Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Monday, November 4, 2024
Saturday, November 2, 2024
not everybody.......................
"Everybody loves raking as a temple activity," my friend Gil explained to me after he returned from his sojourn practicing Zen in Japan and vipassana in Southeast Asia. "In Japan they say, 'When you rake, watch your mind.' So in Japan the monks can be seen raking energetically, sometimes stirring up a cloud of dust, while in Southeast Asia, the monks sometimes stand unmoving with a rake in their hands."
-Edward Espe Brown, No Recipe: cooking as a spiritual practice
Friday, November 1, 2024
Endarkenment......................
..............from the essential pen of Martin Gurri:
The Endarkenment is the pathological disorientation that convulses a society after it has extinguished all sources of meaning and lost sight of all paths to a happier future. It’s the triumph of wish over facts, the infantilization of top echelons of the social pyramid—of hyper-credentialed, globally mobile people, wielders of power and wealth and media, who, on a routine basis, confuse their self-important imaginings with the world itself. It’s the widespread descent of everyone else, now deprived of teachers, preachers, and role models, into a cognitive underclass, prone to the most bizarre theories about how things work.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Thinking about.............................
.............................................dumb stuff faster:
But what if we spent less time figuring out how to do dumb stuff faster and more time pointing out how dumb the stuff is or finding ways to avoid it altogether. Not always possible, sure. But sometimes, it’s possible. Might be possible more often than we think.
yep.............................
Things that have never happened before happen all the time.
-Ben Carlson, as he tries to make sense of the market
skills.............................
Sometimes, those focused on remaining calm and contained are not always learning the skills necessary to perform, to function in the world. They may be stable and not raise their voice in the kitchen, but they don't know how to make salad dressing. They may meditate steadfastly but not develop their communication skills. While busy generating calm, beautiful states of mind, they are not developing the skills, capacities, and practices that could actually and realistically manifest delicious food or wholesome relationships.
-Edward Espe Brown, No Recipe: cooking as a spiritual practice
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Be careful out there.....................
No power on earth is more fearsome than a highly educated class that faces a constrained, even dismal, future.
-Joel Kotkin, as he starts this entry
Be careful out there - Part 2.....
The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems. At its inception, it represented a break from the trend of the 1920s to the 1960s, when the direct meritocratic evaluation of competence became the norm across vast swaths of American society.
on mickles and muckles..............
George Washington’s favorite saying was “many mickles make a muckle.” It was an old Scottish proverb that illustrates a truth we all know: things add up. Even little ones. Even at the pace of one per day. Because, as the Stoics would say, it’s the little things that add up to wisdom and to virtue. What you read, who you study under, what you prioritize. Day to day, practiced over a lifetime, this is what creates greatness. This is what leads to a good life.
-Ryan Holiday, from here