On coping properly.......................

 

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

Checking in with.......................

 

.......................................Alan Watts:

. . . only doubtful truth needs defense.

. . . to know truth one must first get rid of knowledge . . .

Logic, intelligence, and reason are satisfied, but the heart goes hungry.

Man, as a being of sense, wants his life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless there is more than what he sees—unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncertain and momentary experience of life-and-death.

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp . . .

For it is the essence of scientific honest that you do not pretend to know what you do not know, and of the essence of scientific method that you do not employ hypotheses which cannot be tested.

At once new myths come into being—political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures in the present world.  These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness and loneliness.  Yet the very violence of these political religions betrays the anxiety beneath them—for they are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark.

Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.  Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown.  Belief clings, but faith lets go.

Belief has thus become an attempt to hang on to life, to grasp and keep it for one's own.  But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it.

To "have" running water you must let go of it and let it run.  The same is true of life and of God.

enough......................

 

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

-Theodore Roosevelt

Makes sense to me.................

 If your view of the world is that people use reason for their important decisions, you are setting yourself up for a life of frustration and confusion. You’ll find yourself continually debating people and never winning except in your own mind. Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational.

-Scott Adams, as cut-and-pasted from here

Traits for successful investing............

 In fact, most of Buffett’s pithy aphorisms boil down to the same basic message: “Just be sensible.”

This may be easier said than done.

-from this HumbleDollar post

News...............................

     Professor C. John Sommerville, author of How the News Makes Us Dumb:  The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society, saw this coming two decades ago, in 1999, when "tweeting" was still something only birds did:  "If news were just one of many things we read each day, it wouldn't have the same impact.  If we would read science, the classics, history, theology or political theory at any length, we would make much better sense of today's events."

-Ben Sasse, Them:  Why We Hate Each Other—And How To Heal

Ed. Note:  A short cut to all that reading would be to just check in regularly with these nice folks

Checking in with...................

..............................................................................Ziggy:

Makes perfect sense to me................

"There’s an old saying that history doesn’t rhyme but it does retweet."

-Ben Carlson, as extracted from this post about delivering on your promises.

This works pretty well......................

.........................................if you are a long-term thinker:

"I don’t fool a lot around with negotiations. If they name a price that makes sense to me, I buy it. If they don’t, I was happy the day before, so I will be happy the day after without owning it."

-Warren Buffett, as culled from here

Undulate.................

"I get tired of either sense or nonsense if I am kept continuously to either and like my mind to undulate between the two as it likes best."

-Walter Bagehot

Donald the Barbarian.................?

One blogger finds a way to make sense of our 45th president.

May it ever be so..................

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”

-Daniel Kahneman

Especially this election season................

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” 
-Carl Gustav Jung

I don't always agree with Tom Friedman....

.....................but when I do, it is because of quotes like this:


"We need to prevent recklessness, not risk-taking."


-Excerpted from here.  As they say, read the whole thing.

Am I confused...................

.........................about the notion of "universal values"?   At the :19 mark, the President says "an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share."   I'm wondering if the current and previous administrations aren't/weren't seriously confused on this issue.  I would agree that history would seem to indicate that, for the most part,  for the past three hundred years or so, "western civilization" has shared a set of common values.   Acting on the thought process of extrapolating that, since the "west" thinks this way, "all of humanity" thinks this way has caused us considerable heartbreak.



Ed Note:  As I tend to do when confused by an issue, the Oracle Google was consulted.  Under the heading "Universal value", this was found:  "Whether universal values exist is an unproven conjecture of moral philosophy and cultural anthropology..."   Hmm.   Culture matters.  Not all cultures are the same.  Forget that at your own peril.  Just saying.

Makes sense to me.............................

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”

-Daniel Kahneman

Makes perfect sense to me...........................