On The Value Of Taking Stands

March 27, 2011 By 2 Comments

I’m doing a whole lot of spring cleaning this weekend. Part of it entails digging through and sorting out old papers. I just found a really great e-mail exchange from June of 2000 which encapsulates my thoughts during a really intellectually tumultuous time in my life (I had only renounced Christianity at the end of October 1999 and was somewhat ambitiously and adventurously trying to think through the implications of what I thought in its place.

In that context and in reply to some queries, on June 14, 2000 I wrote the following to my Christian philosophy professor and various philosophy majors with whom I had just completed studying philosophy as an undergraduate:

I must warn you that my thought changes from day to day. But it is valuable to put my foot down today so I have something definite to put in my mouth tomorrow.

Geez, I could have written that this month.

At least some things don’t change.

Your Thoughts?

Filed Under: Personal 2 Comments
  • http://nojesusnopeas.blogspot.com James Sweet

    I’m totally stealing that quote (with credit, of course)

  • jamessweet

    Okay, so today my wife says, “Will you get rid of that depressing status message? It sounds so Republican!”

    The status message was (with attribution, of course):

    “It is valuable to put my foot down today so I have something definite to put in my mouth tomorrow.”

    She completely missed the pun, and thought it was about trying to resist something (the implication being taxes) so that you continue to be able to put food on the table. Yikes!!!