Or a shared drink................

 

The important thing is to sit down at the table and talk.  Some things are just easier to say across the remains of a shared meal.

-Jessica B. Harris

On the importance of literature........

 

And literature conveys irrefutable condensed experience in yet another invaluable direction; namely, from generation to generation. Thus it becomes the living memory of the nation. Thus it preserves and kindles within itself the flame of her spent history, in a form which is safe from deformation and slander. In this way literature, together with language, protects the soul of the nation. . . . 

But woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against “freedom of print”, it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another. Silent generations grow old and die without ever having talked about themselves, either to each other or to their descendants. When writers such as Achmatova and Zamjatin – interred alive throughout their lives – are condemned to create in silence until they die, never hearing the echo of their written words, then that is not only their personal tragedy, but a sorrow to the whole nation, a danger to the whole nation.

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from this 1970 speech

Part of the joy of living......

 

.........is exchanging good books with good friends.

Let’s talk for a minute about the etiquette of gifting books. The etiquette is that you probably shouldn’t do it. First of all, there is a 99% chance that you’re going to gift a book that someone won’t like. You’re gifting it because you like it, but you don’t know what the other person likes, so it will probably sit on a shelf somewhere. Second of all, it’s like gifting someone a vacuum cleaner. Great, but now I have to spend ten hours cleaning the house.

-Jared Dillian

it behooves us....................

. . . if before us someone has inquired into [wisdom], it behooves us to seek help from what he has said. It is irrelevant whether he belongs to our community or to another.

-Averroes

Louis XVI..................................?

 In some industries – admittedly not all – the executive to employee pay imbalance is in Louis XIV territory, and the peasants are actively rattling the cage doors for their slice of cake.

For instance, while the UAW demands seem insane, greedy, and self-defeating on their face, when you look at them in relation to what they’re paying, say, the insipid head of GM (Her 2022 compensation comes in at a paltry $28,979,570 which, if you can believe it, meant she made a little less than in 2021.)? You have a sense of where the anger may be coming from.

-as culled from here

your thing........................

 Making art is not selfish: it's for the rest of us.  If you don't do your thing, you are cheating us.

-Kevin Kelly

a glimpse.........................

      As artists, we aim to live in a way in which we see the extraordinary hidden in the seemingly mundane.  Then challenge ourselves to share what we see in a way that allows others a glimpse of this remarkable beauty.

-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

melting......................

      America, which survived a gory civil war among political and geographical factions, has become so far one of history's few exceptions.  The ultimate rationale of America's unique Constitution led Americans eventually to define themselves by their shared values, not by their inconsequential appearances.  Eventually, most who were willing to give up their prior identities and assume a new American persona were accepted as Americans.  The United States has always cherished its universally applicable melting-pot ethos of e pluribus unum—of blending diverse peoples into one through assimilation, integration, and inter-marriage in the manner that diverse colonies united to become one nation.

-Victor Davis Hanson:  The Dying Citizen

Somewhere near the top of my list...................

...............of amazing things is that science tells us there are a billion trillion stars in the observable Universe.  That is a really big number.  What is just ahead of that fact on my list of amazing things is the Universe is mostly empty space.  Obviously this is apropos of nothing, just felt like sharing.

Of course this discussion may remind you of this remarkable scene from Animal House.  If you are in a hurry, skip to the 1:50 mark:

nothing more healing...................

     Step off the superhighway of modern life and go quietly onto your own track.  Go to a new trail where you can hear the whisper of your wild self in the echoes of the forest.  Find the trail of something wild and dangerous and worthy of your fear and joy and focus.  Live deeply on you own inner guidance.
      There is nothing more healing than finding your gifts and sharing them.

-Boyd Varty,  The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life

A quick visit.......................

..................................with David Kanigan:

Hmmm...........................

via

Simpler times they were not.....................

Clearly the president wanted to bury the "bloody shirt" that had enflamed sectional passions for decades.   But he knew that unity and social harmony also required good times and a sense that American prosperity was widely shared.  He devoted elements of his Annual Message to these themes.

-Robert W. Merry,  President McKinley:  Architect of the American Century.  The year was 1897.

And now a word....................

.......................................................from Seth Godin:

"An idea shared is more powerful than one that’s hidden." 

You mean it's not "opposable thumbs".....?

The ability to engage in large-scale cooperative activity is what makes humans as a species unique. It is the secret of our success as a species. It is certainly the secret of the productivity of modern developed economies.

-John Kay, as culled from his recent review of Joseph Henrich's The Secret of Our Success

Reach out................................

“Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.” 

-Og Mandino

image via gapingvoid.com

On rituals.................................

     "If you're speaking of tribal societies in primitive cultures, weren't their rituals often based on fear and superstition?" asked Rob, a middle-school teacher.
     "Sometimes, but that's not what matters here.  Why they did it is not as important as the fact that they did it.  Their coming together reveals something essential for human life, even for all of us today.   It comes from here," he said, tapping his heart, "from the guts.  When you study history and human nature, when you look at how we human beings have always lived together, you see this need for familiar and recurring rituals, regular ceremonial and formal commemoration, which express, strengthen, and define the state of our relationships, our common ideals, our shared triumphs and griefs.  That's something we can't afford to forget, for it's just as true for us."

-The Monks of New Skete,  In the Spirit of Happiness

On the collapse of transaction costs....

..............................and the coming "sharing economy":

Fifty years from now, people will look back on the turn of the century and wonder about us. They will wonder why we were so wasteful, so selfish. Why we had closets, garages, and rental storage units, all under lock and key so we could keep other people from using the stuff that we weren’t using, either.

-Mike Munger, as he opens this essay

a generous and uncompromised place.........

Each focused unflinchingly on the paradoxes that must be embraced in order for faith and reason to flourish in their respective domains.  Neither faith nor reason was to have precedence (this would necessarily lead to a tyranny of the one over the other), but rather each was to have a generous and uncompromised place at the table where both could share in the banquet of truth.

-Maria Rosa Menocal, as excerpted from her discussion of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Musa ibn Maymun (Maimonides) in Ornament Of The World:  How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created A Culture Of Tolerance In Medieval Spain

But, is it even possible...................?

...................."and a system of market socialism an attractive goal."

-as extracted from this Fredrik deBoer post