Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Checking in with.............................
.............................James Clear:
Writing is the superpower of humankind. It is our truest form of magic.
Writing allows you to conjure up something of value where
nothing previously existed. It costs little for you to write down the lessons
of your life and yet those few minutes spent writing can be life-altering for
the right reader. As I once saw it put: "there is someone out there with a
wound in the exact shape of your words."
trade-offs............................
Politics and economics are not just different. They are antagonistic.
The basic premise of economics is scarcity. There is never enough to satisfy everybody. That means there is no free lunch, no "solutions" but only trade-offs.
Politics is full of "solutions." There are free lunches for every voting bloc. The game in politics is to do a little good, right under your nose, and ignore the harm created elsewhere.
-Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?: and other essays
Tyler Cowen.....................
.........visits with Jonathan GPT Swift:
COWEN: If I try to boil your different works — from Gulliver’s Travels to Modest Proposal to the political and coinage writings — down to a common theme, I would say it is this: “Moral and intellectual progress is extremely difficult and is not to be taken for granted.” What would you say to that?
SWIFT: My dear reader, your assessment is perceptive, capturing a common thread that weaves through my diverse body of work. Indeed, I endeavored to convey that moral and intellectual progress is a most arduous endeavor, one that requires constant vigilance and reflection.
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
A demand..................................
.........................................worth making.
Chris highlights the problem with this quote attributed to C. S. Lewis:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
listen.................................
Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes. Today is here. If you don't know what to do, sit still and listen. You may hear something. Nobody knows.
Saturday, December 28, 2024
On problem solving..................
Walking, on its own, is already great for your brain. It gets the blood flowing, lowers stress hormones, and makes you look like one of those mysterious, deep thinkers who stride purposefully through parks. But when you pair walking with my powerful “What If” hack, your perambulations transform into something far more powerful.
Here’s how it works:
1. Start walking. This is the easy part.
2. Instead of spiraling into despair about your unsolvable problem, introduce a single, magical question: “What if?”
That’s it. Those two words are the key.
-Hugh Gallagher, from here
Truth......................
. . . rejecting negative nationalism doesn’t require us to abandon positive patriotism. You can love your people without hating others.
-Adam Grant, from here
Giotto.......................
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| Annunciation: The Virgin Receiving the Message Giotto fresco 1306 |
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| Adoration of the Magi Giotto fresco c 1311 - c 1320 |
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| St. Francis Mourned by St. Clare Giotto fresco c 1330 |
That very obligation which the craftsmen of painting owe to nature, who serves continually as model to those who are ever wresting the good from her best and most beautiful features and striving to counterfeit and to imitate her, should be owed, in my belief to Giotto, painter of Florence, for the reason that, after the methods of good paintings and their outlines had lain buried for so many years under the ruins of the wars, he alone, although born among inept craftsmen, by the gift of God revived that art, which had come to a grievous pass, and brought it to such a form as could be called good.
-Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
first light...................
By the infinite flood of evils which had laid prostrate and submerged poor Italy there had not only been ruined everything that could truly claim the name of building, but there had been blotted out (and this was of graver import) the whole body of the craftsmen, when, by the will of God, in the city of Florence, in the year 1240, w\there was born, to give the first light to the art of painting, Giovanni, surnamed Cimabue, of the family, noble in those times, of Cimabue.
-Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
knots.................
O Time, thou must untangle this, not I;
It is too hard a knot for me t' untie.
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Monday, December 23, 2024
In praise of construction................
That’s shadowed by less irksome regulations, something that unsurprisingly meant more construction. Drive around any of the big Texas metros, particularly the suburbs, you’ll see new buildings everywhere. Permissive zoning laws mean that what, until recently, were rural pathways are now packed with cars and fast-food joints.
-Joel Kotkin, from here
Some good questions.................
How do I know if I’m being patient (a skill) or stubborn (a flaw)? They’re hard to tell apart without hindsight.
When elites aren't........................
There’s a radical dissatisfaction with the social and political status quo across the democratic world. The people in charge are distrusted and despised by the public: They are thought to be in business for themselves and indifferent to the concerns of ordinary people. From government agencies to the scientific establishment, the institutions that buttress modern society have been tainted by the corruption and poor performance of the ruling elites. The public has come to view these institutions as cash cows for the haves—and an oppressive machinery for bleeding the have-nots.
-Martin Gurri, from here
rare fabric....................
What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance?
enlargeable image, with description, via
Sunday, December 22, 2024
Sing, choir of angels.......................
confine........................
Maria. Ay, but you must confine* yourself within the modest limits of order.
Toby. Confine? I'll confine myself no finer that I am. These clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too. And they be not, let them hang themselves by their own straps.
-William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, or, What You Will: Act 1, Scene III
*i.e., clothe
Saturday, December 21, 2024
consider.......................
Consider the stages of the search for understanding, with the first being the admission that progress is lacking on some important front. This is humility as a precondition for revelation.
perhaps................
Perhaps it might be owing to the pleasing serenity that reigned in my own mind, that I fancied I saw cheerfulness in every countenance throughout the journey.
-Washington Irving, The Stage Coach
gas in the tank...............
Whenever you're thinking something nice about someone, tell them. A sincere compliment can put a lot of fuel in someone's tank. People don't hear enough compliments.
Monday, December 9, 2024
'Tis the season.........................
Checking in with Mark Twain..................
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and . . . Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.
He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.
We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.
good ones, anyway..................
Someone says life is hard.
The comedian says, "Compared to what?"
Comedians are philosophers.
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Heaven forbid....................
William Tyndale once was burned at the stake by the existing powers that be (the church) for translating the bible into English so the people could read it. Elon Musk may have a similar impact by having proposed Congressional bills translated into plain English by Grok so people know what the true costs are. Also look for the powers that be to try and burn him (metaphorically) at the stake...
-Chris Lynch, from here
Consistency....................
Stop trying to be spectacular. Start being consistent. . . .
Moments don't make
legends. Consistency does. And the hardest consistency isn't in doing brilliant
things but avoiding stupid ones. Every mistake puts you in hard mode, forcing
you to make up lost ground.
Forgiveness.....................
Christianity places
forgiveness at the very center of man’s relationship to God, as an unmerited
gift. Taken to heart, this can’t help but color our dealings with one another.
The thing about forgiveness is that it is always unmerited. It is a renunciation
on the part of the one who offers it, a turning-away from pride that opens a
kind of manger in the heart. It is a humble place where something new arrives
and we turn toward it. A birth.
-Matthew B. Crawford, from here
Saturday, December 7, 2024
joy...........................
Joy is in the doing, not in the outcome after the doing.
Do more things you like doing.
-Annie Mueller, from here
Optionality.................
Don’t get me wrong. America has a lot else going for it, including being protected by two massive oceans on its coasts and two friendly nations to its north and south, vast resources (energy, farmland, and navigable waterways), a diverse population, an educated workforce and entrepreneurial ethos, and the world’s strongest military, economy, and financial markets. However, Americans’ ability to choose how to leverage these assets most effectively is what makes it the most dynamic country and economy in the world.
-Ted Lamade, from here
more closely confined.................
While he was an early advocate for administrative power, Justice William O. Douglas explained that later in life he came to "realize that Congress defaulted when it left it up to an agency to do what the 'public interest' indicated should be done. 'Public interest' is too vague a standard to be left to free-wheeling administrators. They should be more closely confined to specific ends or goals." But that wish, too, seems now a world away. If laws governing major facets of our society were once largely the work of elected representatives and the product of democratic compromises, nowadays they often represent only the current thinking of relatively insulated agency officials in a distant city. It's a result that, as Justice Willliam J. Brennan, Jr., once observed, can post a quandary: "Whereas the colonists challenged the king, today's citizens may find it impossible to know exactly who is responsible."
-Neil Gorsuch, Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law
Friday, December 6, 2024
data.....................
"Are you asking what the point is when it isn't a perfect straight line from goal to achievement?"
I looked at the floor. Yes. That was what I was asking. . . .
"This is the process. The process is what it is even though it doesn't always match our expectations for ourselves or the expectations others put on us. But being real about the process is the way forward. Taking one step forward and then two steps backward is not a calamity. It's the inevitable process."
"So we just expect to fail again and again?"
"Is that so bad?"
"It certainly feels bad." . . .
"Think of it in science terms, not in moral terms. Each of these attempts at the next step is an experiment. It doesn't give us victory or defeat. It gives us data. We need that data. When we reframe from 'success or failure' to 'experiment and data,' we capture the truer sense of what this is."
-Jarod K. Anderson, Something In The Woods Loves Us
honest, essential generosity..............
"These steps are not prescriptive, they are descriptive. All of it, relapses included, are just how people change. The process becomes less painful when we honor the honesty of it, when we honor the truth that nonlinear progress is still progress." . . .
"So what does honoring this process mean, then?" . . .
"It means that we don't expect to be perfect. It means when we miss a goal and slip backward, we smile and acknowledge that it isn't a tragedy, that it is the process working as we expected. When we give ourselves that honest, essential generosity, it isn't so painful to try for that next step, because missing isn't a refutation of what we have accomplished or who we are. It is just another experiment. More data." . . .
There is no central wisdom that turns messy human endeavor into easy, linear efficiency.
-Jarod K. Anderson, Something In The Woods Loves You
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
in principle versus in practice..............
If nature is placed above man, such that every brook has its transcendent spirit, then, man, women, and child are by necessity placed below nature. This might mean in principle that the wonders of the environment would become rightly valued. In practice, however, it all too often means instead that human beings are given no more shrift than weeds or rats. This inversion of value enables not so much the stewardship of the earth as the exploitation of those deemed no more worthy than the lesser forms of life—exploitation by exactly the sort of people who eternally step forward to abuse such advantage.
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
Well, yeah ........................
I never loved the taste of morels, but I would eat them for tradition's sake and because I liked the idea of physically absorbing both the essence of the woods and the associated mystery of mushrooms themselves.
We would soak them in salt water, slice them in half, dredge them in flour, and fry them in butter. We are Ohioans. If we could pluck starlight from the sky, we would dredge it in flour and fry it in butter.
-Jarod K. Anderson, Something In The Woods Loves You
Monday, November 25, 2024
Checking in with de Tocqueville......
I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. . . .
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: . . .For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the decent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Fourth Book, Chapter VI
stupefies..........................
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly constrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Fourth Book, Chapter VI
judging........................
Imagine your future self judging your current life choices. When making a decision, ask yourself how you'll feel about it when you are old. What would your future self and family thank you for? Simple actions now will compound to give them a better life.
seek...................
To seek elsewhere than in ordinariness for the Highest Divine would have seemed to me now, sitting on a rock in front of the bush, to be a betrayal.
-John Moriarty, Dreamtime
The real reason I blog..................
Procrastination. The bane of productivity, the thief of time, the reason why you’re currently reading this instead of doing that thing we both know you need to do. . . .
If it makes you feel any better, you’re not alone. Studies estimate that 15% to 25% of adults habitually procrastinate. And according to some very serious researchers who actually did their jobs on time, the average person wastes four hours a day procrastinating at work. Four. That’s not even procrastination anymore; that’s a part-time job.
And I’m no exception either. If procrastination were an Olympic sport, I’d be standing on the podium, wearing the gold medal, humming the national anthem of Avoidistan.
-Eric Barker, from here
Sunday, November 24, 2024
Martin Gurri...............................
...............................is always worth reading:
Something new was afoot. In 2016, Trump won an electoral contest. In 2024, he stood at the vanguard of a profound cultural shift that touched on everyday morals and manners, the relations between the sexes, a freer but more fragmented internet—with artificial intelligence hovering in the near foreground—and the first concerted effort in 50 years to reduce the federal government to the dimensions suggested by the Constitution. Trump had become the definitive avatar of the revolt of the American public, and he had been granted much power by the election. The immediate question was whether such a volatile personality, assisted by a gang of eccentrics, could succeed enough to satisfy the public’s hunger for change.
The answer will not be long in coming.
meaning.......................
We don't need to measure our notions of happiness or progress against imagined universal constants for those concepts. They don't exist. Even the typical notions of success change with time, context, and fashion. We do not need to prove that our ideas of identity or purpose are watertight in some objective, evidence-based sense. That isn't how meaning works. Meaning is a story, and act of creation and interpretations, and for human beings meaning is at least as important as fact.
-Jarod K. Anderson, Something In The Woods Loves You
attending..................
There are a near-infinite number of ways to categorize—hence, to perceive—a finite number of objects. We do not and cannot attend with equal devotion to everything occurring always and everywhere around us. Instead, with a glance, we prioritize the facts. In doing so, we attend to very little and ignore much. We do so in keeping with our aim. We do so to gain what we need and want . . .
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine
simplifying.....................
We weigh the facts we encounter in accordance with our values. We elevate some pathways forward, things in the world, and people to a higher place than others, consigning everything deemed lesser to the netherworld of impediment, obstacle, enemy, or foe, or the invisible domain of irrelevance. Thus we order, simplify, and reduce the world, prior to even encountering it.
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine
insufficiently heralded......................
We perceive, therefore, in accordance with our aim. This is a remarkable and insufficiently heralded realization, implying as it does nothing less than both our misery and our joy depend on our values.
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
Saturday, November 23, 2024
I like how he thinks...................
If Donald Trump creates the position, I volunteer to be Secretary of Feeding People to Komodo Dragons. The first round of tossings into the lizard-pit will involve “experts” who still use grossly snobbish terms like “fringe” and “contrarian” to describe beliefs held by most of the population . . .
-Matt Taibbi, from here
kind and worthy wisdom..................
The kind and worthy wisdom we need involves learning to embrace the truth that we will never master ourselves, our lives, or our worlds, though we can learn to view the concept of mastery as what it is: a toxic fantasy that clashes with the reality of our minds and our nature.
We don't need perfection, and we don't need to land upon one final, objective truth.
We need to respect our own unique struggles and our own subjective truths, acknowledging that they will grow and change like the living natural things they are.
-Jarod K. Anderson, Something In The Woods Loves You
Monday, November 18, 2024
Now he tells us....................
People think we live in a world of politics, society, norms, and news. But none of it is real. They're just interpersonal drama. They're the noisy waste product of unhealthy minds.
the ultimate freedom..............?
I do not think that a wise man can possibly be free from every perturbation of the mind.
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Please...........................
The world doesn’t need
another hard-nosed profession. It needs one that acquires clout through
competence and caring.
It's a low bar, but I'd tune in.............
Predict that the DOGE weekly live streams listing all the things they are cutting from the federal budget will garner larger rating than any of the news shows on TV.
-Chris Lynch, from here
You can, but it won't.................
........................Frustration is bargaining with reality, hoping it will change.
Arnold Kling's.................................
........................................recurring daydream:
By undertaking a wholesale
re-org, you can change the default status of a unit from “keep doing what you
did last year” to “justify your continued existence.”
Worth remembering......................
We are the gatekeepers of our own meaning,
Humans need help, yet too many of us have accepted the idea that it's a person failing to seek it.
You can't think your way out of depression any more than you can think your way out of drowning.
Seeking and accepting help is a skill, and it's a skill that we are not taught to value. In fact we are taught to shun it.
I will have gained more in the looking than I lost through not finding.
-Jarod K. Anderson, a few wee excerpts from Something In The Woods Loves You
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Sunday, November 10, 2024
As agendas go.............................
.............this one could garner a lot of support:
The new political agenda is for voter ID, an end to daylight savings, Congressional term limits and buying Greenland. Who says no?
Efficiency is overrated..............
We are rooting for the renaissance of community banking. Please..........
. . . interstate banking was effectively outlawed until the 1980s. While this was inefficient, it had the effect of ensuring that every state had at least one major bank. Now there are only a handful of major banks in the entire country, and they do not have the same stake in local economies.
Arnold Kling, from here
Friday, November 8, 2024
a mental gym...................
At a time when many people are wondering about the value of a college education, those who are in charge of those institutions would be well advised to recognize that their business should be a mental gym; a place where minds and souls are strengthened.
-Michael Wade, as he opens this post
Fifty some years ago, I spent a college semester at Denison University listening to Professor Robert Toplin in a class called Latin America: Evolution or Revolution. We had two 2-hour classes per week. In the first hour of each session Toplin would take the "right wing" point of view on some topic and argue it persuasively. In the second hour of each session Toplin would take the "left wing" point of view on the same topic and argue it equally persuasively. Being typical college students, we got confused. We initially started out trying to figure out Toplin's true opinion, so we could feed it back to him on tests and papers. Took us a while, but we finally discovered that he didn't care what we thought—just so long as we actually did the work of thinking. Toplin taught me one of the most valuable life lessons available: how to think for myself. I have been grateful for him ever since.
Thursday, November 7, 2024
Surprisingly good speech..................................... Where was this guy 180 days ago?.....................
Arnold Kling is worried..................
The intellectual mediocrity of today’s educated class is made worse by a lack of self-awareness. If they recognized that they are lightweights, they would exhibit less class snobbery. But it is the opposite. They feel that their college credentials entitle them to lord it over everyone else. They see their luxury beliefs as setting them apart and above everyone else in America, either in the present or in the past.
"success".............................
My old job might never have been my key problem—chasing after a fictional, idealized version of myself was. When I was quiet and attentive beneath the trees, I began to understand that my traditional view of "success" hadn't been mine at all. I didn't make it. It didn't serve me. It brought me neither peace nor pleasure.
-Jarod K. Anderson, Something In The Woods Loves You
corrupted............................
Nowadays in the West we are, quite literally, corrupted by a lust to explain things. Our lust to explain things veils things. . . . Be true to your eyes, not to the desiderata of science or language.
-John Moriarty, Dreamtime
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
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