have the genius..............

 

     We should all engage in capitalism in this country.  In the United States, we believe capital belongs in the hands of the people.  Communism teaches that capital belongs in the hands of the state.  This is a great difference in ideology.  Communism seems to be based on the idea that humans are too stupid to know what to do with capital, so it should all be given to the state to manage.

    In our country, we believe the knowledge of what to do with capital resides in the populace.  The people have the genius to come up with ideas for goods and services for the marketplace.  This philosophy has built a dynamic enterprise known as capitalism and has created an abundance of opportunities.

-Jim Rohn, Leading an Inspired Life

hot-gospellers.................

 

No two more different people could be imagined than Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan: in appearance, in style, in manner, in speech and, it would seem, in what they stand for.  Fuller is short and round and speaks in epic poetry.  McLuhan is tall and angular and utters puns and epigrams.  But both men became cult heroes at the same time, in the 1960s.  And both for the same reason: they are bards and hot-gospellers of technology.

-Peter F. Drucker, Adventures of a Bystander

choose wisely.......................

 

Underrated life skill: Surrounding yourself with people who make you feel better.

Overrated life skill: Surrounding yourself with people who make you look better.

-Mark Manson

"here to help"........................

 

The frustrations of entering into that Kafkaesque world of chatbots that are “here to help,” or phone menus that seem imported from some generic template, are such that it is worth taking an hour to drive to the CVS pharmacy, or the DMV, or the UPS store, or some medical practice, and collar a human being. Usually they are able to solve my problem in short order.

-Matthew B. Crawford, from this substack

surrounded....................

When working, surround yourself with people more successful that you.

When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you.

-Naval Ravikant 

weary.....................

 

     A constitutional republic in its head and ultra-monarchical in all its other parts has always appeared to me to be a shortlived monster.  The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin, and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Fourth Book, Chapter VI

Eric Baker...................

...............offers four paths to peak happiness:

 But in a field of study like psychology where things are often blurry, it seems fair to say there is one necessary condition for extreme happiness…

Connecting with people you love.

effects.........................

I have sought God in the meanings that have inspired people to live in such a way that their lives seem to point to something larger than themselves . . . It can be an affirmation, someone who gives you the confidence to be yourself.  It can be forgiveness, a way of saying, yes, you know and I know that it was wrong, but that was yesterday, and you have work to do today, and perhaps tomorrow will bring the chance to heal what you harmed.

      People with the Abrahamic monotheisms have always known that for most of us, most of the time, God, more infinite that the universe, older and younger than time, cannot be known directly.  He is known mainly through his effects, and of these the most important is his effect on human lives.

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

ground rules.................

 Here's a rule of life: you have to be there. You have to listen and laugh and argue and comfort the people around you in a multitude of exchanges where life's mystery means you may not know just which exchange was the most important.

-Michael Wade

discovery............................

 Every person you meet knows an amazing lot about something you know virtually nothing about.  It won't be obvious, and your job is to discover what it is.

-Kevin Kelly

types........................

      Two days now Matt Sabre had been marshal of Painted Rock.  Yet the job was not new to him, for he had been marshal before in other towns.  And this town was no different.  Even the faces were the same.  It was strange, he thought, how little difference there was in people.  When one traveled, got around to many towns, one soon realized there were just so many types, and one found them in every town.  Names were different, and expressions, but it was like many casts playing the same roles in a drama.  The parts remained the same, only the names of the cast had changed.

-Louis L'Amour, from his short story The Marshal of Painted Rock

Can I get an Amen.........................?

 It is our theory that the people own the government, not that the government should own the people.

-attributed to Calvin Coolidge

Dormant ties....................

 Dormant ties* are the neglected value in our networks, and givers have a distinctive edge over takers in unlocking this value.

-Adam Grant, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

*Dormant ties are people you used to see often or knew well but with whom you have fallen out of contact.

      It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.

-Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Incomparable.................

   more fun here

Aspirational....................

 

                   via

"Like people" rules.....................

1.  Learn to remember names.  Inefficiency at this point may indicate that your interest is not sufficiently outgoing.
2.  Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you.  Be an old-shoe, old-hat kind of individual.
3.  Acquire the quality of relaxed easy-going so that things do not ruffle you.
4.  Don't be egotistical.  Guard against the impression that you know it all.
5.  Cultivate the quality of being interesting so people will get something of value from their association with you.
6.  Study to get the "scratchy" elements out of your personality, even those of which you may be unconscious.
7.  Sincerely attempt to heal, on an honest Christian basis, every misunderstanding you have had or now have.  Drain off your grievances.
8.  Practice liking people until you learn to do so genuinely.
9.  Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone's achievement, or express sympathy in sorrow or disappointment.
10.  Give spiritual strength to people, and they will give genuine affection to you.

-Lyndon Baines Johnson, as quoted by David J. Schwartz, in The Magic Of Thinking BIG

Martin Gurri on AOC...............

Worth reading, especially the obsession part.  He concludes:

 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been a political celebrity for less than a year.  She may yet rise, in time, to spectacular heights, or plunge into the abyss and be forgotten.  No one can say at this point.  The only prediction I offer with confidence is that her performance, along the way, will be hugely entertaining.

Sacrificial...........................

To the disciples' embarrassment the Master once told a bishop that religious people have a natural bent for cruelty.

"Why?" demanded the disciples after the bishop had gone.

"Because they all too easily sacrifice persons for the advancement of a purpose," said the Master.

-Anthony de Mello,  One Minute Wisdom

On mood swings and sane talk..............

Let me submit, as my parting word, a warning to the skeptic:  the democratic process is in peril of self-negation.  The public's mood swings are driven by failures of government, not hope for change.  Each failure bleeds legitimacy from the system, erodes faith in the machinery of democracy, and paves the way for the opposite extreme. 

. . . A rebellious public, sectarian in temper and utopian in expectations, collides everywhere with institutions that rule by default and blunder, it seems, by habit.  Industrial hierarchies fer no longer able to govern successfully in a world swept to the horizon by a tsunami of information.  An egalitarian public is unwilling to assume responsibility under any terms.  The muddled half-steps and compromises necessary to democracy may become untenable under the pressure applied by these irreconcilable forces.

. . . I wrote this book, in part, to invite the discussion.  I did so in the manner of a man who notices a fire blazing in a corner of a locked room:  I don't want to start a panic, only some sane talk among the occupants about how best to put the thing out.

-Martin Gurri,  The Revolt of the Public