On Half Measures.

I’m half the size I ought to be, although my shape is twice the size; not like the dog who’s half the size she thinks she is, and twice the fight. Since half presupposes the whole, what happens to the missing half? Under stress, we might cut everything in half. It can work, but only in some ways.

This leads to decisions. How do you go about reducing decisions to half? We could have half the number of problems. Take in half as much ambient knowledge. Expect half as much. Be only half as competitive, maybe half contemplative for a change. Half and half.

 Just as every word in the dictionary can hurt someone, nearly every word can be made to profit someone. This is how words lose half their value. The rest is in someone’s pocket.

Failure is simply your discovery of another way to not do things, and hence is morally neutral. Any connection between your goodness and success in your enterprises is fiction. Half as many failures won’t create double the results.

In plague times, you need all the halves to restore health: half measures won’t do. And justice, by its nature, can only be whole.