I had always loved sunrise: was always renewed in spirit. For all my life I'd felt cheated if I'd ever slept through dawn. The primeval winter solstice on bitter Salisbury Plan had raised my childhood's goose pimples long before I understood why, and it had long seemed to me that dawn-worship was the most logical of primitive beliefs.
-Dick Francis, as excerpted from Wild Horses
The universe does not offer financing.
This is hard to accept because modern life trains us to expect
the opposite. We are addicted to "Buy Now, Pay Later." You live in
the house before you pay off the mortgage. You get the degree before you pay
off the loan. You eat the meal before you ask for the check.
We are conditioned to enjoy the benefit today and pay the cost
tomorrow.
Achievement reverses the transaction. It requires full payment
in advance (and regular payments forever). If you want a fit body, a calm mind,
a healthy relationship, or financial independence, the cost is non-negotiable.
You must do the work before you get the result.
This is why most people quit. They pay a little, see nothing,
and stop. They never make it far enough to see the first return arrive.
-Shane Parrish via Farnum Street, from this edition
Gibran's bitter denunciation of both religious and political injustice prevailing at the time, brought about his anticipated exile from the country and his excommunication from the church, although his parents were staunch Maronites. It was the story, Khalil the Heretic, in particular which drove the Sultan and his Emirs into trepidation and cause nervous authorities in the entire Middle and Near East to examine their governments.
Gibran was quietly pursuing painting with his friend Rodin in Paris when he learned of the ceremonial destruction of his book, and he merely expressed the thought that it was excellent cause for the issuance of a second edition.
-Martin L. Wolf, from the Preface to Gibran's Spirits Rebellious
How long will it be before we discover we cannot dazzle God with our accomplishments?
When will we acknowledge that we need not and cannot buy God's favor?
When will we acknowledge that we don't have it all together and happily accept the gift of grace?
-Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
The
older I get, the more I realize nothing changes if nothing changes. The new
life you want doesn’t magically appear. It’s built through action. New habits.
New mindsets. New standards. New boundaries. Reinvention has a cost of entry.
Pay it with pride.
Have been missing the wonderful world of the Eclecticity blog. Stumbled across this post of his while rooting through the archives. Hope all is well with you Doug.
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2005 at Emory, real life is not college; real life is not high school. Here is a secret that no one has told you: Real life is junior high. The world that you’re about to enter is filled with junior high adolescent pettiness, pubescent rivalries, the insecurities of 13-year-olds, and the false bravado of 14-year-olds.
-Tom Brokaw, Emory University Commencement Address (2005)
as found in this week's edition of Tim Ferriss's Five-Bullet Friday
It was a step in the right direction, if not the perfect solution; I did miss the orderly abundance of a fully replenished case. But the experience showed me that creativity was going to be the main ingredient in striking a true balance between restaurant-smart and corporate-smart. . . .
We threw ourselves into the project. Jon proved to be an extremely dangerous co-conspirator. For example, he found a company in Italy making amazing, tiny blue spoons. How amazing could a plastic spoon possibly be? You are going to have to trust me on this: they were paddle-shaped, extraordinarily well designed, and completely unique. They were also preposterously, heartbreakingly expensive.
But I had to have them; the Sculpture Garden deserved them. Nothing else would do.
The first time my boss saw one of those spoons, she narrowed her eyes and asked me what they had cost. I told her, and her eyes got even narrower: "We'll talk about this later." But a month later, we sat down to review the first P & L for the cart, and I never heard another word about those spoons.
I'd managed 95 percent of my budget aggressively, leveraging MoMA's brand to get excelled gelato at a steep discount, and a beautiful cart for free. I'd earned the right to splurge on those spoons, the one small detail I believed would dramatically transform the experience of getting an ice cream at the cart.
This is what I would later call the Rule of 95/5. Manage 95 percent of your business down to the penny; spend the last 5 percent "foolishly." It sounds irresponsible; in fact, it's anything but. Because that last 5 percent has an outsized impact on the guest experience, it's some of the smartest money you'll ever spend.
-Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. All I want is the best of everything and there’s very little of that left . . .
Throughout history, there have always been those who would manipulate others in order to gain sex, money, or power. We have not yet put that era behind us.
-Richard Brodie, Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme
When things
don't go well it's easy to wonder, "Why me?" It's easy to point
fingers. It's easy to wallow in frustration or defeat.
But it is
also easy to ask, "What is this teaching me?"
You can't remove the frustrations from life, but you can always try to come out a little wiser on the other side.
-James Clear, from this edition
Tip generously. You go around only once, and tipping generously is a meaningful way to improve your own quality of life.
Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there.
Computers are useless; they can only give you answers.
-attributed to Pablo Picasso (perhaps modified a bit)
Now, I am faced with another illusion. It is no longer a question of particular privileges, but of transforming privilege into a common right. The entire nation has conceived the odd idea that it could increase production indefinitely by handing it over to the State in the form of taxes in order for the State to give it back a portion in the form of work, profit, and pay. The state is being requested to ensure the well-being of every citizen; and a long and sorry procession, in which every sector of the workforce is represented, from the severe banker to the humble laundress, is parading before the organizer in chief in order to ask for financial assistance.
-Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms and "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen" (March 1848)
-Robert Frost, Carpe Diem
....................and Conservatism 101:
. . . many conservatives are fed up with important institutions, including higher education and mainstream media. This has turned many conservatives into “brokenists.” They are not disposed to protect the authority and legitimacy of existing institutions.
Seems like the distrust of all "isms" has been well earned.
We should also heed the general lesson implicit in the injunction of Ben Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanack: “If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.” This maxim is a wise guide to a great and simple precaution in life: Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.
-Charlie Munger, from his The Psychology of Human Misjudgment
If time=money, your earning potential is limited. If value=money, your earning potential is unlimited.
-Nicholas Bate, from Rule 4 of 7 about money
Neuroscientists tell us that awareness of beauty in one’s environment for a long time, reduces stress, can have physiological benefits, perhaps even longevity, . . .
-as lifted from this David Kanigan post
The guiding notion of the Enlightenment, and later of Marx and Lenin's "scientific" socialism, was that henceforth the alliance between happiness and justice would no longer come about through the individual quest for wisdom, but through the rebuilding of society as a whole. And before building a new society, the old one first had to be completely destroyed. It was at the end of the eighteenth century that the idea of revolution took on its modern meaning. Personal salvation was from then on subordinate to collective salvation. . . . suffice it to say that somewhere between 1965 and 1970 I thought I'd seen the irremediable bankruptcy of this illusion, the progenitor of the great totalitarian movements that have ravaged the twentieth century.
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
-Dr. Seuss, as channeled by Theodor Seuss Geisel
Logic means, simply, the art and method of correct thinking. It is the logy or method of every science, of every discipline and every art; and even music harbors it. It is a science because to a considerable extent the processes of correct thinking can be reduced to rules like physics and geometry, and taught to any normal mind; it is an art because by practice it gives to thought, at last, that unconscious and immediate accuracy which guides the fingers of the pianist over his instrument to effortless harmonies. Nothing is so dull as logic, and nothing is so important.
-Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, from the chapter on Aristotle, the world's first logician
You gotta try your luck at least once a day, because you could be going around lucky all day and not even know it.
-attributed to Jimmy Dean
No thank you. But if it is soon to be part of your future, Eric Barker has some valuable, and free, advice.
Turns out, “endless free time” is only fun when you’re supposed to be doing something else.
The first man who having enclosed in a piece of land, bethought himself of saying, "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.
-attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, Self-Reliance
Most of us cannot hide from the world. We have responsibilities that require engagement and personal skills that will be lost without frequent connection to other people.
If
everything we do requires that we have an iron-clad assurance of safety, we’ll
be on our way to becoming hermits. No great civilization was ever built and
maintained by hermits
-Michael Wade, from this episode
..............................Will be very surprised if there aren't a few first round blow outs.
The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh. The strength of that principle is not measured in ounces and pounds: it tyrannizes at the centre of Nature. We may well give skepticism as much line as we can. The spirit will return, and fill us. It drives the drivers. It counterbalances any accumulations of power.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, as culled from his essay, Worship
For Emerson as for Thoreau, economy means how to live. Failure to understand that means missing Emerson's main point. "The true thrift," he concludes, "is always to spend on the higher plane, to invest and spend, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in augmenting animal existence."
-Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson: The Mind on Fire
Back in 1975 the musician Brian Eno and the artist Peter Schmidt created a curious artifact, a set of cards containing peculiar instructions: "Honour thy error as a hidden intention." "Ask your body." "Work at a different speed." These were meant to help artists, especially musicians, who had come to an impasse in their work. Eno and Schmidt call the card deck Oblique Strategies because they knew that when an artist is blocked, direct approaches meant to fix the problem invariably make it worse. In a similar way, sometimes you can get better at thinking only by turning your attention to matters other than thinking.
-Alan Jacobs, How To Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds
Asking leads to answers, and answers lead to more questions. From not knowing, we get to knowing, and eventually to the truth. This is why we must understand that there is no such thing as a dumb question. In fact, a person becomes smart only by asking questions. The more impertinent and relentless the better.
-Ryan Holiday, Wisdom Takes Work
The cornerstone of the company's culture was a philosophy Danny called Enlightened Hospitality, which upended traditional hierarchies by prioritizing the people who worked there over everything else, including the guests and investors. This didn't mean the customer suffered; in fact, the opposite. Danny's big idea was to hire great people, treat them well, and invest deeply into their personal and professional growth, and they would take great care of the customers—which is exactly what they did.
-Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
Out of disorder and discontent come leaders who have strong personalities, are anti-elitist, and claim to fight for the common man. They are called populists. Populism is a political and social phenomenon that appeals to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are not being addressed by the elites. It typically develops when there are wealth and opportunity gaps, perceived cultural threats from those with different values both inside and outside the country, and "establishment elites" in positions of power who are not working effectively for most people.
-Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order
In the wake of the scientific revolution and certain deadening forms of modernist presumption, the trend has been to sever the bond between objectivity and subjectivity. Consciousness in the modern West has been informed by trends the follow this severance. Subjectivity and objectivity are commonly viewed as opposites, even at odds, rather than being component parts of an already reconciled whole. The hard sciences have sided with objectivity against subjectivity. The human sciences have done the opposite. Errors of all kinds follow from this bifurcation of perception and being into two seemingly incompatible worlds of meaning, especially when one side of the dichotomy is elected over the other for arbitrary reasons. But this is not how Chesterton experienced the world. Arguably, this is not how anyone experiences the world, despite rationalizations to the contrary.
-Duncan Reyburn, The Roots of the World: The Remarkable Prescience of G. K. Chesterton
I like people coming into any orbit of mine without any experience, particularly without any necessarily expertise, without having been quote, made. And then you give people more responsibility than they qualify for because in that forge you find out who swims and who doesn't. And if you have that kind of environment out of it's going to come pretty good people.
Barry Diller, as quoted in this post
The only way to live it is to be as truthful as you can be. With others, of course. But mostly with yourself.
Doing anything else is not living or being in the moment. Anything less than truthfulness is an attempt to distort the past or control the future.
Let your energy impact the people you're talking to, as opposed to the other way around.
For a recent and slightly cynical college graduate, Randy's sunny optimism could sometimes stretch the limits of belief. Ask him how his day was going, and he would say, "You know, man, I'm trying to make today the very best day of my life." I might have rolled my eyes, but that kind of unwavering positivity turned out to be impossible to resist . . .
-Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality
Philip [King of Macedon, 359-336 BC] had no sympathy with the individualism that had fostered the art and intellect of Greece but had at the same time disintegrated her social order; in all these little capitals he saw not the exhilarating culture and the unsurpassable art, but the commercial corruption and the political chaos; he saw insatiable merchants and bankers absorbing the vital resources of the nation, incompetent politicians and clever orators misleading a busy populace into disastrous plots and wars, factions cleaving classes and classes congealing into castes: this said Philip, was not a nation but only a welter of individuals—geniuses and slaves; he would bring the hand of order down upon this turmoil, and make all Greece stand up united and strong as the political center and basis of the world.
-Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy
When I started law practice, I had respect for the power of genetic evolution and appreciation of man’s many evolution-based resemblances to less cognitively-gifted animals and insects. I was aware that man was a “social animal,” greatly and automatically influenced by behavior he observed in men around him. I also knew that man lived, like barnyard animals and monkeys, in limited-size dominance hierarchies, wherein he tended to respect authority and to like and cooperate with his own hierarchy members while displaying considerable distrust and dislike for competing men not in his own hierarchy.
But this generalized, evolution-based theory structure was inadequate to enable me to cope properly with the cognition I encountered. I was soon surrounded by much extreme irrationality, displayed in patterns and subpatterns. So surrounded, I could see that I was not going to cope as well as I wished with life unless I could acquire a better theory-structure on which to hang my observations and experiences.
-Charlie Munger, from the opening of his speech, The Psychology of Human Misjudgment
How do I stave off the cynic's disease and still remain a hopeful skeptic? . . .
Let's sing more that we might make sense, believe in more than the world can conclude, get more impressed with the wow instead of the how, let inspiration interrupt our appointments, dream our way to reality, serve some soul food to our hungry heads, put proof on the shelf for a season, and rhyme our way to reason. Forget logic, certainty, owning, or making a start-up company of it; let's go beyond what we can merely imagine, and believe, in the poetry of life.
-Matthew McConaughey, Poems & Prayers
.........Actually, I was more afraid of Mr. Reed, our gym teacher, than I was of being 30' in the air. Losing the fear of heights was just one outcome; I was still afraid of Mr. Reed.
Freedom is a vital food for the human soul. In the concrete sense of the word, freedom means the possibility of choice. A real possibility, naturally. Wherever there is communal life, it is inevitable that choices will be restricted by rules that are necessary in the interest of the common good. . . .
Rules must be simple and reasonable enough for anyone who wishes to do so, and who has an average faculty of attention, can both understand the utility to which they correspond and the necessities of fact that impose them. Rules must emanate from an authority regarded not as a stranger or an enemy, but which is loved and seen to belong to those it governs. They must be stable, few and general enough to be assimilated into thought once and for all, and not create a conflict each time a decision has to be taken.
-Simone Weil, The Need for Roots
Whatever happens,
those who have learned
to love one another
have made their way
to the lasting world
and will not leave,
whatever happens.
-Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 1998
We call contentment or satisfaction that state of a human being which does not and cannot result in any action. Acting man is eager to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory. His mind imagines conditions which suit him better, and his action aims at bringing about this desired state. The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness. A man perfectly content with the state of his affairs would have no incentive to change things. He would have neither wishes nor desires; he would be perfectly happy. He would not act; he would simply live free from care.
-Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
The ultimate goal of human action is always the satisfaction of the acting man's desire. There is no standard of greater or lesser satisfaction other than individual judgements of value, different for various people and for the same people at various times. What makes a man feel uneasy and less uneasy is established by him from the standard of his own will and judgment, from his personal and subjective valuation. Nobody is in a position to decree what should make a fellow man happier.
-Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
..........a number of times in our corner of the blogosphere, the problem is not too many books, the problem is too few bookshelves. Judging by this post and list, Barnes & Noble will be sending some additions to the collection shortly.
"I think that someone on the left who went through this curriculum would come away with more admiration for conservatism and some doubts about leftism."
The Licking County Courthouse is all dressed up for the holiday.
Many
situations in life are similar to going on a hike: the view changes once you
start walking.
You don't
need all the answers right now. New paths will reveal themselves if you have
the courage to get started.
-James Clear, from this edition
Intuition appears to be something that, while inevitably fallible, is often more reliable, much quicker, and capable of taking into account many more factors, than explicit reasoning, including factors of which we may not even be consciously aware. It also underlies motor, cognitive and social skills, and is the ground of the excellence of the expert. The attempt to replace it with rules and procedures is a typical left hemisphere response to something it does not understand – a response that is, alas, powerfully destructive. We inhabit a world in which reason is needed more than ever before, yet in which reason is so narrowly conceived that it drives out true understanding. For that we would have had to learn respect for the power of intuition, not as opposed to reason, but as both grounding it, and the means for it to fulfill its potential in making judgments in life.
Aristotle described virtue as a kind of craft, something to pursue just as one pursues the mastery of any profession or skill. "We become builders by building and we become harpists by playing the harp," he writes. "Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions."
Virtue is something we do.
It's something we choose.
Not once, for Hercules's crossroads was not a singular event. It's a daily challenge, one we face not once but constantly, repeatedly. Will we be selfish or selfless? Brave or afraid? Strong or weak? Wise or stupid? Will we cultivate a good habit or a bad one? Courage or cowardice? The bliss of ignorance or the challenge of a new idea?
Stay the same . . . or grow?
The easy way or the right way?
-Ryan Holiday, Wisdom Takes Work
A free political order is possible only when the fundamental political act is a mutual promise between governor and governed. But no human being can be trusted to keep his or her word when he or she has access to power—a power not available to opponents. Sooner or later, if not in the lifetime of the ruler, then in that of his or her descendants, there is an inescapable risk of tyranny. Freedom can only be guaranteed in a political system where the constitution sovereign is God himself, where he has sought and obtained the free consent of the governed, and where he has bound himself to respect human freedom.
-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning
So whether you're in retail, finance, real estate, education, health care, computer services, transportation, or communications, you have an incredible opportunity to be just as intentional and creative—as unreasonable—about pursuing hospitality as you are about every other aspect of your business. Because whether a company has made the choice to put their team and their customers at the center of every decision will be what separates the great ones from the pack.
Unfortunately, these skills have never been less valued than they are in our current hyperrational, hyperefficient work culture. We are in the middle of a digital transformation. That transformation has enhanced many aspects of our live, but too many companies have left the human behind. They've been so focused on products, they've forgotten about people. And while it may be impossible to quantify in financial terms the impact of making someone feel good, don't think for a second that it doesn't matter. In fact, it matters more.
The answer is simple, if not easy: create a culture of hospitality. Which means addressing questions I've spent my career asking: How do you make the people who work for you and the people you serve feel seen and valued? How do you give them a sense of belonging? How do you make them feel part of something bigger than themselves? How do you make them feel welcome?
-Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
To devise a method of barring incompetence and knavery from public office, and of selecting and preparing the best to rule for the common good—that is the problem of political philosophy.
-Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy
Perhaps the largest barrier to housing availability and affordability in places like California are permitting rules, land use restrictions, and construction codes that make it absurdly expensive, or even outright impossible, to construct new single or multi-family housing. Part of this is a conspiracy of current homeowners to protect and increase the value of their property -- after all, new home construction inevitably reduces their property value (or future escalation) by adding competing inventory and/or by creating congestion and loss of property-value-enhancing open space. Another part of this is "everything bagel liberalism" where every program has to achieve every Leftish goal -- eg we want new housing but it has to have solar and appliances with a minimum SEER and use recycled materials and have a certain number of units set aside for protected groups and create a conservation easement on part of the land, etc etc -- until even units that can get permitted are too expensive for all but the very wealthy.
-Warren Meyer, from this post
It doesn’t matter if you are trying to pick a new skill, or get fit. Discipline is the secret sauce. Do it long enough and it becomes a part of who you are. Then rewards compound. Every seed of talent, when watered with consistent input grows to bear multiple fruits.
-Tanmay Vora, from here
We live in a world of unintended consequences.
-Michael Wade, as he posts on technology and AI
P. S. Check his recommended reading list at the end
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