2016 was an odd year, full of surprises, and joys, and some disappointments. We want what we need, but sometimes we get what we do not deserve. Where do we travel from here, together, as a nation — while split apart at the inseams of belief, shredded in the threads of faith, and torn asunder by the warp and woof of radicalized empathy?
Words are toxic and dangerous things. We currently have a Presidential contender who threatens his opponent with prison if he wins, and if he doesn’t win the election, then that means the election was rigged against him. That sort of clear and obvious threat against Democracy is not just craven and crass, but unwise — however, his threats are precise and clearly inform us all of his intentions and insanity.
We only need to travel back to the United Nations on October 12, 1960 and watch Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev take off his shoe and bang it on the podium while threatening to “bury us” all!
Continue reading → Disparity Between Political Translation and Human Transliteration
written by Anthea Syrokou
[Publisher’s Note: In my recent, David Boles: Human Meme, podcast entitled — “We Are Our Works” — loyal listener Anthea Syrokou wrote a smart, and thoughtful, response to that piece of work and, with her permission, we share her fine mind…
Continue reading → We Are Our Works: Anthea Syrokou Responds
If you spend any time doing business on the internet — “Branding Yourself” — is an important part of the process even if it seems shameful and unseemly and selfish: Enjoy it! It’s what you’ve become by being here!
Continue reading → On Branding, Own the Generic: Why I Became “David Boles” on the Internet
We are often confronted with the mandate of youth, and the conundrum of wisdom in the matter of — “Everything Goes!” — and I stand here to humbly submit that not everything must go. Sometimes, we need prescience and determination to realize the lack of self-restraint and that an untrained, unsavory, following can become profound enough to dangerously dismiss the best of us.
As we age into society, there are certain human truths we not only begin to learn, but then start to live — and it is in moments like those, like the one we’re sharing now in the rare “long form” live read on the internet — that I want to urge you to abandon the trophies and the tricks and the cunning surrounding our lives and to instead leave behind something that matters, footfalls suspended in amber, creating your own fossil record.
I’m always fascinated by labels and meaning and the attributes we actively choose to apply to people and thoughts and concepts. Disambiguation is important — words have previously defined meanings — and to purposefully change the common use of a word to fit a narrow political stream, or a personal agenda, is both dangerous and daunting. There are two words I’ve lately been pondering: Precious and Precocious!
Continue reading → Precious or Precocious and an Eerily Dissimilar Disambiguation