Softpanorama

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Home Switchboard Unix Administration Red Hat TCP/IP Networks Neoliberalism Toxic Managers
(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and  bastardization of classic Unix

Communication Humor

Communication with Corporate Psychopaths Communication with Micromanagers Negative Politeness Socratic Questions Diplomatic Communication Humor Etc

The Eleventh Commandment

As the world gets crazier and crazier, perhaps a little Buddhist wisdom would help us all cope.

Buddhist monks, like Catholic priests, are supposed to be celibate. One day long ago, an older monk and a young monk were walking along a road toward their monastery. They came to a stream that had to be forded, and on the other side a beautiful young girl stood staring at the swirling water.

Without hesitation, the older monk waded across, picked up the girl and carried her through the water to the other side. Then the two monks resumed their journey, but the older monk noticed that his young companion was sulking.

"What's wrong?" he finally asked. 

"How could you do that?" the young monk said. "How could you pick up that young girl? How could you hold her in your arms?"

The older monk laughed. "I put her down a long time ago, but you're still carrying her." 

One of the points of this story is to deal with the present situation, but then let it go. The same point is made in the wonderful novel "Zorba the Greek," by Nikos Kazantzakis.

 A mob of superstitious villagers decides to murder a young widow because the people believe she has the evil eye and has caused the death of a young man. Zorba valiantly fights to save her life, but when he fails, he shrugs and goes home. The situation was over. The moment had passed. He let it go.

Lots of people have a great deal of trouble letting things go. Some people go through their whole lives reacting to situations in certain ways because of things that happened to them when they were children or adolescents. Neither past nor future exists except in our minds.

A samurai once advised that serious matters should be taken lightly, and small matters seriously. Really serious matters will occur only two or three times in a lifetime. One prepares for them by taking seriously the details of daily life. To use a martial example, one may not have an occasion to kill another man but once in several decades. However, if you have paid attention to daily practice with your weapon, when that fatal day arrives, you can handle it easily.

There is a great similarity between Zen Buddhism and Roman Stoicism. Emperor Marcus Aurelius said it is pointless to get angry at anyone no matter what he does, because whatever he does, he believes it is the right thing to do. When I first read that as a hot-tempered lad in school, it struck me as foolish. As the years of experience pile up, I begin to see the wisdom of it.

These days, I'm astounded to the point of laughter at how angry some people get simply because someone has an opinion they don't agree with. Democrats made a stink about the Iraqi prime minister speaking to Congress because he had criticized Israel and not criticized Hezbollah. It was especially funny because the whole business in Iraq has been based on the Big Lie that we care about freedom and democracy. Well, freedom means a man can say he doesn't like Israel if that's his opinion. How does one man's opinion affect another man's life? It doesn't, unless the second man allows it to.

Here's one last tip from an old samurai: "Human life lasts but an instant. One should spend it doing what one pleases. In this world, fleeting as a dream, to live in misery doing only what one dislikes is foolishness."

And here's a tip from me: You and I are not going to solve the great problems of the world, nor did God place responsibility for the universe and the fate of mankind on our shoulders. Or as I or someone else once put it, remember the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shall not sweat it, Ace.



Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.

FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.

This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...

You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site

Disclaimer:

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: March, 12, 2019