Love.........................

 

........................................is paramount.

fences........................

 

That which is necessarily and inevitably axiomatic—that upon which everything else depends—is to be touched at great peril.

-Jordan Peterson

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

-G. K. Chesterton

On self-care........................

 

Spending your days, day after day, not caring is a tragedy.

-Seth Godin

warning........................

 

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one we have.

-Émile Chartier

real freedom.............................

There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty little unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom.

-David Foster Wallace

Here be monsters..................

Musk had to be destroyed, or others might start to believe that they could also defy the groupthink. . . .

On a much higher level, Musk seems to have felt the same liberating aspects of being declared persona non grata. They turned Musk into the very monster they feared.

-Jonathan Turley

Be careful what you pray for........................

 

          more fun here

fragility.........................

 

. . . the dissociative or abstract quality of children's television in general these days—makes it an ideal vehicle for psychological adjustment; for constructing and managing the kind of selves that society requires, without meddling interference from the nature of things. . . . when dumb nature is understood to be threatening to our freedom as rational beings, it becomes attractive to construct a virtual reality that will be less so, . . .With this comes fragility—that of a self that can't tolerate conflict and frustration.  And this fragility, in turn, makes us more pliable to whoever can present the most enthralling representations that save us from direct contact with the world.

-Matthew B. Crawford,  The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming An Individual In An Age Of Distraction

bees.............

 If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay Prudence

This qualifies.......................

 ................as dangerous behavior today:

It seemed like a good opportunity to understand the crux of this conflict and hear multiple perspectives directly from those who hold them, as opposed to how they’re described by others. I listened, I found it enlightening, and I shared it.

-Mo Perry, from here

thanks Patrick

What happens when.......................

 .............................money is free?  A list of eleven things here.

We experienced a decade of quantitative easing and declining interest rates that culminated with an unprecedented multi-trillion-dollar infusion of capital in 2020. But three years later, the party had to end.

The Fed is raising rates, money isn't free anymore, and companies have to once again rediscover the lost art of "turning a profit." Outrageous stuff, isn't it?

-via

A veneer really......................

 Everywhere in the West there are subversive minorities who, sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population.  One should not overestimate the thickness of this stratum.

-C. G. Jung, from his 1957 work, The Undiscovered Self

Unplugged...............................

  “I do not see that computers are bringing us one step nearer to anything that does matter to me: peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work.”

-Wendell Berry, from here

Be careful out there......................

 Ben’s rule number one of the unfortunate realities of the investment business is a talented sales staff will trump a talented investment staff when attracting capital from investors.

-Ben Carlson, from his Investments as a Status Symbol post

My favorite optimist..................

…........................…….takes a turn toward pessimism:

It is very easy, in other words, to bet on the tendency of journalists and their readers to engage in a competitive auction of unjustified alarm. “The whole aim of practical politics,” said H.L. Mencken, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” And no, the fact that the millennium bug was a damp squib was not because we were well prepared; some countries and industries did nothing and were still fine.

So why don’t I think this hobgoblin is imaginary? First, because lethal plagues have a long track record. From the plague of Justinian to the Black Death to the Spanish flu of 1918 to the HIV epidemic, new diseases have proved they can burn through the human population with frightening efficiency. It’s true we have got better at eradicating infectious diseases through vaccinations, pills and public health, but most viruses are still very hard to cure and some are very easy to catch.

On self-fulfilling prophesies........

         via

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

About the "Butterfly Effect"......................

Instead, we should humbly evaluate to what extent it is possible to steer complex systems at all.

Isn't it that "humbly" part that causes us all the trouble?

via

Lessons learned...................

"Never taunt your enemies; especially when they are more numerous and have been drinking."

-David Warren, from this post (in which he sent me scurrying to the dictionary, looking up the word usufructuary)

Meaning through caring.................

"I understand that people want there to be meaning in their lives. But you don’t necessarily need altered states of consciousness to find meaning. You can find meaning from caring – about family, friends, art, science, sports, philosophy, religion, politics, nature, you name it. My guess is that the more you care about what you are close to, like your family, and the less you try to derive meaning from caring about distant phenomena, like celebrities or politics, the better off all of us are.

-Arnold Kling, as extracted from here