To wit, people must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obliged by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.
-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Still one thing more, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
-Thomas Jefferson, from his first Inaugural Address
The great European cathedrals were built over generations by thousands of people and sustained entire communities. Similarly, the electric grid, the public-water supply, the food-distribution network, and the public-health system took the collective labor of thousands of people over many decades. They are the cathedrals of our secular era. They are high among the great accomplishments of our civilization. But they don’t inspire bestselling novels or blockbuster films. No poets celebrate the sewage treatment plants that prevent them from dying of dysentery. Like almost everyone else, they rarely note the existence of the systems around them, let alone understand how they work.
-from this Charles C. Mann essay
Freedom and liberty always refer to interhuman relations. A man is free as far as he can live and get on without being at the mercy of arbitrary decisions on the part of other people. In the frame of society everybody depends upon his fellow citizens. Social man cannot become independent without forsaking all the advantages of social cooperation. The self-sufficient individual is independent, but he is not free. He is at the mercy of everybody who is stronger than himself. The stronger fellow has the power to kill him with impunity. It is therefore nonsense to rant about an alleged "natural" and "inborn" freedom which people are supposed to have enjoyed in the ages preceding the emergence of social bonds. Man was not created free; what freedom he may possess has been given to him by society. Only societal conditions can present a man with an orbit within the limits of which he can attain liberty.
Liberty and freedom are the conditions of man within a contractual society.
-Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
You'll be living a lesson that everyone should learn. Random stuff happens. All you can control is your response. Every day, you'll practice how to react to chaos: with dignity, poise, and grace.
-Derek Sivers: How To Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion
Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.
Is there “right-wing
misinformation”? Hell yes. It exists in every direction. But I grew up a
Democrat and don’t remember being afraid of it. At the time, we didn’t need
censorship because we figured we had the better argument.
Obviously, some of you lack
that same confidence. You took billions from taxpayers and blew it on programs
whose entire purpose was to tell them they’re wrong about things they can see
with their own eyes.
-Matt Taibbi, from here
Politics is about power, and at the heart of the Abrahamic vision is a critique of power. Power is a fundamental assault on human dignity. When I exercise power over you, I deny your freedom, and that is dangerous for both of us. The opening chapters of Genesis are about the abuse of power. Cain murders his brother Abel, and two chapters later we read, "The Earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence" (Genesis 6:11).
Abrahamic monotheism is based on the idea that the free God desires the free worship of free human beings. The historical drama of the Bible turns on the question of how to translate individual freedom into collective freedom. How do you construct a free society without the constant risk of the strong dominating and exploiting the weak? That is the issue articulated by the prophets, and it was never completely solved.
-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning
..............Abraham Lincoln's birthday.
The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor — property is desirable — is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
"Whenever you think that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it is actually you who are ruining your life. It is such a simple idea. Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life. If you just take the attitude that however bad it is in any way, it's always your fault and you just fix it the best you can - the so-called "iron prescription" - I think that really works.
I remember very well the time I was captured by the dream of unified learning. It was in the early fall of 1947, when at eighteen I came up from Mobile to Tuscaloosa to enter my sophomore year at the University of Alabama. A beginning biologist, fired by adolescent enthusiasm but short on theory and vision, I had schooled myself in natural history with field guides carried in a satchel during solitary excursions into the woodland and along the freshwater streams of my native state. I saw science, by which I meant (and in my heart I still mean) the study of ants, frogs, and snakes, as a wonderful way to stay outdoors.
-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem.
The artificial demands of outlines, graphic organizers, and panning often subvert the creative process and force would-be writers to think about what they are writing before a word even hits the page rather than allowing them to spill their guts and evaluate the material later.
-Matthew Dicks, Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
A lot of fancier yarns come from people trying to tell the truth. It’s not easy once you’re out of the habit.
-Dashiell Hammett, channeling his inner Nick Charles
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue.
In 1819 Van Buren had read a series of pseudonymous articles from a western New York newspaper criticizing him. He wasn't bothered by the attacks. In fact, he was impressed by the author's writing skills, presentation of argument, and grasp of law and politics. Van Buren inquired whose pen was behind the series and was told it was a young Federalist attorney from Oneida County named Samuel A. Talcott, a Connecticut native and a graduate of Williams College. When Van Buren spotted him one day on a steamboat, he introduced himself, and they soon became friends. Van Buren told Talcott, who had just turned thirty, that he was "misplaced in the political field" and that "his chances for fame and public usefulness would be increased by joining us." Talcott accepted. The Skinner council made him the new attorney general.
-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician
Unlike Clinton, who wasted precious capital after his 1817 landslide, Van Buren moved at once to consolidate his power. "It was one of Mr. Van Buren's maxims," Hammond wrote, "that that which ought to be done, should be done quickly."
-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
-Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776
Consequences aren't optional. It's in the nature of being finite that every choice comes with some sort of consequences, because at any instant, you can only pick one path, and must deal with the repercussions of not picking any of the others.
-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
But we demand a belief when we want to escape from a fact into an unreality.
-J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
18. He who ignores what his neighbor is saying or doing or thinking, and cares only that his own actions should be just and godly, is greatly the gainer in time and ease. A good man does not spy around for the black spots in others, but presses unswervingly on towards his mark.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Four
.............Arnold Kling is feeling imposed upon:
What appalls me is the
arrogance of the project to alter other people’s lifestyle. When people moved
here, they showed a preference for living as we do. The plan replaces the
preferences of the residents with the preferences of the planners.
If a developer came along
and built a community where cars were disfavored, that he said would “repair
past injustices that disproportionately affected people of color” and “reduce
climate-related risks,” then people could decide whether or not to reside in
that community. I have no problem with that. But to take a community that
people chose to live in and completely remake it to suit the planners’ idea of
utopia to me seems un-American.
....................................from Farnum Street:
The hardest truth about happiness is that it's a choice.
Watch how people discuss their problems. They'll spend hours
explaining why things are terrible, how unfair life is, and how others need to
change. But suggest they might have the power to improve things and they
suddenly have countless reasons why that's impossible.
Self-pity feels safer than responsibility.
This was some good father-son financial advice on Landman:
You got two choices in life: Get really good at balancing a check book or make enough money that you don’t have to.
Most personal finance experts focus on the former while most people would be better off striving for the latter.
-Ben Carlson, from this list
My business partner and I decided a long time ago that one of our goals in business was to be able to out-earn our mistakes. While it may not be a goal everyone would embrace, it's worked for us—so far.
The world has need of a philosophy, or a religion, which will promote life. But in order to promote life it is necessary to value something other than mere life. Life devoted only to life is animal, without any real human value, incapable of preserving men permanently from weariness and the feeling that all is vanity. If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty.
-Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916
........but it is a more apt description of football:
Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind’s noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage. By witnessing physical grace, the soul comes to understand and love beauty. Seeing people compete courageously and fairly helps emancipate the individual by educating his passions.
-George F. Will, Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball
Posts
All Comments
