Sunday, December 7, 2025
return.........................
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
with keener avarice..........
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
peculiar............
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......................
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
cornerstone.....................
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
When "elites" aren't very elite..........
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
this bifurcation of perception.............
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
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
