Wisdom For Family Arguments
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I said I wouldn't write about family arguments because I only like people when they are well cooked with plenty of garlic. However, I thought you mike like these ideas extracted from "Time Enough For Love" by Heinlein, my favorite author. You could probably get your copy from your nearest bookshop but I got mine decades ago, so I'm all right.
One reason I like these ideas is that they're not entirely politically correct, and I don't like political correctness.
- In a family argument, if it turns out you are right - apologize at once.
- Another ingredient for a happy marriage: Budget the luxuries first.
- Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss.
- Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offence, that is.
- A man does not insist on physical beauty in a woman who builds up his morale. After a while he realizes that she is beautiful - he just hadn't noticed it at first.
- I came, I saw, she conquered. (The original Latin seems to have been garbled.) This one reminds me of why the English were beaten by the Romans. When they heard Veni, vidi, vichi, they thought they had just been classified as weenie, weedy and weaky, so they all ran away.
- Being generous is inborn; being altruistic is a learned perversity. No resemblance - Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
- Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
- In a mature society, "civil servant" is semantically equal to "civil master."
- Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, etc ad nauseam, heep her from drowning them at birth. (I like Heanlein's method for bringing up boys. Keep them in a barrel and feed them through the bunghole. When they reach their teens, drive in the bung.
- Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. My brother and I have found this to be almost too true to be worth repeating.
- The more you love, the more you can love - and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.
- Dear, don't bore him with trivia or burden him with your past mistakes. The happiest way to deal with a man is never to tell him anything he does not need to know.
- Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, equality is a disaster.
On second thoughts, the advice for family arguments wouldn't work for me. Each time I win an argument, my wife puts her fingers in her ears and screams "shut up...shut up...shut up..." so she couldn't hear if I apologized.
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