First.............................

 I've learned that nothing is worth doing if it cannot be done from a place of deep peace.  If we want to restore the planet, we must first restore ourselves.  I believe that you find your way to your right life, your mission, the same way you find an animal.  First quiet your heart and be still.  Then find the fresh track and be willing to follow it.  You don't need to see the whole picture; you only need to see where to take the next step.  Life isn't about staying on track; it's about constantly rediscovering the track.

-Boyd Varty, Cathedral of the Wild:  An African Journey Home

If.......................

. . . if we take responsibility for being the author of our world, we can come close to its source where we can correct it.  By being loving towards others, we discover that we are surrounded by love and lovingness.  When we unreservedly support life without expecting gain, life supports us in return.  When we abandon gain as a motive, life responds with unexpected generosity.

-David R. Hawkins, I: Reality And Subjectivity 

Power vs Authority.........................

 Authority is not mere power, and it is extremely unhelpful, even dangerous, to confuse the two.  When people exert power over others, they compel them, forcefully.  They apply the threat of privation or punishment so their subordinates have little choice but to act in a manner contrary to their personal needs, desires, and values.  When people wield authority, by contrast, they do so because of their competence—a competence that is spontaneously recognized and appreciated by others, and generally followed willingly, with a certain relief, and with the sense that justice is being served.

-Jordan Peterson,  Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

Fun with the language....................

 Anyone totally committed to a single pursuit almost inevitably becomes the propagandist of his own effort.  As a nation of specialists, we have become a nation obsessed with self-justification.  When we don't have it, we make it.  And we are now familiar enough with the make-work of manufacturers who need products, scholars who need projects, politicians who need issues, generals who need armies.  We speak the language of a people bent on justifying everything we do or want to do, whether it is justifiable or not.

     This preoccupation, with its consequent language of self-praise, is epidemic.  It is chronic at the highest levels of the government.  Much of the blame for the erosion of our idealism must be laid to the government, because the language of ideals has been so grossly misused by the propagandists.  The liars of policy and public relations are addicted to a rhetoric of high principle.  Our political ideals fill their mouths as unctuously, and with as little involvement of conscience or intelligence, as so many pieces of fat meat.

-Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House

On curiosity....................................

 Awaken our sense of wonder, I say to my fellow nerd-communicators.  Ignite the spark of curiosity and give it some fuel, using the time-honoured methods of storytelling, character, suspense and humour.  But let's not rely on the journalists and the scientists and the other communicators of complex ideas.  We have to be responsible for our own sense of curiosity.  As the saying goes, 'only boring people get bored'. The world is so much more interesting if we take an active interest in it.

     'The cure for boredom is curiosity,' goes the old saying.  'There is no cure for curiosity.'  Just so: once we start to peer beneath the surface of things, become aware of the gaps in our knowledge, and treat each question as the path to a better question, we find that curiosity is habit-forming.

-Tim Harford, How to Make the World Add Up:  Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers

Your share......................

 To maintain good relationships with your colleagues means, among other things, to give credit where credit is due; to take your share of the jobs no one wants but still must be done; to deliver on time and in a high-quality manner when teamed with other people; to show up when expected; and, in general, to be trusted to do somewhat more than your job formally requires.

-Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

a cathedral project...........................

      True cathedral projects can sustain such ambition because they are so broad:  in their base of support, in the number and diversity of people and ideas that they bring together, in the number of experiments they contain.  In doing that, they create and sustain the legitimacy that allows them to endure.  Lose that and they're finished: anachronisms or pariahs that will dwindle and die.  They remain public goods only as long as the public says so.  In this, they are profoundly democratic.

     Does that imply that democracy, too, is a cathedral project, one in which all of us are involved?  Constructed over centuries, radical in conception, daring in ambition, sustained only by those who continue to believe in it.  What we know of such projects is that, to endure, they require enormous openness to new ideas, a broad base of support, the ability to adapt and to change, a willingness to experiment, and to be febrile in their responsiveness to the unforeseen and unpredictable.  Without that, they have no future.  But with it, they may last for millennia.

-Margaret Heffernan,  Uncharted:  How To Navigate The Future

Gone, but not forgotten..................................

Michael Stanley Band..........Let's Get The Show On The Road

 

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

 ............................................Jordan Peterson:

. . . people depend on constant communication with others to keep their minds organized.  We all need to think to keep things straight, but we mostly think by talking.

Freud and Jung, with their intense focus on the autonomous individual psyche, placed too little focus on the role of the community in the maintenance of personal mental health.

We compete for attention, personally, socially, and economically.  No currency has a value that exceeds it.  Children, adults, and societies wither on the vine in its absence.

We cannot live without food, water, clean air, and shelter.  Less self-evidently, we require companionship, play, touch, and intimacy.

It is much better to make friends with what you do not know than with what you do know, as there is an infinite supply of the former but a finite stock of the latter.

No one unwilling to be a foolish beginner can learn.

-all quotes excerpted from Rule One, the first chapter, in Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

Fifty years ago............................

Badfinger....................................................Day After Day

 

Fifty years ago......................................

Richie Havens..........................................Here Comes The Sun

 

Toughen up................................

 Humans are not built for a life of ease. This is a forgotten wisdom, one revered by the ancient Stoics and once fundamental to philosophical thought. Within the writings of Seneca and Epictetus lies the maxim that it is not our hardship that harms us, but how we relate to it. In choosing to learn and grow from affliction, we fortify our mind. As Seneca wrote, “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.” . . .

“Humans don’t mind hardship,” Junger remarks, “in fact they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.”

-Freya India, from this post on Generation Z and suffering

practice is necessary.........................

 The archer allows many arrows to go far beyond the target, because he knows that he will learn the importance of bow, posture, string, and target only by repeating his gestures thousands of times and by not being afraid of making mistakes.

     And his true allies will never criticize him, because they know that practice is necessary, that it is the only way in which he can perfect his instinct, his hammer blow.

     And then comes the moment when he no longer has to think about what he is doing.  From then on, the archer becomes his bow, his arrow, and his target.

-Paulo Coehlo,  The Archer

What leadership is not....................

 Today's American culture tells us that those most likely to rise to the most important positions of responsibility are the ones who graduate at the top in their classes and have long lists of extracurricular activities.  Such countless engagements on a CV are somehow equated with leadership—though they may actually have as much to do with a fear of commitment, a preoccupation with image, or the inescapable desire to assure others that one can master everything at once.

     It is ironic, perhaps, that many great, victorious military commanders in our history—Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant; Gen. John Pershing, World War I commander of U. S. forces; and Dwight Eisenhower, World War II supreme Allied commander in Europe—graduated from West Point well below the top of their classes.

-Susan Eisenhower, How Ike Led:  The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions

On the importance of Feynman..........

 One of the most important things Feynman ever taught me was that some of the most exciting scientific surprises can be discovered in everyday phenomena. All you need do is take the time to observe things carefully and ask yourself good questions. He also influenced my belief that there is no reason to succumb to external pressures that try to force you to specialize in a single area of science, as many scientists do. Feynman showed me by example that it is acceptable to explore a diversity of fields if that is where your curiosity leads.

-Paul Steinhardt, as culled from here

thanks Chris

Toward better..........................

 One challenge is embracing the effective and generative approach of possibility when we’re sure that we’re entitled to grievance.

-Seth Godin, from his post Grievance and possibility

Can we get an Amen..............................?

via

Fifty years ago.......................................

John Denver..........................Take Me Home, Country Roads

 

One by one..............................

 "As they say 'to be in the world, but not of the world.' You can go to the Himalayas and miss it completely, and you can be stuck in the middle of New York and be very spiritual. I mean, I noticed in certain places, like New York, it brings out a certain thing in myself. If I go to some place like Switzerland, I find a lot of uptight people because they're living amongst so much beauty there's no urgency in trying to find the beauty within themselves. If you're stuck in New York you have to somehow look within yourself - otherwise you'd go crackers. So, in a way, it's good to be able to go in and out of both situations. Most people think when the world gets itself together we'll all be okay. I don't see that situation arriving. I think one by one, we all free ourselves from the chains we have chained ourselves to. But I don't think that suddenly some magic happens and the whole lot of us will all be liberated in one throw."

-George Harrison

    via

Perhaps, then.........................

 ............we should argue to learn, not to win:

     image via