Kenny Smith Quotes

“Americans are cultured from their earliest years to be either one-sided douloi or one-sided banausoi, i.e. either they cannot think abstractively/conceptually/orchestrally or else they can only think abstractively. Thinking in a truly rational dialectic between intuition and intellect is just beyond the reach of our nation of emotionalist helots. What prevails among us truly has to be called not thinking but "thinking," a pathetic surrogate for actual thinking for the benefit of existentially or modally crippled mentalities.”

Thinking Years Nations Benefits Intuition Intellect Rational Mentality Pathetic Crippled One Sided Dialectics Surrogates

Author:Kenny Smith

“Damian Lillard is having a better year than Chris Paul. Lillard got snubbed when he was left off of the USA Men’s Basketball team, and now the All-Star team.”

Men Years Left Stars Team Basketball Usa Basketball Team All Stars

Author:Kenny Smith

“This same formula by which Buddhists so anti-rationalistically and anti-banausically describe the "relation" between soul and body also applies to the relation between lover and lover, parent and child, member and community.”

Children Soul Body Parent Community Lovers Members Relation Buddhist Formulas Children And Parents Soul And Body

Author:Kenny Smith

“Soul one might say is more imperfectly infinite than spirit, because soul tends to abolish the ego-consciousness that it absorbs or overwhelms, reducing its particularizing structure to pure sublime feeling (immediacy); but spirit is more successfully infinite than soul, even though also more difficult and abstruse, because it digests the functions of consciousness into itself and thus preserves and deploys the senses and intelligence of conscious ego to higher ends.”

Soul Ends Feelings Might Spirit Difficult Consciousness Higher Pure Ego Conscious Function Infinite Structure Senses Preserves Sublime Reducing Abolish Immediacy

Author:Kenny Smith

“Kafka's writings often display an insidious power to describe a wholly secular and "factical" world in which the eerie or "unheimlich" elements gang up behind or beneath the ego's awareness and immerse it in a waking dream of something Other, an alien world-order similar to ancient irrationalist cultures (in transition from primitivism to civilized mythos-culture).”

World Writing Soul Dream Order Culture Behinds Awareness Ego Elements Ancient Aliens Civilized Transition Waking Display Secular Gang World Order Insidious Eerie

Author:Kenny Smith

“I think we all have great opportunities individually but collectively our unit is so much bigger. Collectively our unit is something I've never seen on television. I don't look at our show as a basketball show. I look at our show as a sports and entertainment show.”

Thinking Looks Shows Opportunity Sports Television Basketball Bigger Entertainment Units Great Opportunity

Author:Kenny Smith

“I know one thing. If a NASCAR driver ever got on the court with me, they wouldn't be able to keep up. That would be like me driving a bus in a NASCAR race.”

Ifs Knows Would Be Able Race One Thing Court Driving Like Me Drivers Bus Nascar

Author:Kenny Smith

“Those who have chosen the path of least resistance in life, who cannot bear to bring themselves to make a stern value-judgment in criticism of their own most intimate feelings, achieve what they deserve: not self-understanding but radical self-superficialization, not a discovered but a self-ascribed identity that explains nothing, reveals nothing, means nothing, and ultimately accomplishes nothing culturally or intellectually.”

“What may be the significance of so many forms of "spirituality" on this planet that are antagonistic to "life" - and Christianity at the head of that list, with its "calumny" against life, its faith that just because nothing in life is eternal therefore life itself contains no value, nothing that makes it worth living, investing our souls in, committing our consciences to?”

Life May Soul Philosophy Form Life Is Values Spirituality Christianity Planets Eternal Conscience Eternity Investing Lists Significance Worth Living Calumny

Author:Kenny Smith

“But for the Jews this moral-spiritual issue raises the same societal problem it does for the Greeks: how can a man have the "right" to make himself spiritually or rationally destitute or retarded when this corrupts the whole quality of the culture that we all together need and depend on? If anyone wants a cloistered and closed-minded life, an anti-aristic life, let him either go off and live among the wolves-or else join the community of like-minded idiots that (alas) compose and define the basic terms of modern society.”

“How infinitely happier and more grateful is the whole personality or spirit when it finds something nourishing in art or writing or thinking, than the mere mind or intellect is: the kinship you celebrate in these personalities is your own dismembered Orpheus stumbling across another fine organ to rejoin to itself. I put it this way: aristic psyche loves itself enough to chasten itself, to put itself through boot camp for the sake of being competent for life, alive to life.”

Thinking Way Life Writing Mind Art Enough Whole Spirit Alive Fine Personality Grateful Mere Sake Intellect Celebrate Camps Boots Organs Competent Stumbling Kinship Orpheus Boot Camp

Author:Kenny Smith

“Not the least of the problems in clarifying one's consciousness is developing the stoic determination to criticize one's own softness or sentimentality toward oneself. Ego, self-solicitous about its own tenderness, is the ultimate policeman over its own false consciousness, dementedly uprooting every healthy seedling of insight into the truth. As Kierkegaard remarked, most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, but the real trick and task of life is to learn to be just the very opposite.”

“Between what human beings so naively and stupidly fear and what they most profoundly ought to fear-i.e. what they so pathogenically and addictively do to their own selves-there is a horrendous gulf and disparity.”

Humans Self Philosophy Fear Human Beings Ought Disparity

Author:Kenny Smith

“"Playing" the resources of characterology for the sake of clarification and insight into the structures of actual existence is many times more daunting than playing a piano; it requires the thinking of chords of thoughts, not just isolated simplisms or abstracta; it demands the shaping or encompassing of morphological modes of intelligence that can comprehend gestalten, syndromes, historical and civilizational patterns in which it is not the particulars but their interactive significance (as an ensemble of actualities or principles) that is vital.”

“I start off with the obvious, that it makes no sense either to believe or to disbelieve in God until a substantial and intelligent definition or concept should be offered. Belief or disbelief is a secondary consideration, contingent on the intelligibility and cogency of the premise; the primal unintelligence or irrationality of moderns is revealed by their eagerness to leap to a conclusion without ever being curious what the hell the original premise was.”

Should Believe God Belief Hell Concepts Intelligent Originals Definitions Obvious Conclusion Curious Consideration Leap Believe In God Premises Disbelief Primal Eagerness Irrationality

Author:Kenny Smith

“Ultimately the most profound problems with psychotherapy have always been that instead of possessing any contrarian or transcendent values to enable it to produce insights countervailing against our dysfunctional and incoherent and humanly destructive culture, its "therapists" have been virtually all shills or agents for this culture, trying to accommodate their patients to a fundamentally unhealthy and insane way of life.”

“The key to all aristeia and wisdom and gnosis is a seed that conformist and mediocritist and democratist Americans haven't got even a scintilla of a prospect of nourishing, and that is sapere aude: DARE TO BE WISE.”

Philosophy Wise Havens Keys Wise Words Words Of Wisdom Dare Seeds Being Wise Conformist Gnosis

Author:Kenny Smith

“Human cultures are all experiments in trying to find a form that will fit the matter of our immediacy; but it is absolutely not the case that all such experiments are of equal merit or value. Some cultures - and modernity is patently one - have managed to transmute consciousness into the "disease" that Nietzsche called it, the self-affliction of a self-centeredness that has purged itself of all vestiges of wisdom and value.”

Trying Humans Self Matter Form Values Culture Consciousness Cases Words Of Wisdom Fit Equal Disease Experiments Merit Affliction Modernity Immediacy Self Centeredness Centeredness

Author:Kenny Smith

“Wisdom is the aristic craving for extraordinary insights, for incandescent revelations that have the power to burst through banausic and doulic ordinariness: wisdom is the lust to be transfigured, transvaluated.”

Philosophy Words Of Wisdom Extraordinary Insight Lust Revelations Craving Ordinariness

Author:Kenny Smith

“Instant enlightenment. A quintessential modernism, culture and religion accommodated to the age of fast food and bumper stickers. But psyche and spirit are not so exempt from the natural domain that they can simply produce self-change instantaneously, on demand. Wisdom precipitates through a notoriously slow apparatus of retorts and flasks, and it has to find receptive ground only in a properly seasoned mind.”

“People who turn to philosophy expecting to harvest a crop of formulas of wisdom or understanding do not understand-philosophy has such things, but they are merely incidental, not the essence of the matter. Philosophy is about subtilizing and tuning up the coherence and acuity of one's seeing, it is about opening new dimensions for insight, learning to think about what one is doing when one thinks instead of just blundering through the processes of putting thoughts together.”

People Thinking Matter Philosophy Wisdom Together Turns Process Understanding Seeing Essence Insight Opening Dimensions Formulas Expecting Harvest Crops Tuning Coherence

Author:Kenny Smith

“In all technai or arts (medicine perhaps most of all), there is a self-exhilaration on the part of the practitioner (the intoxication of the ego with its own potency) which is infectious: the patient enjoys a placebo-effect which redounds to the ego of the "artist."”

Art Self Philosophy Artist Enjoy Effects Ego Medicine Patient Intoxication Exhilaration Potency Placebo Placebo Effect

Author:Kenny Smith

“What passes for education, culture or maturity in most minds is merely how individuals want to think of themselves, a contrived egocentric self-concept, not actual and effective principles and values. This is what is known in the cliche as the "veneer" of civilization.”

Thinking Want Mind Self Philosophy Values Culture Individual Known Principles Civilization Ego Concepts Maturity Cliche Egocentric Veneer Self Concept Principles And Values

Author:Kenny Smith

“All that the posture of skepticism accomplishes is to freeze the ego in an ignorantist poverty that never stretches or diversifies its resources of imagination or understanding. Any uncultured cretin can close his eyes and try to reduce the issues down to linear simplisms and say, "I am doubting, I am proving my magisterial or sovereign control over my own mind." Doubt is a useful and significant test of one's critical powers, but by itself it bears little if any significant cultural charge of enlightenment or satori; indeed it is the very opposite kind of thing.”

“Ultimately, love is only possible for humans insofar as they can achieve some comprehension of their place and their duties and their values and their significance within the whole of life, of society, of spirituality, of history, of nature. In all merely partial or fragmentary perspectives, there necessarily remain undigested irrational factors, surds that one is merely tolerating and not truly respecting as essential and integral to the whole of what we are.”

Love Humans Philosophy Whole Values Spirituality Love Is Achieve Duty Perspective Essentials Factors Significance Irrational Comprehension

Author:Kenny Smith

“The will and self are ultimately dynamic, they are their actions. This energy can be trained and directed, tuned like an orchestra. It is not a matter of a "rational interior" that poses a problem for a decorator, rather a feng-shui intelligence is called for that orients the "house" to the flow of life that takes place in it (I rather suspect this is turned on its head in most cases of feng-shui, i.e. Americans capitulate once again to "experts").”

Self Matter Philosophy Problem Action House Energy Cases Flow Rational Experts Suspects Interiors Orchestra Feng Shui Decorators

Author:Kenny Smith

“There is no extrahistorical or eternalist or abstractivistically pure standpoint where we can get oriented in the absolute Truth per se before dealing with the concrete lineaments of how we happen exist in this time and place. We are participants in a dynamic system and we know its profile only by its action in organizing how we interact together and how we see our own selves. "The truth is the whole," and the whole is a system of living energy: our life as human and historical spirits.”

Knows Humans Self Whole Happens Truth Action Together Spirit Energy Our Lives Truth Is Pure Absolutes Historical Concrete Standpoint Profile Participants Absolute Truth

Author:Kenny Smith

“Education in philosophy is energy speaking to energy, a higher perspective of spirit that is trying to awaken its next natural generation to something beyond the stupid appearances of things.”

Trying Philosophy Spirit Next Energy Natural Education Generations Stupid Perspective Higher Appearance

Author:Kenny Smith

“People compose the schedules they do out of the priorities they have; and someone who says otherwise is deceiving himself about what he really values. The same thing applies to money that applies to time. I make a practice of watching what people do, never what they say. Whatever is important, to anyone sane, he will make a place for it; people live out their values. Values are different in this respect from "ideals," which are typically vain and effete and thus exist mostly for the sake of promoting self-delusions.”

People Important Different Self Philosophy Time Values Practice Ideals Sake Priorities Vain Delusion Sane Deceiving Schedules Promoting Self Delusion

Author:Kenny Smith

“Terence: nihil humanum alienum a me-"nothing human is alien to me," the greatest expression of ancient megalopsychia or great-souled and cosmopolitan "magnanimity."”

Humans Soul Expression Ancient Aliens Magnanimity

Author:Kenny Smith

“Always, a form of self-equilibration, a soul or psyche, is trying to assert itself, to continue the melody of its self-realized life.”

Trying Soul Self Form Self Realization Melody

Author:Kenny Smith

“It is man's intrinsic and irreducible self-responsibility to humanize himself, to exercise his entire range of rational and moral resources to raise his mode of being and seeing and acting above not just that of animals, but also above that of the majority of subhuman (never to be self-realized) humans who will never draw themselves into a self-punishing position of focal self-diagnosis and self-accountability.”

“Take a good long look at human beings in their actual practices and motives; bring the utmost psychological and bio-economic factors to bear on making sense of their illusions and delusions. What then would the truth have to be, such that such human beings are FIT TO KNOW IT at all, even provisionally or tentatively?”

Knows Humans Looks Long Truth Human Beings Practice Economic Bears Fit Illusion Psychological Factors Make Sense Motive Delusion Fitness Bios Good Long

Author:Kenny Smith

“There is a form of poetic and esthetic and moral genius necessary to make philosophical issues truly incandesce for students, and even though I indeed had some world-class professors myself when I went through the curriculum, I rarely saw such gnosic or concretist/poetic passion among them. I am not speaking of broad histrionics or melodramatic delivery, but rather a moral investment of concern, of loving delight and pathos in exposing one's consciousness to the full horrific and magnificent implications of the materials.”

“Values and verdicts never bother me half as much as people trying to weasel their way around them, or people compromising their reason to pander to their own prejudices and preconceptions, which they are so rarely competent to look in the face.”

People Way Trying Looks Reason Philosophy Faces Values Half Prejudice Compromise Bother Competent Verdict Preconceptions Weasels

Author:Kenny Smith

“Hegel understood the Heisenbergian reality of knowing: yes, it would be nice if we could somehow delicately capture the truth and bring it closer to ourselves without altering it, "like a bird caught with a limestick." But the reality is, every truth we manage to know is altered, deformed by our very "encheiresis naturae," by the act of our taking-in-hand of nature (to borrow the alchemists' phrase from Goethe's Faust).”

Ifs Knows Hands Reality Would Be Truth Knowing Nice Bird Understood Caught Manage Phrases Capture Being Nice Altered Alchemist Hegel Faust

Author:Kenny Smith

“Philosophy exists in profoundest opposition to rhetoric, which is speaking for the sake of producing or controlling some effect in others' perceptions. Philosophy is about the caustic or cauterizing effect of the truth, not the currying of sensibilities.”

Philosophy Truth Effects Perception Sake Opposition Rhetoric Sensibility Caustic

Author:Kenny Smith

“In late modernity we grow more and more accustomed to politicians and public figures who are indebted to their appetites for their "values," to their intellectual sloth for their "principles," to their rhetorical cleverness for their "conscience," and to their regimented conformism for their "philosophy."”

Philosophy Values Grows Principles Figures Politician Late Intellectual Conscience Appetite Accustomed Modernity Cleverness Sloth Indebted Rhetorical Public Figures

Author:Kenny Smith

“"The people" is that massive portion of a society that lives by its pathetic subjection to sheer immediacy or self-obviousness, and that therefore uncritically seizes upon the most simplistic and abstract ways of filling its vacuous self-consciousness. Not philosophy but dogma and rhetoric, not rationality but indoctrination and conditioning, provide the cultural junkfood by which the Many perfunctorily slake their thirst and hunger.”

“The Zen masters have the right idea-no pain no gain: thwack a silly nebbish and he'll remember it far longer and more indelibly than any words you muster at him. Not absolutely everything can or should have to be explained, and particularly not to everybody. But a concussion is a value-judgment anyone gets the point of.”

Should Ideas Philosophy Pain Remember Values Memories Masters Judgment Gains Should Have Silly No Pain Muster Zen Master Concussions Right Ideas No Pain No Gain

Author:Kenny Smith

“American democracy is a chess-game in which pawns imagine themselves to be free individuals with wills of their own: that delusion is one of the rules of the game, without which the game could not continue. I doubt anyone, no matter how sharp and sharp-tongued, could succeed in getting across to high school students how vital an acute mind is for just keeping a grip on one's life and earnings in our mendacious politics and economics. No wonder our school system is devoutly dedicated to demoralizing and blunting such minds.”

“It is the cruelest of all ironies that moderns imagine themselves to be (abstractly understood) "individuals," because in actuality moderns are "types," abstracted and self-abstractive victims of a process of stereotyping that afflicts even would-be rebels and anarchists.”

Self Would Be Individual Process Imagine Type Understood Victim Irony Rebel Individualism Stereotype Anarchist Actuality

Author:Kenny Smith

“The approach of intellect or noesis will forever be an effete and limited sort of thing by contrast with the vigor and color of gnosis; but in academia there is virtually nothing but noetic minds to be found, and the very idea of gnosis is alien and untranslatable, not to mention discreditable.”

Mind Ideas Found Education Forever Color Approach Intellect Aliens Contrast Vigor Academia Gnosis

Author:Kenny Smith

“One can hardly appreciate how academia has perverted its highest tasks and "ideals" without pondering long and hard the implications of Jacques Barzun's House of Intellect and its Hegelian/Bergsonian contrast between rigidified "intellect" and always-growing "intelligence." This fundamentally Hegelian distinction, needless to say, cuts to the quick of the contrast between Platonic and Aristotelian forms of philosophy.”

Long Hard Philosophy Form House Education Cutting Growing Highest Ideals Appreciate Tasks Intellect Distinction Contrast Implications Pondering Academia Platonic

Author:Kenny Smith

“I have always been spurred on by my not finding expressed anywhere the kinds of perspectives that I thought these issues most perspicuously needed and deserved; but that is just another way of saying that Americans have overwhelmingly expunged from their public understanding the strongest and most clarifying resources out of ancient and traditional European cultures. By far we prefer our familiar and user-friendly parochialisms, and there is no percentage in trying to pry these pachydermal plates apart.”

“Sadly the very thing that strikes us as obvious always defeats our thinking about it in more penetrating ways: just as the Romans said that "the good is the enemy of the better," so too "the self-evident is the enemy of the very process of clarification or understanding," not to mention the enemy of the "transcendent or ultimate."”

Thinking Way Said Self Process Understanding Enemy Ultimate Defeat Obvious Strikes Evident Transcendent Clarification

Author:Kenny Smith

“Human beings "belong" to some minor comity or enclave of faith at the expense of the clarity and autarkia of their intelligence and conscience, of course. "Belonging" is another way of saying: "capitulating to."”

Way Humans Courses Human Beings Conscience Independence Clarity Belonging Expenses Minors Another Way

Author:Kenny Smith

“Among the multitudes will be found many who cannot discriminate between what is merely wanted and what is needed, what is necessary for bare subsistence and what is indispensable for the sake of the freedom and clarity of one's higher powers.”

Needs Wanted Found Needed Higher Sake Clarity Multitudes Indispensable Higher Power Subsistence

Author:Kenny Smith

“Nothing in our politics is any longer driven or designed by individual humans who have a name and a face; we have sunk from theism into impersonal and depersonalizing deism, a scheme of rule by alien and implacable abstract metaphysical forces.”

Humans Philosophy Faces Names Individual Force Driven Aliens Abstract Schemes Metaphysical Theism Deism

Author:Kenny Smith

“If you like capitalism, you will positively love depressions, because they are one and the same, like manic-depressives and their cycles, like spouse-abusers and their storms of violence.”

Ifs Philosophy Violence Capitalism Storm Cycles Spouse Positively Manic Abusers

Author:Kenny Smith

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