whispery......................

 

This is a story walking us in several directions.  Whoever said time was a straight line?  We now find ourself right back at the beginning, in the very woods the terrible deal was struck.  A message is caught and manipulated between king and queen, warrior and mother.  Fake news flying around the psyche.  When we are out of touch with truth, we can stew on such wretched and fictitious messages.  Often in a fairy tale when a witch or sorcerer wants to infect you, they get you alone and start whispering such distortions in your ear, delighted to paralyze your immediate relationships.  The mythologist Marie-Louise von Franz called this 'cold evil' as opposed to 'hot evil'.  Hot evil is all giants and swinging clubs, heads on spikes, villages massacred, very visible.  Cold evil is something else again.  Very interior, very subtle, very whispery, very hidden.  This is a good example.  It has a hallucinatory, paranoid essence.  Gossipy.

-Martin Shaw, Smoke Hole:  Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass

choices......................

 

Persistent emotional turmoil can undermine our peace of mind, and it might be caused by an ongoing spiral that’s fueled by the short-term choices we make. Cultural and economic pressure can make those choices feel non-optional, but if we can protect ourselves early, we may be able to create enough value for others that our hygienic choices easily pay for themselves.

There are countless opportunities to thrive. But we might have to make hard choices to find them. 

-Seth Godin, from this post

The more things change..................

 

      There is a tendency, as strong now as at any former time, to suppose that an oligarchy is admirable if it consists of 'good' men.  The government of the Roman Empire was 'bad' until Constantine, and then it became 'good'.  In the Book of Kings, there were those who did right in the sight of the Lord, and those who did evil.  In English history as taught to children, there are 'good' kings and 'bad' kings.  An oligarchy of Jews is 'bad', but one of Nazis is 'good'.  The oligarchy of Tsarist aristocrats was 'bad', but that of the Communist Party is 'good'.

     This attitude is unworthy of grown-up people.  A child is 'good' when it obeys orders, and 'naughty' when it does not.  When it grows up and becomes a political leader, it retains the ideas of the nursery, and defines the 'good' as those who obey its orders and the 'bad' as those who defy it.  Consequently our own political party consists of 'good' men, and the opposite party consists of 'bad' men.  'Good' government is government by our group, 'bad' government that by the other group.  The Montagues are 'good', the Capulets 'bad', or vice versa.

      Such a point of view, if taken seriously, makes social life impossible.

-Bertrand Russell, The Taming of Power, circa 1938, from The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell

shelter.......................

 

I had grown up in a world which, according to Bishop Ussher's reckonings, the one true God had made in 4004 B.C.  It was a great drama, that world.  A drama in five acts, the acts being Creation, Fall, Revelation, Redemption and Last Things.  Having become incarnate in it, the God who created our world had left sacraments and commandments in it.  By receiving the graces made available to us in these sacraments and by keeping these commandments, we could in the end win through to a life of glory.  Alternatively, by rejecting the sacraments and breaking the commandments, we could be running the risk of damnation.  It was in other words a drama that had for issue one or the other of two stupendous possibilities, eternal bliss in heaven or eternal perdition in hell.

     That was the story I lived in.  That was the story that sheltered me.  And now I knew that it isn't only houses that shelter us.  A great story can shelter us.

     It was my calamity that I had fallen out of my story.  I had fallen out of a world into a universe that seemed infinitely indifferent, even hostile to my purposes and yearnings.

     And the killingly lonely thing was, I didn't know of anyone else to whom this had happened.  As far as I could see, it was an utterly unique calamity.  It only deepened my isolation whenever I attempted to talk to someone about it.

     I felt like Job.

-John Moriarty, nostos: an autobiography

meaning......................

 

In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

uh-oh.........................

 

more fun here

about that understanding...............

 

We did not live upon the same earth that they did and we flatter ourselves when we think we understand them.

-Jim Harrison and Rob Firchau

The sheer delight..........................

 

..................................................of friction.

A life................................

 

.............................................well lived.

A declarative force........

 

She was not beautiful according to the standards of the magazines and moving pictures of the time, and she knew it.  But by any standard she was a desirable woman, and she also knew that.  She knew it from what she had seen in the eyes of certain men, to which from time to time she had felt something like an echo in herself.

     That she was desirable was acceptable to her as a part of the liveliness and also the goodness of the world.  It was a gift.  But that she was desirable and knew it and accepted it unfitted her somewhat for her role as a minister's wife.  It was not expected.  She had not expected it herself until her own wits told her it was so.  Part of her desirability was her look of knowing more that she was saying, and being amused by the difference.  That, and the utter frankness of her presence.  There was in her, even in old age, a declarative force of being that was unhesitating and without disguise.

-Wendell Berry, from his story, A Desirable Woman (1938-1941)

when investing....................

 

. . . lean more heavily on emotional intelligence rather than IQ.   Temperament is more important than brainpower in the markets.

-Ben Carlson

Although, understanding the past would be a good place to start.......................

 

     It is no longer sufficient for Johnny to understand the past.  It is not even enough for him to understand the present, for the here-and-now environment will soon vanish.  Johnny must learn to anticipate the directions and rate of change.  He must, to put it technically, learn to make repeated, probabilistic, increasing long-range assumptions about the future.  And so must Johnny's teachers.

-Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (1976)

cherry picking......................

 

When any statistic can be recruited to support your preferred theory, you are suffering from confirmation bias. Scientists like to boast that they strive to prove themselves wrong, that following the philosopher Karl Popper they know falsification is the essence of science. Nonsense. Like prosecutors determined to find a suspect guilty, they usually seek out evidence that bolsters, rather than challenges, their pet ideas. In this they are only human.

As the philosopher Francis Bacon noted in 1620: “And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by."

-Matt Ridley, from this substack

thanks chris

unfortunately...................

 

Delaying a conversation doesn't make it easier.

-James Clear

A dream.................

 

     I think Christianity has often forgotten that it is a dream, to its own peril.  When threaded to political power it often engenders the will rather than the wonder, the law almost entirely over the spirit.  Christianity is a dream in which the very best of us is encouraged to emerge.  A dream that challenges and inspires us.  A dream in which God speaks directly to us.

-Martin Shaw,  Liturgies of the Wild

Opening paragraphs..................

 

Skye and Henry stood on a corner of Union Square on a fading San Francisco afternoon in early June, the occasional odor of popcorn swirling through, trying to busk up a few dollars.  Skye saw the devil go by in his black '85 T-top, crooked smile, ponytail, twisty little braids in his beard.  His skinny blond girlfriend sat beside him, tats running across her bare shoulders like grapevines, front teeth filed to tiny sharp points.  Skye turned away, a chill running down her back.

-John Sanford, Gathering Prey

Wait, what.............................?

 

No item sold on Amazon has the ability to perform a life transplant.

-Eric Barker, from this episode, delving into wantingness and lifeitsownself.

Fifty years ago........................

 

Any Major Dude With Half a Heart offers his 20 major albums from 1976.

It would overstate things to say that 1976 was a great year for music, the release of a few absolute classics notwithstanding, but it was a satisfying year. 

working with..................

 

The basic ground of compassionate action is the importance of working with rather than struggling against, and what I mean by that is working with your own unwanted, unacceptable stuff, so that when the unacceptable and unwanted appears out there, you relate to it based on having working with loving-kindness on yourself.  

-Pema Chodron

have the genius..............

 

     We should all engage in capitalism in this country.  In the United States, we believe capital belongs in the hands of the people.  Communism teaches that capital belongs in the hands of the state.  This is a great difference in ideology.  Communism seems to be based on the idea that humans are too stupid to know what to do with capital, so it should all be given to the state to manage.

    In our country, we believe the knowledge of what to do with capital resides in the populace.  The people have the genius to come up with ideas for goods and services for the marketplace.  This philosophy has built a dynamic enterprise known as capitalism and has created an abundance of opportunities.

-Jim Rohn, Leading an Inspired Life