Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.”

• 2 Timothy 2:22-26

“The first is the unity of opposites. He pointed out that the path up the mountainside and the path down the mountainside are not two different paths running in opposite directions, they are one and the same path. The young Heraclitus and the old Heraclitus are not two different individuals, they are the same Heraclitus. If your drinking companion says your bottle of wine is half full and you say it is half empty you are not contradicting him, you are agreeing with him. Everything (Heraclitus thought) is a coming together of opposites, or at least of opposing tendencies.”

• Bryan Magee, The Story of Philosophy

“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

• C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Heraclitus (535c-475BC) has been mentioned a few times in these philosophy discussions.  But this quote above about him saying that a glass half full and a glass half empty are not contradictions would make tiny minds within cavernous brains roll.

Of course, in psychology today, these two concepts are polar opposites.  The half-full person is by definition an optimist.  The half-empty person is by definition a pessimist.

If varying your thinking from these truths in a world that believes there is no concrete, objective truth…  Yet, more contradictions.  You might as well move to another post about fluffy teddy bears and butterflies.

My thinking is that both are correct, and the more we try to fuss at other people for adding labels, we invent more labels.  I think that both are obviously optimistic under certain conditions.  I think that both are pessimistic under certain conditions.  If we think that outside those conditions, no one should give a hoot nor holler.  I thought this was the least offensive epithet.  But I was really thinking of Rhett Butler’s final line in the movie, Gone with the Wind.  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a ….”

If you need to wash the dishes, and your glass is filled with a beverage, you can look at the glass as half empty, meaning that “Hey, I’m at least halfway to the point where I can wash the glass.”  But if your stomach is full, someone might think you are pessimistic about pouring out perfectly good beverage, but you had to wash the dishes, and you could not drink it.  When the goal is getting that glass empty, you are being optimistic instead of being pessimistic.

Now, for those who have drunk an entire jug of “Go Lightly” or its equivalents before a colonoscopy…  And you know the first question the next morning will be, “Did you drink all of it?”

You are instructed to drink a cup, 8 ounces, every fifteen minutes until it is all consumed.  It might be ten minutes or twenty minutes.  But when you see the jug is half-empty…  You are emptying it.  You have no thought in your mind other than emptying it.  If you think about half full at this point, you should worry about men in white coats and butterfly nets chasing you.  No!  It is half empty, but your stomach is full.  Where does this laxative go?  You have not yet started the sitting on the toilet with (and I love this phrase from The Big Bang Theory) “an upside-down volcano here!!!”.  You must coax your stomach into expanding.  Regardless of what label you are normally assigned, that jug is “half-full”.  You are completely full.  And unless you have been successful in the past, you are one hundred percent sure that this is not going to work.  But some time later, you have an entirely different problem.  Make sure you can pull down your drawers and sit on the toilet quickly.  You might even get another form of pessimism…  Will I ever get to sleep tonight?

Hey, you can sleep during the procedure!  How is that for optimism.

But think about it.  When you are drinking what is in the glass, you are thinking of emptying the glass.  Considering that it is half-full is stupid.  Let’s say you are serving iced tea at a gathering outdoors.  Everyone is thirsty.  You pour iced tea into someone’s glass.  You do not say, “That’s half empty!  Let me give you more.”  No!  You say it is half full because it is your job to make that glass completely full.  Empty has nothing to do with it, unless you are from another planet.

Now, if you are cleaning up after the gathering, and there is a half dozen glasses with about 50% of the capacity of the glass with liquid in the glass.  Refer to Rhett Butler’s line from the aforementioned movie, as to whether full or empty even matters.  But if I am the one cleaning up after the gathering, all those glasses are half empty.  What is in my mind is to completely empty them, so any thought of them being any percentage of “full” is pessimistic!  They could be completely full, but a few seconds later, they are going to be empty!

For some reason, I have used the exclamation point often in this post.  And I am rather optimistic about that!!!!!

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.