User:Moby

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All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.
~ Herman Melville ~

True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.
~ Joseph Addison ~

God is an Iron.
~ Spider Robinson~

A few personal reflections upon the statement known as Hanlon's Razor, or Hanlon's Law:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" is a very remarkable and wise statement, showing a profound knowledge of important truths, and has long been one of my favorites. If the author of that statement said nothing else in his entire life worthy of note, those words alone make his contribution to the wisdom of humanity eternally memorable.

If one defines stupidity as the extreme state of ignorance, confusion or foolishness where one manifests the will to remain ignorant, foolish, or in states of confusion at least one further level of important corollaries can extend from this observation:

Never attribute to willful stupidity, that which can adequately be explained by oblivious ignorance and confusion.

Yet, very probably the moderating statement of caution and prudence should also always be remembered, and never dismissed as irrelevant:

Never fail to recognize that potentials for extreme foolishness, stupidity, malice, and the ultimate insanity of malevolence exist wherever ignorance and confusion dwell.

Knowing this, the wisest and greatest are ever inclined to battle in every necessary way against states of ignorance and confusion, and to avoid needless confrontation or conflict with people who are ignorant and confused.

It might be said that ignorance and confusion about cover it as an ultimate basis for all forms of human indifference, foolishness, stupidity, malice and malevolence. Not discouraged by the pervasive existence of all of these, the wisest, the noblest, and the best of people are inclined to love others so much as they can for their positive potentials, and to do what they can to try to help them build upon these — despite the ignorance, confusion, and the sheer stupidity many people often exhibit in manifesting the worst of their capabilities and inclinations. As one very great figure of history and legend declared as he suffered and faced extreme torments and death at the hands of others: "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." ~ Moby 22:26, 1 May 2004 (UTC)