It is the sovereign individual who is shaper and potentially master of the indeterminate future—or, more accurately, it is the consciousness manifesting itself within each individual who is such a master.
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
"The dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power over the last century." This statement is the most misleading claim in all of finance. Full stop.
The collapse of purchasing power of the US dollar is used to scare investors, sell dubious products, and fool people into believing nonsense. . . .
Let's begin with the biggest issue: The US dollar (USD) is not a long-term Store of Value. That was never its intended purpose. Rather, the USD is a Medium of Exchange. There is an enormous difference between these two cases, and those who seek to mislead people rely on their not understanding the difference.
-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors That Destroy Wealth—and How to Avoid Them
The allure of Robespierre is that he transformed himself into a stoic, but he was also a romantic to the end. Doctrinaire and calculating, he was a master of sowing differences among his rivals, waiting patiently for them to unravel on their own. He would then get his chance, proving to be a stern disciplinarian, a capable organizer, and a fearless leader. He instinctively believed that he would one day rule—he was right—and remarkably, he prophesied that he would one day be killed; he was right there as well.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
The opinions people have, Franklin wrote, are "almost as various as their faces." The job a printers is to allow people to express these differing opinions. "There would be very little printed," he noted, if publishers produced only things that offended nobody. At stake was the virtue of free expression, and Franklin summed up the Enlightenment position in a sentence that is now framed on newsroom walls: "Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter."
-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
That is the continual manifestation, within each of us, of the Divine Word that generated the cosmos when time and space themselves began. That is the initial biblical characterization of the spirit of what is highest; the initial manifestation of the spirit of the one God. This is a stunning idea, a revolutionary idea, a world-ordering idea, a civilization-engendering idea—an idea that is a precondition for optimized psychological and social order alike. It is from that presumption of our implicit individual value—to say it again—that we derive our infinite set of natural rights (and, let us not forget, as we are so prone to, natural responsibility).
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
But if you follow any modeled data series, you must always keep in mind statistician George E. P. Box's warning: "All models are wrong, but some are useful." . . .
Yet we place a great deal of faith in models. The problem occurs when, as journalist Jonathan V. Last observes, we forget that models are "not a report sent back from the future." He observes the three types of inputs that go into models:
1. Stuff we know;
2. Stuff we think we know:
3. Stuff we have no idea about.
-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors That Destroy Wealth—and How to Avoid Them
In Paris the convention beamed. Feeling invincible, it thus announced its most ambitious stroke yet: the December 15, 1792, "Edict of Fraternity," decreeing "war on castles, peace for cottages," and promising fraternal aid to any nation wishing to recover its liberty. It stated wondrously, "the French nation proclaims the sovereignty of the people [in all cooperating regions]. . . . You are, from this moment, brothers and friends, all are citizens, equal in rights, and all alike are called to govern, to serve, and to defend your country.
France was no longer simply a great nation; this decree made it a revolutionary state abroad as well—the first in European history. World revolution was now its stated goal, republicanism its guiding star. With chilling precision, Brissot put it this way: "We cannot be calm until all Europe is in flames." But there were consequences for such ambition: As is so often the case, the newly "liberated" territories began to chafe under French rule, suggesting that one taskmaster had simply taken over for another. And by this stage, the rulers of Europe, angry and bewildered, no longer could stand idly by. Having little choice, they saw the convention's actions as the unmistakable sound of war against all monarchs.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of uncertainty about different things. But I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about. I don't feel frightened not knowing things.
When working, surround yourself with people more successful that you.
When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you.
. . . for a long time they will prevent the establishment of any despotism, and they will furnish fresh weapons to each succeeding generation that struggles in favor of the liberty of mankind. Let us, then, look forward to the future with that salutary fear which makes men keep watch and ward for freedom, not with that faint and idle terror which depresses and enervates the heart.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2, Chapter VII (1840)
The victors of history have a habit of growing complacent at precisely the wrong moment.
-Alexander C. Carp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, Self-Reliance
On a long enough timescale, everything is transitory. As we work our way through the detritus and minutia of life, we should not lose sight of that.
In today's world, the art of listening seems to be under threat. Social media has trained us to believe that what matters most is what we have to say. We're talking more than ever, broadcasting our thoughts to the world with every post, tweet, and status update. But in this cacophony of voices, it often seems like nobody is truly hearing each other.
We've become so focused on crafting our next response, our next witty comment, that we've forgotten how to listen. We skim, we scan, we scroll, but we rarely stop to absorb and consider what others are saying. We're more connected than ever, yet in many ways, we're more isolated, trapped in echo chambers of our own making.
This is why the skill of listening—real, active, engaged listening—is more crucial than ever. It's a skill that can set you apart in a world where everyone is clamoring to be heard. It's a skill that can open doors, build relationships, and lead to insights and opportunities that you might otherwise miss.
-George Raveling, What You're Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports
But history would not wait for Louis. Newly arrived in Paris, Gouverneur Morris, one of the central drafters of the American Constitution and among the keenest observers of the age, echoed the dispatches that his Russian counterpart, Baron Simolin, was sending to Catherine the Great. Morris was stunned by what he saw. "We stand on a vast volcano," he observed. "We feel it tremble, we hear it roar, how and when and where it will burst, and who will be destroyed by its eruptions, is beyond the ken of mortals to discern." On July 31, 1789, he also added: "This country is at present as near to anarchy as society can approach without dissolution." He was right.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
As creatures formed in God's image, we have the responsibility to continue the act of creation in the best manner imaginable.
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
Is the idea of man as an image of God not utterly preposterous? How could flawed man, even the lowliest man or woman, possess a direct relationship to the divine? Man, with his propensity for decrepitude, suffering, and death; his self-evident insignificance contrasted with nature and the cosmos; the brevity of his life—why attribute value to something so fleeting in its existence and contemptible in its inadequacy? But, in the absence of that divine proposition, where would we be? . . . How could we possible manage without the tradition of inalienable rights and intrinsic individual responsibility that is the logical consequence of that axiomatic proclamation of our sacred worth?
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
Irrational trends rarely follow rational timelines. Unsustainable things can last longer than you think.
-Morgan Housel, from here
But that would not be the end of the matter. If Congress did not end this "slave business," the head of the select committee quietly communicated to his antislavery colleagues, then the entire South might "rise up in a flame." No one was willing to take this chance. While Madison himself thought the proslavery arguments "shamefully indecent," he cherished the union even more. And as Madison went, so went the moderates. As the moderates went, so went Congress. After several days of debate, on March 23, the majority that had favored Franklin's petition disintegrated, and an exhausted House voted 29-25 to accept a heavily amended report that basically buried the matter. More starkly, it said in effect that slavery in the South would be out of bounds of congressional discussion—forever. The founding generation, always obsessed with its capacity to set precedents, had inadvertently set a strong precedent on the very matter they hoped to avoid. Without intending it, Congress had determined that the new republic should—indeed it would—sanction, even underwrite, bondage. The stage was thus set for a collision one day between the integrity of republican government and the right to hold, sell, and buy men, women, and children as though they were cattle.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
Posts
All Comments
