means
that all of us live many lives.
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My memory keeps happy days of childhood in Odessa (Ukraine),
a beautiful port city.
June 22 was my mother’s birthday and has always been a very
joyful day for my family.
However, on June 22 1941 Germany attacked the USSR and
a terrible war started. My happy first life ended that day.
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I also remember my life in Tashkent (capital of Uzbekistan), It was
so different from my first life. New city, new people, new language.
My father was in the army, my mother worked in the hospital in
another city and I lived with my grandparents in a tiny room with a clay
floor. There was too little food, we were lacking many necessities
but my grandparents loved me very much and l loved going to school.
We had wonderful teachers, real professionals who loved their
students..
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Then there was a life in Moscow where I graduated from college, met my
wonderful wife and we started our family.
That life was very difficult too.
We lived in the totalitarian country where people could disappear at any
moment. My wife did not know her father. He was arrested and
executed a month before she was born. 28 years later my mother-in-law
received an official letter that he was innocent.
Three of us lived in a small apartment with three other families.
There was only a big sofa in our room, so my mother-in-law
had to go to sleep to her sister who lived nearby..
My wife was a designer and I worked on my dissertation at that
time and our love, our interesting work, love of our relatives and
friends made us happy.
A year after our marriage our son was born.
He had to sleep in the crib on the wide windowsill as there was no
other place for him in our room.
Our dream was also to have a girl. But first we needed a better
place for our family,
So we worked very hard for years. Besides working in research I
wrote books. We saved money and realized our dream by buying a nice
two bedroom apartment. And we were happy to live there with our
two children.(a boy and a girl).
Yes, a human being is born for happiness but happiness is not
quaranteed, it must be achieved!.
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Every person must grow mentally and spiritually. And with the growth new
goals come.
We were happy to live in our new apartment. Both of us were successful in
our careers. We lived in the center of Moscow and had many friends,
But gradually we came to understanding that it was our duty to leave the
USSR, to bring our children into the free world and to experience freedom
of a democratic society.
We made a very risky choice to apply for a permission to emigrate.
Nobody knew if the permission would be granted. We had to resign from
our jobs and to keep our children at home.
We were lucky to get a permission to emigrate after waiting for
five months. In February of 1975 we left the Soviet Union and then
a new cycle of lives in USA started.
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Who created symmetry?
Before submitting entries to this challenge I searched for definition of the word “symmetry”.
Here is one that I like (from The Free Dictionary): “The correspondence of the form and arrangement of elements or parts on opposite sides of a dividing line or plane or about a center or an axis.”
Then I thought: “Where do we meet symmetry?” Is symmetry natural? Is it created by people?”
It looks to me that nature has only a few symmetrical things on this planet. As a rule beauty is not symmetrical. The rule of thirds in photography confirms it.
I think that symmetry (even as beautiful as some of my digital paintings) actually shows limits of human imagination.
Now it’s time to show my entries in this challenge.
Quotes of George Bernard Shaw (1).
I believe that quotes of George Bernard Shaw must be understood and remembered by everyone. That’s why I reblog this old post.
I know that bloggers are élite.
It is obvious that all of you know that George Bernard Shaw was a great man.
But it is quite possible that you know only about one or two of his life’s activities and achievements.
So I recommend you to read an article about George Bernard Shaw HERE.
I love many of his famous quotes. Below are several of them that are as valid today as they were valid during his life.
He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called…
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Philosophy of beauty
I am sorry!
With learning photography, painting and writing I neglected to share with you many interesting things found and saved in a special draft called “Reserve”.
On the other hand, it might be interesting only for me.
Let’s try it today.
I’ll give you below a link to an article that I liked very much.
Please click on the link, read the article and let me know your opinion.
I’d like to know if I should share with you some other items saved in “Reserve”.
PHILOSOPHER by JF
Several Voltaire quotes.
Voltaire died in 1778. Please read his quotes and see if they are relevant today.
From Wikipedia: “François-Marie Arouet …; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire…, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.”
Below are several Voltaire quotes I selected for your consideration.
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Quotes about opinions.
Quotes below are about facts and opinions, about prejudice and passion. They explain why our society is so divisive today and why violence often rules.
Some technological achievements have undesirable results.
For example, TV networks and other social media often manipulate facts and give their own opinions to the public.
Majority of young people today base their opinions not on facts or knowledge or life experience but on what politicians and social media (who work for politicians) tell them.
That’s why it becomes almost impossible to discuss ideas and to solve common problems. That’s why our society became so divisive.
Please read the quotes below and comment on them. I’ll be happy to reply to your comments.
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Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
Bernard M. Baruch (1870 – 1965)
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)
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New Year’s resolutions?
I have to confess that I have never made New Year’s resolutions.
For many years it was simply necessary to survive.
When problems or needs arose I tried to do my best to solve problems or satisfy needs. There was no time for procrastination, for doubting what was possible.
It’s impossible always to be a winner, but doing your best actually makes you a winner. And it is always possible to adjust needs and to see if your problems are real.
2015 is coming.
What am I going to do?
To enjoy life, love, friendship, creativity, beauty!
The Sun will be rising again tomorrow, the Earth will be beautiful, all oceans will be in their usual places.
We live in the wonderful world!
OUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD! by JF
FAMILY AS A SYSTEM
I started this blog on 10/03/2013. At that time I had no idea where it will go. I only knew that I was close to 80 and so I chose the name of the blog “closetoeighty”.
In the beginning of November I published the post below, then I published many other posts about happiness and pursuit of happiness. I am going to combine them later on a separate page.
In the meantime I decided to reblog this post.
After I became 80 I decided to change the name of the blog to “PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS”. All people want to be happy. However, I am convinced that it is impossible to be happy without pursuing happiness.
Several Thomas Jefferson’s quotes.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Several quotes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’
Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Edgar Cayce – The Sleeping Prophet.
On March 30, 2014 I posted THREE SIMPLE QUESTIONS.
One of them was: “Who was Edgar Cayce and where did he live?”
Only my friend Painting Pandit gave a brief answer.
Edgar Cayce is not a legend. What he did confirmed for years by a group of people.
Please read about him HERE.
You can get even better knowledge of his life and enjoy very much reading books about him.
Here are Edgar Cayce’s SEVEN PROPHECIES THAT CAME TRUE.
You might be interested in his prophecies that are still to come and in many his readings.
In conclusion, I want to introduce to you several Edgar Cayce’s quotes:
“Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.”
“It is thought and feeling which guides the universe, not deeds.”
“When ye are prepared for a thing, the opportunity to use it presents itself.”
“You can never lose anything that really belongs to you, and you can’t keep that which belongs to someone else.”
Several quotes of Edmund Burke.
“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”
“Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.”
“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”
About thoughts.
My painting #13.
Dear friends,
I’ll have to stop blogging for some time.
Today I show you my painting #13. I made it using paint program on PC.
You’ll have enough time to comment.
Best wishes!
A painting of my friend V.Ryklin.
In the post MY FRIEND ARTIST VLADIMIR RYKLIN I described how we met and became friends and I showed you a link to some his paintings.
Below is a photo of Vladimir’s painting in our dining room.
We discussed with him many times what happens with people who moved from one kind of society to another (from a totalitarian country to a democratic country, from poor country to rich country, from country where religion persecuted to a country where majority of population is religious, from a country with one religion to a country with many religions).
We also discussed how soon and how willingly people who settle in a new country will learn its language, will accept its laws, will love this country.
The painting below is a result of these discussions. The photo of the painting is not very clear so I want to tell you its idea: people from other countries should WILLINGLY go through a meat grinder (hard years of learning language, laws, working, FULLY adjusting to new culture) to become ROSES (people who love their new country).
I know, I know!
After I published yesterday the short post “Do you believe in evolution? Our relative?” one of my followers (M-R) asked me to clarify my beliefs. I do it by reblogging this post.
Several Voltaire quotes.
From Wikipedia: “François-Marie Arouet …; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire…, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.”
Below are several Voltaire quotes I selected for your consideration.
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We build our worlds!
This morning I found a post with a photo that I liked very much.
You can see the post below.
IT IS GOOD THERE WHERE WE ARE NOT.
The post is properly categorized and tagged. There is Absence and Emptiness in the photo. It is definitely black-and-white. It is fine art. It is easy to see mystery there too. There is also beauty there.
However, I can’t agree with the title of the post.
I believe that from early childhood we must start building our own worlds.
We must understand ourselves, choose our priorities, take risks, work hard and build our own personal wonderful worlds.
We are born to enjoy life!
It is our major task to create happiness where we are!
Quote about poverty and wealth.
“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of.
In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 