[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Malcolm Wallace:

“It’s our wits that makes us men.”

[central_va]

Rudyard Kipling

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

[mad_as_he$$]

I might give a $hit what this guy has to say if he still called himself Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. I will not listen to anything an Muslim sports “star” has to say. Actors have more cred.

[knarf]

First ... get saved.

[central_va]

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing......Only I will remain."

[steelhead_trout]

"but the fact that teens' brains have not yet physically matured. The pre-fontal cortex (PFC) does not fully develop in most people until they're twenty-four years old."

[freekitty]

Credibility.

[huldah1776]

Stay away from soy then you won’t need to kill exotic animals or eat weird stuff to make up for the estrogen effects.

[CodeToad]

1. Stop being a limp wristed liberal and not register as a Democrat.

[TNoldman]

They missed ONE. Hint: It involves a Female!

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

What he said about brain maturity is critical for boys (and girls) to lead healthy lives. Before brain maturity, any addictive chemicals can actually rewire the brain to make addiction to that chemical more likely, *and* to make addiction to *other* addictive chemicals more likely, *and* to make it harder for them to quit addictions for the rest of their lives.

The health consequences to many addictive substances can have long term drawbacks, strongly reduce quality of life, and significantly shorten lifespan.

Add to this another major problem of brain immaturity, which is sociopathy.

To function, people need some degree of psychopathia, that is, the ability to *not* care or feel empathy when they shouldn’t. But it is a gray scale. Too much of it makes a person a psychopath. But still it is how their brain is wired, be it from birth or as the result of brain injury.

A sociopath is a person who is not a psychopath, but is conditioned and trained to not care or feel empathy to others, or a select group of others, such as with real racism or sexism, politics or whatever.

A person can only be trained to be a sociopath before their brain has matured; and importantly, if they have been trained to be a sociopath, that training must be broken before their brain has matured, or for the rest of their life they will likely remain a sociopath.

Critically, the younger a person is, the more flexible their brain is. As they get closer to maturity, it becomes much harder to condition and train their minds.

The apex of late childhood conditioning is found with military basic training. It is not easy, but drill instructors have learned that lots of bad habits and conditioning must first be eliminated before recruits can be retrained to become disciplined adults.

Importantly, the process of maturation also includes a “safety” that most of us are familiar with. It is typical for middle-teenagers to go through a period of rejection and revolt against their conditioning and training. This is essential to survival because it presents an opportunity for them to break out of a self-destructive family patterns, or at least to critically examine them by resisting them.

Recognition and reward for increasing maturity is very important for both boys and girls. It creates a clear dividing line between immature and mature behavior, and the idea that with maturity comes authority and responsibility. To embrace this it helps to have a mind uncluttered with addictions and sociopathy, instead some degree of empathy, clarity, judgment, reason and self control.

[onedoug]

Why is this guy still a muslim? I saw him not long ago on TCM describing to the host why he liked certain movies. His tastes and reasons were derived solely from American thinking and insight. Now he writes this.

Something does not compute.

[Vendome]

I’m in decent shape. Not as good as I’d like but working on it.

As far as not doing anything on a dare; life is a dare and if some other punk can do it so can I.

If it hasn’t been done why not be the first.

Great list though.

[Pan_Yan]

There are 31 chapeters in Proverbs.

Read one chapter a day.

Every day.

For years.

Then you will not become a mocker or a fool.

I’m trying to learn that now. I’ve been trying to get my son to learn it while he’s still a teen.

[RichInOC]

Wilt Chamberlain would have said “Seriously, who stops at twenty?”