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| Claude Monet The Bodmer Oak Oil on Canvass 1865 |
When we shout at the oak tree, the oak tree is not offended. When we praise the oak tree, it doesn't raise its nose. We can learn the Dharma from the oak tree; therefore, the oak tree is part of our Dharmakaya. We can learn from everything that is around, that is in us.
Things move slowly, for a long time, and then very fast. Europe has long become a museum to its own past; which is why we love it. We walk the cobblestone streets; dine in the ancient taverns under empty castles drinking wine that was made when life was lived then, raging all around and not in the rear view mirror. When people looked to the future, not the past for their ideas of the west.
-Joel D. Hirst, from here
.....................with Naval Ravikant:
The best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed. They are creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets.
Intentions don't matter. Actions do. That's why being ethical is hard.
Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.
Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now.
If they can train you to do it, then eventually they will train a computer to do it.
You're never going to get rich renting out your time.
Earn with your mind, not your time.
You will never be worth more than you think you're worth.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
. . . build your character in a certain way, then your character becomes your destiny.
There's a great power in not knowing. When faced with a challenging task, we may tell ourselves it's too difficult, it's not worth the effort, it's not the way things are done, it's not likely to work, or it's not likely to work for us.
If we approach a task with ignorance, it can remove the barricade of knowledge blocking progress. Curiously, not being aware of a challenge may be just what we need to rise to it.
-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Nonetheless, what Nagel compels us to confront is the very real possibility that the most fundamental problems of philosophy are insoluble but, crucially, no less meaningful and important for that. Taking on board Nagel’s view of philosophy can be an unnerving experience since it asks us to doubt some of our most strongly held pre-theoretical as well as theoretical assumptions, not least the common presupposition that every authentic problem must have a definitive solution or, put negatively, that only spurious problems lack genuine solutions.
Among the functions of the soul there are some lowly ones; he who does not see that side of her also, does not fully know her. And perhaps she is best observed when she goes at her simple pace. The winds of passion seize her more strongly on her lofty flights. Moreover, she gives all her being to each matter, and concentrates all her strength on it, and never treats more than one at a time. And how she treats a matter not according to itself, but according to herself.
Things in themselves may have their own weights and measures and qualities; but once inside, within us, she allots them their qualities as she sees fit. Death is frightful to Cicero, desirable to Cato, a matter of indifference to Socrates. . . .Wherefore let us no longer make the external qualities of things our excuse; it is up to us to reckon them as we will. Our good and our ill depend on ourselves alone. Let us offer our offerings and vows to ourselves, not to Fortune, for she has no power over our character; on the contrary, it drags her in its train and molds her in its own form.
-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 50
Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes.
-as culled from here
Your real résumé is just a catalog of your suffering. If I ask you to describe your real life to yourself, and you look back from your deathbed at the interesting things you've done, it's going to be around the sacrifices you made, the hard things you did.
All crying, "We will go with you, O Wind!"
The foliage follow him, leaf and stem;
But a sleep oppresses them as they go,
And they end by bidding him stay with them.
Since ever they flung abroad in spring
The leaves had promised themselves this flight,
Who now would fain seek sheltering wall,
Or thicket, or hollow place for the night.
And now they answer his summoning blast
With an ever vaguer and vaguer stir,
Or at utmost a little reluctant whirl
That drops them no further than where they were.
I only hope that when I am free,
As they are free, to go in quest
Of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life
It may not seem better to me to rest.
-Robert Frost, Misgiving
If you want to navigate life in an astonishingly successful way, you need to find a lot of truths. Truths are hidden all over, across time, geography, culture, and disciplines. Being a snob about your sources of truth is like amputating mental limbs.
-Eric Jorgenson, from this post
One idea Friedman articulates better than almost anyone else is how advocacy of the market mechanism is (or at least can and should be) rooted in epistemic humility. It’s not just society that is unfathomably complex – the individuals who make up society are also complex and multifaceted ways technocratic policy can never hope to reflect. His advocacy of markets can be paraphrased as “Look, this social problem is extraordinarily complicated. I don’t know what the best solution is. In fact, even talking about a ‘best’ solution may be senseless, because different solutions will work better for different people and different circumstances. The best approach is to let a thousand flowers bloom and give people the space to work out for themselves how to solve their issues in a way best suited to their own needs and desires.” To be a technocrat is to deny that a problem is too complex for you to understand, to believe that there is a “correct” solution, that you in particular know what that solution is, and that you can effectively use policy to implement that solution by altering the behavior of people you’ve never met in ways you can reliably predict. If you reject the simple-society ontology of a naive realist, you see these kinds of claims as incredibly hubristic. But these are the claims one has to make to advocate a technocratic policy.
-Kevin Corcoran, talking about this book:
.................."a scientist of yourself."
Short-term results can undermine long-term development.
Difficulty isn’t a sign that you aren’t learning, but ease is. Sorry.
The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.
Shatter MeThe modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.
-as extracted from here
I’ve given up on trying to avoid 3:00 a.m. thoughts. Instead, over the years, I’ve tried to channel them to a more productive use.
Clouds never truly disappear. They change form. They turn into rain and become part of the ocean, and then evaporate and return to being clouds.
The same is true of art.
Art is a circulation of energetic ideas. What makes them appear new is that they are combined differently each time they come back. No two clouds are the same.
This is why, when we are struck by a new piece of art, it can resonate on a deeper level. Perhaps this is the familiar, coming back to us in an unfamiliar form. Or maybe it is something unknown that we didn't realize we were looking for. A missing piece in a puzzle that has no end.
-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Thus we are quite wont to say, with reason, that events and outcomes depend for the most part, especially in war, on Fortune, who will not fall into line and subject herself to our reason and foresight, as these lines say:
But if you take it rightly, it seems that our counsels and deliberations depend just as much on Fortune, and that she involves our reason also in her confusion and uncertainty. "We reason rashly and inconsiderately," says Timaeus in Plato, "because like ourselves, our reason has in it a large element of chance."
-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 47
The enemies of those struggling for freedom and democracy are not man. They are discrimination, dictatorship, greed, hatred, and violence, which lie within the heart of man. These are the real enemies of men - not man himself.
-Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King, Jr, from here
Open a book and a voice speaks. A world, more or less alien, or welcoming, emerges to enrich a reader's store of hypotheses about how life is to be understood.
-Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things
Abraham Lincoln, his best friend Joshua Speed later recalled, said that his highest ambition at the time "was to become the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." Clinton, the sixth governor of New York, was the driving force behind the first great American infrastructure project, perhaps the most consequential until the Interstate Highway System - the Erie Canal. Clinton saw this project as a means of preventing states in the West from detaching themselves from the Union. The canal would "bind the union together by indissoluble ties" because the people would be "habituated to frequent intercourse and beneficial inter-communication," and all Americans would be "bound together by the golden ties of commerce and the adamantine chains of interest." The canal, also, and inadvertently, helped to bring down the old order in Europe. By bringing cheap wheat from America's Great Plains, the canal struck at the roots of Europe's landed aristocracy. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York chauvinist, delighted in saying that the canal did more than Europe's socialist movements did to upend Europe's class structure. Such are the unanticipated caroms of economic forces when they are allowed the freedom to flow.
- George F. Will, The Conservative Sensibility
Editor's note: Calling Will (or DeWitt Clinton) on some bullshit here. For all his high-minded talk, one suspects Clinton's real motive was to move goods from Ohio, via the canal and the linked waterways, through the Port of New York. Prior to the canal, Philadelphia was the leading port and economic driver. After the canal, that title moved to New York City.
On a related note, the Age of the Canal was very brief - maybe thirty years, The coming of the railroads, a far more important and consequential "infrastructure project," put the canals out of business fairly quickly.
The benefit of the doubt is priceless. And yet people waste it, every day.
-Seth Godin, from here
So the goal here is to have a healthy relationship with money. You don’t want the porridge to be too hot or too cold, but just right. How do you know when you have a healthy relationship with money? When you no longer stress about money. People who spend too much experience stress—they’re always worried about how to make the next credit card payment. People who spend too little experience stress—they’re agonizing over every penny. The goal is not only not to experience stress about money, but to not even think about it at all. I have an assignment for you: try to go a week without even thinking about money. I bet you can’t do it. It’s a lot harder than you think. Everywhere we go we are bombarded by financial decisions. Shit, the price of gas is high these days. Shit, Chipotle is $20 nowadays. Shit, my HOA dues went up this month. Do any of these things cause you stress? If so, that provides an insight into your psychology.
-Jared Dillian, from this post
...........................................Kevin Kelly
Recipe for success: under-promise and over-deliver.
It’s not an apology if it comes with an excuse. It is not a compliment if it comes with a request.
Be governed not by the tyranny of the urgent but by the elevation of the important.
The foundation of maturity: Just because it’s not your fault doesn’t mean it’s not your responsibility.
A multitude of bad ideas is necessary for one good idea.
Being wise means having more questions than answers.
Compliment people behind their back. It’ll come back to you.
Most overnight successes — in fact any significant successes — take at least 5 years. Budget your life accordingly.
You are only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
Your best response to an insult is “You’re probably right.” Often they are.
The worst evils in history have always been committed by those who truly believed they were combating evil. Beware of combating evil.
If you can avoid seeking approval of others, your power is limitless.
When brainstorming, improvising, jamming with others, you’ll go much further and deeper if you build upon each contribution with a playful “yes — and” example instead of a deflating “no — but” reply.
Work to become, not to acquire.
As early as 1650, in England and America, Adams men had made their living as malsters, steeping, drying, sweating, and kilning barley to be fermented into beer. It was a messy, exacting, labor-intensive business at which Samuel Adams Sr. had splendidly succeeded. At the time of his son's birth, the family occupied a stately home on what is today Purchase Street, with a commanding ocean view, an observatory, a wharf that bore the family name, various outbuildings, and an orchard. The estate fronted Boston's sparkling harbor; a garden sloped to the shore. Even a non-admirer was impressed. Samuel Adams Sr. had - in an intricate business, practiced on a modest scale, supplying Boston housewives with the malt with which they brewed beer - "accumulated a surprising amount of money."
-Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary Samuel Adams
He closed on a note of Wilsonian laissez faire. "I hope the Doctor does not think there is anything seriously the matter with your sister. Do not let him do much to her. I am more afraid of remedies than diseases."
-Walter Bagehot, from a November 22, 1857 letter
In my own personal experience, the place I end up the most is wanting to be at peace.
Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace into happiness anytime you want. But peace us what you want most of the time. If you're a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity.
Today, the way we think you get peace is by resolving all your external problems. But there are unlimited external problems.
The only way to actually get peace on the inside is by giving up this idea of problems.
It is our theory that the people own the government, not that the government should own the people.
-attributed to Calvin Coolidge
On July 5, 1926, President Calvin Coolidge, who was born of the Fourth of July, 1872, spoke in Philadelphia to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Coolidge was more learned than his cultured despisers know and more learned than most of them are. He translated Dante's Inferno as a wedding gift for his wife, he read Cicero in Latin, and there is no extant evidence that he ever said "the business of America is business." That day in Philadelphia he spoke "to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound." The founding of the United States, he said, represented a "new civilization...a new spirit...more developed in its regard for the rights of the individual" than any in Europe. Coolidge said "life in a new and open country" had given rise to "aspirations which could not be realized in any subordinate position." These aspirations. "decreed by the very laws of human nature," testified to the fact that "man everywhere has an unconquerable desire to be the master of his own destiny." The Declaration's "great truths were in the air" Americans breathed.
-George F. Will, The Conservative Sensibility
Gambling at the casino is a form of entertainment. Successful investing is not supposed to be entertaining.
Following the markets can be a form of entertainment as long as you don’t act on every impulse but the act of investing itself should not be exciting. In fact, good investing should be relatively boring.
Investors need to remember this when they’re in search of investment advice as well.
If you’re taking recommendations from people in the financial media you must understand the difference between entertainment and advice.
-Ben Carlson, from here
But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. And I knew that that would haunt me every day. So when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision.
-Jeff Bezos, from here
A million in the hands of a single banker is a great power; he can at once lend it where he will, and borrowers can come to him, because they know or believe that he has it. But the same sum scattered in tens and fifties through a whole nation is no power at all: no one knows where to find it or whom to ask for it. Concentration of money in banks, though not the sole cause, is the principal cause which has made the Money Market of England, so exceedingly rich, so much beyond that of other countries.
-Walter Bagehot, from his 1873 book, Lombard Street: A Description of the Money MarketCreativity is not a rare ability. It is not difficult to access. Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It is out birthright. And it's for all of us. . . .
Regardless of wheter or not we're formally making art, we are all living as artists. We perceive, filter, and collect data, then curate an experience for ourselves and others based on this information set. Whether we do this consciously or unconsciously, by the mere fact of being alive, we are active participants in the ongoing process of creation. . . .
Attuned choice by attuned choice, your entire life is a form of self-expression. You exist as a creative being in a creative universe. A singular work of art.
-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
I should be prone to excuse our people for having no other pattern and rule of perfection than their own manners and customs, for it is a common vice, not of the vulgar only but of almost all men, to fix their aim and limit by the ways to which they were born.
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 49
Sometimes “productivity” feels like a country you’ve heard a lot about but never thought you’d get a chance to visit.
-from this Barking Up The Wrong Tree post
Adams banked on the sage deliberations of a band of hard-working farmers reasoning their way toward rebellion. That was how democracy worked. He dreaded disunity. "Neither religion nor liberty can long subsist in the tumult of altercation, and amidst the noise and violence of faction," he warned. There was nothing feigned about his zeal for liberty, "the best cause," he assured his wife, "that virtuous men contend for." In his case it was bred deep in the Calvinist bone. Adams could not live in the house with a slave and arranged for the one who arrived on his doorstep to be freed. He refused to believe that prejudice and private interest would ultimately trample knowledge and benevolence. Self-government was in his view inseparable from governing the self; it demanded a certain asceticism. He wrote anthem after anthem to the qualities he believed essential to a republic—austerity, integrity, selfless public service—qualities that would become more military than civilian. The contest was never for him less than a spiritual struggle. It is impossible with Adams to determine where piety ended and politics began: the watermark of Puritanism shines through everything he wrote. Faith was there from the start, as was the scrappy, iconoclastic spirit, as were the daring, disruptive excursions beyond the law.
-Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary Samuel Adams
American politics resembles a three-way scrum. An institutional center, dominated by a guardian class of elites, who manage pretty much everything in modern society, faces persistent assaults from the populist Left and Right.
On close inspection, the three contending parties can be reduced to two ideological streams: the politics of control and the politics of incoherence. Terrified by the rise of populism, the elites have hardened into what the French would call an “extreme center,” claiming a right to rule in perpetuity by reason of its superior virtue and moderation. Democracy has been redefined as the electoral triumph of the center. Candidates from outside the fold are deemed “semi-fascist” and thus illegitimate. . . .
The politics of control unite the extreme center and left populism: at present, the two factions share an uneasy alliance. This is only partly a contradiction. The center is ideologically exhausted and requires justification for control. In identity and environmentalism, the Left supplies that justification. The center is also aware that institutional power has decayed and verges on collapse. By its ability to summon the digital mob, the Left can offer social control over a restless public. At any rate, left populism today is not revolutionary but performative: it needs the media to build a proper stage on which to strut. The young rebels are often the children of the elites, getting credentialed in moral drama before they ascend to leadership.
-as culled from this post
..............a few interesting things were found:
The rule, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” creates incentives to demonstrate minimum ability and maximum need. Poverty is the inevitable result.
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Unprecedented actions on the scale that we experienced in 2020-2022 will bring unexpected results in 2023. So, while we never want to ignore a number like the January jobs report, we have to question how much is signal and how much is noise.
The economy is still absorbing the money printed during the pandemic. Inflation has not been eradicated, the Fed is highly unlikely to loosen policy anytime soon, and earnings are likely to fall as all the stimulus wears off. That’s not a recipe for a simple forecast or a soft landing. Like the Super Bowl, until the game is played no one knows exactly what will happen. Count us less bullish than conventional wisdom.
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You learn something new every day; as part of the settlement to the Spanish-American War - Spain agreed to sell the US the Philippines for $20 million. Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in the world at the time, offered to reimburse the government $20 million if they would give the Philippines their freedom instead of making it a US Protectorate. The government rejected his kind offer...
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I don't care which party is in power, the State of the Union address has become an embarrassment. It should be abandoned.
Accenture's team also discovered that something that nearly every meeting does is a waste of time: introductions. The data show that everyone except for the person speaking is neurologically frustrated during these recitations. Instead of an introduction, Accenture now puts names on paper tents in front of attendees. Using name tents also avoids "introduction creep" in which one person offers an in-depth description of his or her job, career and personal goals, sporting activities, children, and dog. People are able to meet each other during frequent breaks without formal introduction.
-Paul J. Zak, Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness
..........................with Charlie Munger:
The desire to get rich fast is pretty dangerous.
Knowing what you don't know is more useful that being brilliant.
Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom.
People are trying to be smart—all I am trying to do is not to be idiotic, but it's harder than most people think.
Life, in part, is like a poker game, wherein you have to learn to quit sometimes when holding a much-loved hand—you must learn to handle mistakes and new facts that change the odds.
My idea of shooting fish in a barrel is draining the barrel first.
Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.
I succeeded because I have a long attention span.
It's waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can't stand to wait.
I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn't like it; indeed, especially when one doesn't like it.
-all quotes lifted from The Tao of Charlie Munger
. . . we have 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day from now until the end of this decade.
-from this Ben Carlson post, in which he offers answers to six significant questions about the economy
I am content to place humankind at the center of Creation. We are complex enough, interesting enough. What we have learned, limited as we must assume it to be, is wonderful even in the fact of its limitations.
-Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness Of Things
“What is realised in my history is not the past definitive of what it was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming.”
“I am there where it is spoken that the universe is a defect in the purity of non-being.”
“I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there's no way, to say it all. Saying it all is literally impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real.”
“I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think.”
“The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.”
32. Develop your thinking: treat it as a skill.
33. Observe your thinking to refine it and get more bang per buck.
34. Use proactive thinking: what do I need to anticipate?
35. Use critical thinking: what do I need to do better?
36. Use lateral thinking: what do I need to do differently?
-Nicholas Bate, from this list
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