When he's right.......................

 more gardening fun here

results....................

 You'll get 10 times better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior, especially in children and animals.

-Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

grounded...................

Regardless of what the marketers, click-bait headlines, and pseudoscience evangelists say, there are no magic lotions, potions, or pills when it comes to deep happiness, lasting well-being, and enduring performance.

. . . happiness, fulfillment, well-being, and sustainable performance arise when you concentrate on being present in the process of living instead of obsessing over outcomes, and above all when you're firmly grounded wherever you are.

-Brad Stulberg, The Practice of Groundedness

hearing.....................

Only today

I heard

the river

within the river.

-Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

Walk....................

 

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.

-Soren Kierkegaard, as quoted here

a precious inheritance...............

      In all those ways modern conservatism arose as a defence of the individual against potential oppressors, and an endorsement of popular sovereignty.  However, it opposed the view that political order is founded on a contract, as well as the parallel suggestion that the individual enjoys freedom, sovereignty and rights in a state of nature, and can throw off the burden of social and political membership, and start again from a condition of absolute freedom.  For the conservative, human beings come into this world burdened by obligations, and subject to institutions and traditions that contain within them a precious inheritance of wisdom, without which the exercise of freedom is likely to destroy human rights and entitlements as to enhance them.

-Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

Morgan Housel.................

 .....gets in our game of posting favorite quotes.

Blue-eyed soul..................

................. Any Major Dude With Half a Heart has the mix.

Yep......................

 There’s nothing wrong with being risk averse at times but if you’re always risk averse you’re going to miss out on life.

-Ben Carlson, as lifted from here

Magic pills don't exist....................

  The shortcut turnpike is dark and filled with terrors.

-Tony Isola, from this post

Us pesky humans...............

 Man alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt for existence, and yet a boundless desire to exist; he scorns life, but he dreads annihilation.

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 1, Chapter XVII

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

 Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

-Will Durant

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

 ................................Albert Camus:

One does not decide the truth of a thought according to whether it is right-wing or left-wing.

Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.

Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

The ancients, even though they believed in destiny, believed primarily in nature, in which they participated wholeheartedly. To rebel against nature amounted to rebelling against oneself. It was butting one's head against a wall.

It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily.

Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.

Light and Glory......................

 

“I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.

“It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

“You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States.

“Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will triumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.”

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

On the inertia of busyness................

 Productive activity has nothing to do with being swept away by the inertia of busyness.  It is not about quantity either.  Rather, it is a deliberate choice of where and how to direct one's attention.

     The significance of this choice cannot be overstated.

-Brad Stulberg, The Practice of Groundedness

Ah............................

 If you can't tell what you desperately need, it's probably sleep.

-Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

Hope........................

 Time, and the work of changing days, has made

Many a bad thing good; fortune has played

With many men, and set them firm again.

-Virgil, as channeled by Montaigne, Book 2, Chapter 3

For a take on geopolitics..............

 .............that you likely won't find elsewhere, one should check in periodically with Fred Reed:

Here it is, step by step, following Fred’s First Law, an American war begins with overestimating American power, underestimating the enemy, and misunderstanding the kind of war it is getting into.

Checking in with Wendell Berry.........

While Attending the Annual Convocation of Cause Theorists and Bigbangists at the Local Provincial Research University, the Mad Farmer Intercedes from the Back Row

'Chance' is a poor word among
the mazes of causes and effects, the last
stand of these all-explainers who,
backed up to the first and final Why,
reply, “By chance, of course!” As if
that tied up ignorance with a ribbon.
In the beginning something by chance
existed that would bang and by chance
it banged, obedient to the by-chance
previously existing laws of existence
and banging, from which the rest proceeds
by logic of cause and effect also
previously existing by chance? Well,
when all that happened who was there?
Did the chance that made the bang then make
the Bomb, and there was no choice, no help?
Prove to me that chance did ever
make a sycamore tree, a yellow-
throated warbler nesting and singing
high up among the white limbs
and the golden leaf-light, and a man
to love the tree, the bird, the song
his life long, and by his love to save
them, so far, from all the machines.
By chance? Prove it, then, and I
by chance will kiss your ass.

As seen from our deck last night.........

 

Look..........................

 Look beneath the surface: never let a thing's intrinsic quality or worth escape you.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six

Asking......................

 .............................the tough questions.

the intention heuristic.............

 I am not a fan of the desire to do good. I call it the intention heuristic. I think that, on average, profit-seeking businesses do good, and non-profits do harm. But if you insist on doing non-profit work, I think that working for a hands-on charity is less likely to cause harm than working for a cause.

------------------------------------------

What I call the intention heuristic takes two forms:

Good intentions necessarily lead to good consequences.

Bad consequences necessarily indicate that someone had bad intentions.

True wisdom requires discarding the intention heuristic. It requires accepting that the world is complex and that each individual is complex.

-Arnold Kling, from this substack

The 4th of July......................

 

 

The fog of war.......................

Pickett's Charge. More like a long walk across an open field, hazarding cannon fire while armed enemy troops hide behind stone walls just awaiting your arrival.  Not sure why some very smart people thought this was a good idea. July 3, 1863.

 

An interesting exercise.................

 ...........would be to study the net worth of members of Congress prior to their election and after they have served multiple terms.  Just curious.

A distinction must be made when aristocracies and democracies accuse each other of facilitating corruption.  In aristocratic governments, those who are placed at the head of affairs are rich men, who are desirous only of power.  In democracies, statesman are poor and have their fortunes to make.  The consequence is that in aristocratic states the rulers are rarely accessible to corruption and have little craving for money, while the reverse is the case in democratic nations.

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 1, Chapter VIII, 1835

need......................Part 1

      We human beings live naturally in communities, bound together by mutual trust.  We have need for a shared home, a place of safety where our claim to occupancy is undisputed and where we can call on others to assist us in times of threat.  We need peace with our neighbors and the procedures for securing it.  And we need the love and protection afforded by family life.  To revise the human condition in any of those respects is to violate imperatives rooted in biology and in the needs of social reproduction.

-Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

need.......................Part 2

 . . . But to conduct political argument as though these factors are too far from the realm of ideas to deserve a mention is to ignore all the limits that must be borne in mind, if our political philosophy is to be remotely believable.  It is precisely the character of modern utopias to ignore these limits - to imagine societies without law (Marx and Engels), without families (Laing), without borders or defenses (Sartre).  And much conservative ink has been wasted (by me among others) in rebutting such views, which can be believed only by people who are unable to perceive realities, and who therefore will never be persuaded by argument.

-Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Grand Tradition

seeks.........................

 Philosophy, as Spinoza understands it, does not peddle in temporary cheer, modest improvements in well-being, or chicken soup for the soul; it seeks and claims to find a basis for happiness that is absolutely certain, permanent, and divine.  The principal—indeed, the sole—purpose of his mature philosophy, as expressed in his masterwork, the Ethics, is to achieve this kind of blessedness or salvation. . . . Like Socrates, Spinoza avers that blessedness comes only from a certain kind of knowledge—specifically, the "knowledge of the union the that mind has with the whole of Nature."

-Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

consistency.....................

 The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity.  Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally.

-Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

The Big Long vs The Big Short............

...................... or, contrarians are usually wrong.

supremely........................

 There is a way of losing that is finding. When soul overmasters sense. When the noble and divine self overcomes the lower self. When duty and honor and love immortal things bid the mortal perish. It is only when a man supremely gives that he supremely finds.

-Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

The left flank............................

Sitting atop Gettysburg's Little Round Top, protecting the left flank of the Union Army, the 20th Maine is about out of ammunition and under heavy attack.  There are no reinforcements to be had. Using the advantage of the high ground, the regimental commander, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, orders a bayonet charge down the hill at the advancing Confederate Army.   History shows Chamberlain and the 20th Maine saved the day.  July 2, 1863

 

time.........................

 I hope there's time

for this and that,

and not just this.

-Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

The high ground....................

Brigadier General John Buford and his 2,500 men get to Gettysburg first. His recognition of the importance of holding the high ground and of slowing the advance of the Confederate armies to enable the Union troops to occupy said high ground likely changed the outcome of the Civil War.    July 1, 1863.

 

a great difference............

 There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine.

-Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

Consider......................

 You see that I have set out opposing assertions in response to your question and I have touched on quite strong arguments in support of each position. Therefore consider now which seems the more probable to you.

William of Ockham, Dialogus

Trust me. Pick the Cabernet...............

 

more fun here

Cleaning out the closet..........................

 

grown-up...................

      From earliest childhood she had been taught to accept responsibility, and to make her own decisions and abide by them. "Every youngster wants to be grown-up," her father had said, "but the difference between a child and an adult is not years, but rather it's a willingness to accept responsibility, to be responsible for one's own actions."

-Louis L'Amour, Flint

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

    Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
    vacation with pay. Want more
    of everything ready-made. Be afraid
    to know your neighbors and to die.
    And you will have a window in your head.
    Not even your future will be a mystery
    any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
    and shut away in a little drawer.
    When they want you to buy something
    they will call you. When they want you
    to die for profit they will let you know.
    So, friends, every day do something
    that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
    Love the world. Work for nothing.
    Take all that you have and be poor.
    Love someone who does not deserve it.
    Denounce the government and embrace
    the flag. Hope to live in that free
    republic for which it stands.
    Give your approval to all you cannot
    understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
    has not encountered he has not destroyed.
    Ask the questions that have no answers.
    Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
    Say that your main crop is the forest
    that you did not plant,
    that you will not live to harvest.
    Say that the leaves are harvested
    when they have rotted into the mold.
    Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
    Put your faith in the two inches of humus
    that will build under the trees
    every thousand years.
    Listen to carrion – put your ear
    close, and hear the faint chattering
    of the songs that are to come.
    Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
    Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
    though you have considered all the facts.
    So long as women do not go cheap
    for power, please women more than men.
    Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
    a woman satisfied to bear a child?
    Will this disturb the sleep
    of a woman near to giving birth?
    Go with your love to the fields.
    Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
    in her lap. Swear allegiance
    to what is nighest your thoughts.
    As soon as the generals and the politicos
    can predict the motions of your mind,
    lose it. Leave it as a sign
    to mark the false trail, the way
    you didn’t go. Be like the fox
    who makes more tracks than necessary,
    some in the wrong direction.
    Practice resurrection.

-Wendell Berry

haunted..................

 

     The spirit of Plato, and that of his pupil and critic Aristotle, have haunted philosophy throughout its history, and it is to them that almost all medieval controversies in the subject and ultimately be traced.  They each bequeathed to the world arguments and conceptions of superlative intellectual and dramatic power, and it is not surprising that, wherever they were read, their influence was felt.  Each of the important Mediterranean religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—attempted either to assimilate their doctrines or to present some alternative that would be equally persuasive and equally compatible with our intuitive sense of the nature of the world and of our place within it.

-Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy

a general unrest..............

The full  moon often rises

in the wrong place.  Tonight I sense

activity up there, a general unrest.

-Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

Truth.............(until the third one)

 

Faithful readers.........................

 .............may remember a series of posts about the Hopeful Birth of a Subdivision.  We started the process of developing 113 single-family residential building lots in 2021. We are 97% finished with our part of the development.  Our home builder partner, D. R. Horton, is about 60% finished with their portion of the project.  Drone photography is pretty cool.  This is what progress looked like this hazy afternoon:

The whole development

Phase 1 95% built out

Phase 2 is now really getting started

While not finished, we are announcing the successful birth of Conor's Pass Sub-division. There will likely be a wrap-up post, celebrating the development and construction and sale of all 113 houses next Spring.  Stay tuned.

Was ready ...................

.....................to a call bullshit on this:

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Richard McKenzie points out that one underappreciated cause of the increase in the concentration of wealth in the U.S. is that Americans are living longer. (via)

But then I remembered this.  Maybe it is correct.

Testing our self-awareness.................

...................................with 21 questions.

51 ideas.............................

 29. Occam’s Razor: If there are multiple explanations for why something happened and they are equally persuasive, assume the simplest one is true. In the search for truth, remove unnecessary assumptions. Trust the lowest-complexity answer.

30. Hickam’s Dictum: The opposite of Occam’s Razor. In a complex system, problems usually have more than one cause. For example, in medicine, people can have many diseases at the same time. 31. Hormesis: A low dose of something can have the opposite effect of a high dose. A little bit of stress wakes you up, but a lot of stress is bad for you. Lifting weights for 30 minutes per day is good for you, but lifting weights for 6 hours per day will destroy your muscles. Stress yourself, but not too much. 32. Robustness Principle: Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. It’s a design guideline for software and a good rule for life: Hold yourself to a higher standard than you hold others to. 33. Legibility: We are blind to what we cannot measure. Not everything that counts can be measured, and not everything that can be measured counts. But people manage what they can measure, so society repeats the same mistakes. 34. Horseshoe Theory: Extreme opposites tend to look the same. For example, a far-right movement and a far-left movement can be equally violent or desire a similar outcome. People on both sides are more similar to each other than they are to people in the center.

-full list here

In the background.......................

..........................Motown's Greatest Hits

Powerful.............................

 ..................................productivity choices.

A teaser.........................

..................................as I crack open the third "summer of Scruton" book.

Sometimes the lines between...........

 .............correlation and causation do touch.

Be careful what you wish for............

 If I can resort to politics to impose my own preferences on the behavior of others, even if these preferences are not highly valued intrinsically, then it would seem that other persons, working in democratic process, can do the same to me. I may find that the political process is double-edged. 

-James Buchanan, as quoted here

And all of a sudden...................

 .................BJJ (Brazilian jiujitsu) is a big thing.  

Back and forth...............

 Raindrops on your glasses;

there you go again,

reading the clouds.

-Either Jim Harrison or Ted Kooser from Braided Creek

your turn David

Overstuffed..........................

 .............................slack is underrated.

-Seth Godin

Life its ownself.........................

.................. Semi-retired but still in the game.

The old rights and responsibilities problem....

Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in. . . . A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.

-attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals

thanks Kurt

straight............................?

 What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

-Tennessee Williams, as channeled by David Kanigan

Wisdom.............

 . . . I lean toward the position that not doing negative things may be far more important than doing positive things.

-Michael Wade

The gift....................

 ...............that never stops giving. Love the "so far" part.