February 21, 2020- Vacation Monday. The blog will be quiet for just a few days. I will miss it. The blog is such an integral part of my life.

I re-read Hannah Arendt last night. She is the moral philosopher whose writing has guided so much of own life and decision making. She was averse to telling other people how to think and feel. She pointed out that most murderous and genocidal impulses come from people who believe they are morally superior to other people, and are thus entitled to conquer, dominate, imprison and kill them.  From the people who ran the Inquisition to more recent monsters like Stalin and Hitler, moral superiority is a thread that runs through their beliefs.

Moral absolutism, Arendt wrote, is for the weak-minded, for people who are too lazy to think things through or listen to others. Or make up their own minds.

A few years ago, I decided to kill my border collie Orson, about whom I had written a book, from which a movie was made. He harmed three people, and I decided it was not justifiable to endanger humans or to imprison him in so confining a way that he couldn’t harm anyone. I was attacked for this in a number of different ways – you can check out the Amazon reviews for “A Good Dog.” Many people seemed to think they knew better than me what was best for my life, my dog, and my own ideas about right and wrong.

Life is odd though. “A Good Dog” is my favorite book, in many ways my best book, I think. It is also my best-selling book. And despite the criticism, it is my most praised book. There is no one way to look at anything.

Hannah Arendt taught me – long before I put poor Orson down – that what mattes is now what other people think, or what we wish others to think. What matters is self-respect. The person you have to please is yourself. When you look in the mirror in the morning,  you have to respect what you see. Some mornings this is true for me, some mornings it is not. The ratio is improving. But Arendt’s wonderful writings – I especially love her “Life Of The Mind” have helped me tremendously in forming a value system that gives me strength and guides me thorugh difficult decisions. I do not believe in black and white. As a writer and a photographer, I know that life is best viewed by me in hues, shades and shadows and light.

I am often puzzled by people who write me and say they will continue reading me even though they disagree with me. Why do they need to agree with me? And why should I shape my life based on the agreement of others with my ideas? Those people usually don’t hang around long. They find writers they agree with.

I am not looking for approval, or for simple answers. I am seeking self-respect. That’s the standard, and the measure. And the person I am seeking i from is me.