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"Everything in moderation."
If it's considered such a healthy philosophy then we should invest in the fullest ... We should concentrate less on the "moderation" end of the sentence and give equal attention to the "Everything" which is, after all, capitalized.
Everything in moderation.
in
fact, to be sure we continue to receive the lifelong benefits of this principle we should consider:
Everything in [scheduled] moderation.
just have a couple beers and stop. but do so several times/wk.
have 1 cigarette every thurs afternoon.
Party all night once/month.
Take a heavy drug once/yr.
Have a fling every 5 yrs.
this might be good for us, and what's more, is possible to accomplish with the technology of the current day.
[link]
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With the news constantly bombarding us about "this is good / that is bad", "blah blah blah red wine red meat all beef olestra medicinal marijuana low fat painkiller", this actually seems not too bad an idea! |
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Everything in moderation, including this axiom. |
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But what about those things that mitigate against moderation. Murder for instance? |
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I do everything in constipation, unfortunately. |
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(*marks calender for next January*) |
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what exactly are we supposed to be flinging? can I swop the ciggies and the drugs for a little more alcohol? |
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//this might be good for us, and what's more, is possible to accomplish with the technology of the current day// |
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I'm not convinced this is true - the problem being that EVERYTHING is a pretty big list of things to do(let's call the size of that list Y) - assuming that it takes 1 second to do a thing, and that the average person lives for 2,365,200,000 seconds (let's call this value X), that means that there's an upper limit X of things that CAN be done, in moderation or otherwise in the finite amount of time Y. |
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How many actions can we perform at any one time? The minimum is 1. What's the maximum? It depends on how we define a 'thing'. If A and B are two distinct things to do, it follows that performing them simultaneously constitutes performing an action C - which we can describe as "Doing A and B at the same time" and as a thing in its own right. Using this definition means that we can always boil each moment down into the performance of a discrete act - it does however inflate the number of things Y that constitutes EVERYTHING to do, in moderation, or otherwise - attempting to enact this idea is going to make people pretty busy - and I'm all for that [+] it's not like I've got anything better to do! |
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This is not what the philosopher meant, at all. |
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This all falls apart when you consider that the "everything" in "Everything in moderation" includes moderation. |
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This all falls apart when you consider freebase cocaine and armed robbery. |
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A moderate armed robbery might be where you politely request 20p from someone on threat of flicking an elastic band at them - injecting freebase cocaine (is that what you do with freebase cocaine?) might be moderated by chewing a coca leaf, or by having a glass of Coca-Cola (which still contains coca-extract, albeit a non-active version) whilst gently poking yourself with a pencil. |
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Well if you look at it like that... I'm off to SuperValu with a packet of rubber bands. I'll let you know how it goes. |
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The original Delphic proverb is negative - more like 'not too much of anything' - which rather spoils this party. |
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μηδεν αγαν |
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D'oh! The Greek doesn't show up! I remember having this problem with Russian before. |
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Anyhow, it's not just the Everything that would have been capitalised in the original, but probably all the letters - not for emphasis, but because that's how letters usually come out when you're carving them in stone. |
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I wonder whether Terry Pratchett ever did a joke where, say, a troll demonstrated his strength by doing cursive writing with a stone-chisel? |
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