Lao Tzu once said. “Simplicity. Patience. Compassion. These are your greatest treasures. He’s right and this has been known for thousands of years. Make these three treasures habits in your every day life.
-culled from Chris Lynch's substack
Monday, March 23, 2026
a mark.......................
It is the mark of an educated man to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Spent much of Saturday............................
............................................rearranging mine:
the quest........................
Life is full of experiences—touching and seeing and looking and doing and acting—but you're going to lose the lessons of those experiences if you don't take time to reflect.
We can all learn to gather up the past and invest in the future. Gather up today and invest it in tomorrow. Gather up this week and invest it in the next week. Gather up this year and invest it in the next year. Many people simply hang on one more year. They are just hanging in there, seeing what's going to happen. I am asking you to choose a different path, to learn, study, and reflect. This is a major part of personal development: the quest to become better than you are now.
proportionate....................
"Our rewards in life will always be in direct proportion to our contribution." This is the law that stands as the supporting structure of all economics and of our personal well being. . . .
Most people concentrate on the bowl marked "Rewards." That is, they want things—more money, a better home, education for the kids, travel, retirement and so on—all rewards. They're hungering for the rewards, but the rewards aren't materializing because they're forgetting the bowl marked "Contributions." In other words, they're concentrating on the wrong bowl. They're like the man who sat in front of the stove and said, "Give me heat, and then I'll give you wood." He could sit there until he froze to death. Stoves don't work that way, and neither does life or economics.
Sunday, March 22, 2026
When drinking largely sobers us..............
| A little learning is a dangerous thing; |
| Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: |
| There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, |
| And drinking largely sobers us again. |
| Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts, |
| In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts; |
| While from the bounded level of our mind |
| Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind, |
| But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise |
| New distant scenes of endless science rise! |
| So pleased at first the towering Alps we try, |
| Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky; |
| The eternal snows appear already past, |
| And the first clouds and mountains seem the last; |
| But those attained, we tremble to survey |
| The growing labours of the lengthened way; |
| The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes, |
| Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! -Alexander Pope |
Thursday, March 19, 2026
transmissions..............
We have said that a great civilization does not entirely die—non omnis moritur. Some precious achievements have survived all the vicissitudes of rising and falling states: the making of fire and light, of the wheel and other basic tools; language, writing art, and song; agriculture, the family, and parental care; social organization, morality, and charity; and the use of teaching to transmit the lore of the family and race. These are the elements of civilization, and they have been tenaciously maintained through the perilous passage from one civilization to the next. They are the connective tissue of human history.
If education is the transmission of civilization, we are unquestionably progressing. Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.
-Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History
Debatable...............?
The standard of carving, of both the flesh and the draperies, is without precedent in human history, and it is not hard to imagine the astonishment and respect it produced among both cognoscenti and ordinary men and women alike. The youth of the sculptor made him a wonder, and the acclaim given to the work was the beginning of Michelangelo's reputation as an artistic superman, larger than life—like some of his works—and endowed with godly qualities.
Whether it benefits an artist to have this kind of reputation is debatable.
-Paul Johnson, The Renaissance: A Short History
reforming.....................
There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on. "If anything ail a man," says Thoreau, "so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even . . . he forthwith sets about reforming—the world."
-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
perceptions awry................
Captured by a blend of multiculturalism and white guilt that has infected so many at the highest levels, their leaders never perceived that importing large numbers of military-age single men from nations that regard women as chattel and freedom of expression as a joke might not be a wise plan, especially over the long-term.
-Michael Wade, from this substack
Meaning........................
Again and again, people said that life was busy but not meaningful. That experiences and relationships felt meaningless. Or that they didn’t know what they were meant to do in work and life. And it’s worse for the strivers than anyone else: The richer, more technologically advanced the country, the greater the percentage of the population that answers “no” to the question “Do you feel your life has an important purpose or meaning?”
Here’s why: Strivers are great at solving technical problems and answering specific, hard questions. They have been educated and trained to believe that, while the world is incredibly complicated, with enough knowledge and hard work, every problem can be solved.
The truth is, many big, complicated problems can be solved with sheer intellectual horsepower. But meaning is not one of them. “What is the meaning of my life?” is a question that cannot be answered like “How do I build an app for finding concert tickets?” or “How do I create an effective six-month weight-loss program?” Meaning is a question that must be lived, not solved with a Google search or simulated using artificial intelligence. It requires deep contemplation and a commitment to living a real life, full of unsolvable secrets, puzzling riddles, unexplainable bliss, and terrible suffering.
But in all their technical excellence, strivers trivialize their humanness by reducing life’s magnificent inscrutability to a series of complicated but solvable problems. They aren’t just living in a simulation; they are also creating the simulation they are living in.
So, if you’re a young striver, here’s what you need to know: Your life does have meaning, and you can find it. But to find it, you’ll have to think and live fundamentally differently from how you’ve been trained by school, work, media, entertainment, and culture.
-Arthur Brooks, from this edition of The Free Press
If only.................
When you claim the merit for all the good that occurs, you incur responsibility for all the harm that arises.
-Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms and "What is Seen and What Is Not Seen"
Choice..................
Remember, each individual has a choice. You are always the one in control. The cause of irritation—our notion that something is bad—that comes from us, from our labels or our expectations. Just as easily, we can change those labels; we can change our entitlement and decide to accept and love what's happening around us. And this wisdom has been repeated and independently discovered in every century and every country since time began.
-Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic
Action...................
The questions whether society or the individual is to be considered as the ultimate end, and whether the interests of society should be subordinated to those of the individuals or the interests of the individuals to those of society are fruitless. Action is always action of individual men. The social or societal element is a certain orientation of the actions of individual men. The category end makes sense only when applied to action. Theology and the metaphysics of history may discuss the ends of society and the designs which God wants to realize with regard to society in the same way in which they discuss the purpose of all other parts of the created Universe. For science, which is inseparable from reason, a tool manifestly unfit for the treatment of such problems, it would be hopeless to embark upon speculation concerning these matters.
-Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
dogma vs truth...........
However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.
-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
still shaping...........................
The society of the modern world, which I have sought to delineate and which I seek to judge, has but just come into existence. Time has not yet shaped it into perfect form; the great revolution by which it has been created is not yet over; and amid the occurrences of our time it is almost impossible to discern what will pass away with the revolution itself and what will survive its close. The world that is rising into existence is still half encumbered by the remains of the world that is waning into decay; and amid the vast perplexity of human affairs none can say how much of ancient institutions and former customs will remain or how much will completely disappear.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book Two, Chapter VIII, 1840
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
On guessing/investing.............
The difference between a good investor and a bad one isn’t access to some hidden truth. It’s the quality of the process. How disciplined is your research? How well do you manage risk when you’re wrong? How honest are you with yourself when a thesis breaks down? Good investors aren’t right more often because they know more. They’re right more often because they’re more rigorous about how they guess, and quicker to admit when they’ve guessed wrong.
-Eric Soda, from this newsletter
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
AI and the real estate business...................
The tools are getting smarter. The question is how do we get smarter about using them.
-Joe Stampone, from this "writing is thinking" post
a craft.....................
I start my valuation classes with a question of whether valuation is an art or a science, and I argue that it is neither; it does not have the precision that characterizes a science and unlike an art, it does come with principles that constrain you on what you can and cannot do. I describe valuation as a craft, where you learn as you value companies, and in the process, there are times where you question how it is practiced, and try to find ways to do it better. I have learned my share of lessons in the four decades that I have practiced valuation, and I have often abandoned standard practices, in the hope of developing better ones.
-Aswath Damodaran, from this episode
wanting incompatible things.............
Individual voters bears essentially no cost for holding inconsistent political beliefs — wanting generous pensions and robust public services and low taxes is essentially free, since no single vote determines the outcome. The irrationality is individually rational and collectively ruinous. Voters are not necessarily confused about what they want; they simply face no price for wanting incompatible things.
-Alex Tabarrok, from read-worthy this post
All my life.....................
On the first night of the millennium, remnants of the tremendous blizzard that tore through northern France the day after Christmas claimed the Pyrénées and tumbled down the mountainsides, chilling the village in which I live. the wind that followed was thin and bitter—nothing like the full-bodied storms of my native region—and for the first time since I retired here a year ago I wanted a dog at the end of the bed to warm my feet.
I packed a sandwich in the pocket of my hunting jacket the next morning and followed a game trail a thousand meters up the steep slope behind my house until I reached the meadow that saddles the snow-capped peaks closest to the village. There I witnessed a spectacle long since disappeared in Normandy: a pair of golden eagles soaring, long wings cupping and releasing the wind, yellow talons tangling in midair like old men shaking hands. Icy clouds sailed past the raptors in shreds. I smoked and watched and flapped my arms and closed my eyes. All my life I've wanted to fly and for an hour that morning I was the monarch of the sky. When I looked through the binoculars Vincent has given me for Christmas I saw sheep in the valley, sunlight fanning across the mountain slopes, and the silhouettes of eagles dancing.
-Guy de la Valdène, Red Stag
Discovery..............
"Help us to find God."
"No one can help you there."
"Why not?"
"For the same reason that no one can help the fish find the ocean."
-Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom
Monday, March 16, 2026
Scott Blitstein.................
and his site, The Sensory Dispensary, has long been a regular destination on my travels through the Intertunnel. Over the years, I have learned a bunch about music, and a bit about cancer. Scott has a GoFundMe page set up. Please, do go visit it.
The catch.....................
Everyone has something to teach you, even if neither of you realizes it.
The catch is: it’s not their job to show you, it’s your job to figure out what you can learn.
-Mark Manson, from here
Cal Newport.......................
.........ponders an AI outcome no one was talking about:
This is a worst-case scenario: you work faster and harder, but mainly on shallow, mentally taxing tasks (because of all the context shifting they require) that only indirectly help the bottom line compared to harder efforts.
It’s not quite clear why AI tools are having this impact. One tantalizing clue, however, comes from Berkeley professor Aruna Ranganathan, who is quoted in the article saying: “AI makes additional tasks feel easy and accessible, creating a sense of momentum.”
This points toward a pattern similar to what happened when email first arrived. It was undeniably true that sending emails was more efficient than wrangling fax machines and voicemail. But once workers gained access to low-friction communication, they transformed their days into a furious flurry of back-and-forth messaging that felt “productive” in the abstract, activity-centric sense of that term, but ultimately hurt almost every other aspect of their jobs and made everyone miserable.
Hard lessons................
Hippies were so dedicated to living in the moment that preventive maintenance was a difficult lesson for us. Something breaking was a big event. Repairing the broken thing is a big event. But preventing the thing from breaking is a non-event. Doing a responsible task like changing the oil doesn't come naturally. It's a messy chore, tedious and thankless. There's no reward when you do it and no reward later—just the unnoticeable absence of pain.
To acquire the adult discipline of preventive maintenance, us flower children had to learn at soul depth the remorseless logic of "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." . . .
Once the pain of avoidable repair is severe and repeated a few times, the attraction of heading off the pain with preventive maintenance becomes compelling. Then all we need is knowledge of what to do and when and how to do it.
The universal advice from professional maintainers to every impatient equipment misuser is an expletive: "Read the fucking manual!" By which they mean: Part of taking proper ownership of something is to study the manual first.
-Steward Brand, Maintenance: Of Everything
Incentives matter.............
Unsustainable things can last longer than you anticipate. Incentives can keep crazy, unsustainable trends going longer than seems reasonable because there are social and financial reasons preventing people from accepting reality for as long as they can.
-Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes
Maybe.......................
To think independently of other human beings is impossible, and if it were possible it would be undesirable. Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social. Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said. And when people commend someone for "thinking for herself" they usually mean "ceasing to sound like people I dislike and starting to sound more like people I approve of." . . .
. . . it should remind us that all of us at various times in our lives believe true things for poor reasons, and false things for good reasons, and that whatever we think we know, whether we're right or wrong, arises from our interactions with other human beings. Thinking independently, solitarily, "for ourselves," is not an option.
-Alan Jacobs, How To Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds
binding/blinding............
People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.
-Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind
cruel resistance................
An idea of health that does not generously and gracefully accommodate the fact of death is obviously incomplete. The crudest manifestation of modern medicine is its routine, stubborn, and finally cruel resistance to death. This comes of the refusal to accept death not only as part of health, which it demonstrably is, but also as a great mystery both in itself and as part of the mystery that surrounds us all our lives. The medical industry's resistance is only sometimes an instance of scientific heroism; sometimes it is the fear of what we don't know anything about.
-Wendell Berry, Life Is A Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition
The goal.....................
The goal was never to transform the external world by acting physically upon that world, but to transform it in producing better human beings, in allowing human beings to develop an inward knowledge of themselves.
-Matthieu Ricard, as taken from here
Fruitless, no doubt.....................
The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness.
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