The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the
opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know; nor any people so confident, as those who entertain us with fables.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
Balkans human duplicity,
belief,
history,
humanity,
Ignorance,
Montaigne,
psychology
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
There isn’t anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can’t believe it.
Mark Twain, as quoted in The Consciousness Deniers, Galen Strawson (NYRB, March 13, 2018)
Mark Twain, as quoted in The Consciousness Deniers, Galen Strawson (NYRB, March 13, 2018)
Labels:
belief,
consciousness,
discernment,
faults,
humanity,
humans,
Ignorance,
Mark Twain,
mistakes
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Retracing your steps can help you remember what you were looking for. Your memory of a thought is married to the place in which it first occurred to you.
Jennifer Ackerman, The Genius of Birds
Jennifer Ackerman, The Genius of Birds
Labels:
birds,
consciousness,
forgetfulness,
insight,
life comfort,
memory,
thought
Wednesday, March 07, 2018
Everybody has a plan, till they get punched in the mouth.
Mike Tyson, as quoted by Avishai Margalit in the NYRB.
Mike Tyson, as quoted by Avishai Margalit in the NYRB.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Such as only meddle with things subject to the conduct of human capacity, are excusable in doing the best they can: but those other fellows that come to delude us with assurances of an extraordinary faculty, beyond our understanding, ought they not to be punished, when they do not make good the effect of their promise, and for the temerity of their imposture?
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
blame,
criticism,
fairness,
influence,
leadership,
lies,
Montaigne,
predators,
road rules
Friday, February 23, 2018
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
We're an information economy.... it's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information. Fragments that can be retrieved, amplified...
William Gibson, Johnny Mnemonic
William Gibson, Johnny Mnemonic
Labels:
complexity,
computers,
contemporary life,
cyberspace,
internet,
millennials,
modernity,
premonition,
sci-fi,
skepticism
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Natural Teleology
Natural teleology would mean that the universe is rationally governed in more than one way—not only through the universal quantitative laws of physics that underlie efficient causation but also through principles which imply that things happen because they are on a path that leads toward certain outcomes—notably, the existence of living, and ultimately conscious, organisms.
Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos
See also: http://everythingrum.blogspot.com/2018/01/if-there-was-cosmological-design-what.html
See also: http://everythingrum.blogspot.com/2018/01/if-there-was-cosmological-design-what.html
Labels:
complexity,
consciousness,
cosmology,
evolution,
existence,
mind,
Nagel,
phenomenon,
philosophy,
physics,
reality,
reason,
science,
teleology,
universe
Thursday, January 25, 2018
The existence of conscious minds and their access to the evident truths of ethics and mathematics are among the data that a theory of the world and our place in it has yet to explain.... A satisfying explanation would show that the realization of these possibilities was not vanishingly improbable but a significant likelihood given the laws of nature and the composition of the universe.
Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos
Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos
Labels:
awareness,
being,
complexity,
consciousness,
cosmology,
ethics,
evolution,
existence,
life,
nature,
philosophy,
physics,
possibility,
reality,
reason,
universe
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Most people don’t like righteousness in others. They can be quite righteous about it.
Louis Menand, The New Yorker (January 8, 2018)
Louis Menand, The New Yorker (January 8, 2018)
Labels:
contemporary life,
modernity,
politics,
standards,
tolerance
Monday, January 08, 2018
At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see.
Philip Larkin, The Old Fools
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see.
Philip Larkin, The Old Fools
Labels:
age,
awareness,
contemplation,
death,
existence,
humanity,
identity,
insult,
life,
melancholy,
old age,
Philip Larkin,
poetry,
prophecy,
seasons,
thermodynamics
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
action,
contemplation,
discernment,
life ideas,
moderation,
Montaigne,
philosophy,
prudence,
reflection,
rules,
sagacity,
standards
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
The world is nothing but babble; and I hardly ever yet saw that man who did not rather prate too much, than speak too little.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
conversation,
discernment,
listening,
Montaigne,
reflection,
sagacity,
wisdom
Wednesday, December 06, 2017
A man may say too much even upon the best subjects.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
conversation,
discernment,
insight,
listening,
moderation,
Montaigne,
reflection,
sagacity,
wisdom
Monday, December 04, 2017
So many mutations of states and kingdoms, and so many turns and revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise enough to make no great wonder of our own.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
America,
change,
civilization,
decline,
disorder,
empire,
history,
Montaigne,
Thucydides
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
The disdain that so many people feel [millennials] reflects an unease about the forces of deregulation, globalization, and technological acceleration that are transforming everyone’s lives. (It does not seem coincidental that young people would be criticized for being entitled at a time when people are being stripped of their entitlements.) Millennials, in other words, have adjusted too well to the world they grew up in; their perfect synchronization with economic and cultural disruption has been mistaken for the source of the disruption itself.
Jia Tolentino, "Where Millennials Come From" (The New Yorker, December 4, 2017)
Jia Tolentino, "Where Millennials Come From" (The New Yorker, December 4, 2017)
Labels:
affluence,
America,
change,
contemporary life,
globalization,
millennials,
society
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Now is now! There is never more to experience than this single "now", which recurs at an interval exactly one second in length.
Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth
See also: http://everythingrum.blogspot.com/2013/09/moments-in-time-and-consciousness.html
Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth
See also: http://everythingrum.blogspot.com/2013/09/moments-in-time-and-consciousness.html
Labels:
contemplation,
existence,
future,
happiness,
life ideas,
mortals,
reality,
sci-fi,
time
Thursday, November 16, 2017
In truth, knowledge is not so absolutely necessary as judgment; the last may make shift without the other, but the other never without this.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
discernment,
intelligence,
judgement,
knowledge,
Montaigne
Monday, November 13, 2017
What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do?...
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Labels:
contemplation,
death,
existence,
life,
premonition
Sunday, November 05, 2017
Weber was wrong: the modern world is not
disenchanted (even if secularists pretend otherwise) but a continuation
of Christianity by other means. Whether liberal, communist, fascist, or
authoritarian, every polity relies to one degree or another on the
persistence of charismatic authority and the (usually disguised)
theological legitimation of political power.
Benjamin Nathans on Yuri Slezkine'd The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution in the New York Review of November 23, 2017
See also Freud and Plato - The Politics of the Soul (Pt 1)
Benjamin Nathans on Yuri Slezkine'd The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution in the New York Review of November 23, 2017
See also Freud and Plato - The Politics of the Soul (Pt 1)
Labels:
authority,
communism,
democracy,
fascism,
Freud,
government,
illusion,
politics,
psychology,
religion
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
About Filling A Commonplace Book?
I go here and there, culling out of several books the sentences that best please me, not to keep them (for I have no memory to retain them in), but to transplant them into this; where, to say the truth, they are no more mine than in their first places.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
ambivalence,
blogging,
contemplation,
eccentricity,
getting older,
insight,
memory,
Montaigne,
reflection
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Even in our counsels and deliberations there must, certainly, be something of chance and good-luck mixed with human prudence; for all that our wisdom can do alone is no great matter; the more piercing, quick, and apprehensive it is, the weaker it finds itself, and is by so much more apt to mistrust itself.... [Given] the shortsightedness of human wisdom...the surest way, in my opinion, did no other consideration invite us to it, is to pitch upon that wherein is the greatest appearance of honesty and justice; and not, being certain of the shortest, to keep the straightest and most direct way.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Sunday, October 22, 2017
We are, as we have always been, dangerous creatures, the enemies of our
own happiness. But the only help we have ever found for this, the only
melioration, is in mutual reverence. God’s grace comes to us unmerited,
the theologians say. But the grace we could extend to one another we
consider it best to withhold in very many cases, presumptively, or in
the absence of what we consider true or sufficient merit (we being more
particular than God), or because few gracious acts, if they really
deserve the name, would stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. This is not
the consequence of a new atheism, or a systemic materialism that
afflicts our age more than others. It is good old human meanness, which
finds its terms and pretexts in every age. The best argument against
human grandeur is the meagerness of our response to it, paradoxically
enough.
Marilynne Robinson, New York Review (November , 2017)
Marilynne Robinson, New York Review (November , 2017)
Thursday, October 19, 2017
The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.
Ancient proverb coming down through Sextus Empiricus
Ancient proverb coming down through Sextus Empiricus
Labels:
Greece,
justice,
proverb,
reflection,
skepticism,
wisdom
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
These are the times we live in, in which men hide their truths, perhaps even from themselves, and live in lies, until the lies reveal those truths in ways impossible to foretell.
Salman Rushdie, The Golden House
Salman Rushdie, The Golden House
Labels:
appearance,
chaos,
lies,
literature,
modernity,
premonition,
Rushdie,
truth
Friday, September 29, 2017
The nation’s labor market continues to bifurcate, separating the workers lucky enough to get the high-skill jobs our economy has newly created (and get paid accordingly) from those stuck with jobs for which automation has taken away the need for skills and that therefore pay very little.
Benjamin M. Friedman, New York Review (October 12, 2017)
Benjamin M. Friedman, New York Review (October 12, 2017)
Labels:
capitalism,
change,
economy,
fairness,
globalism,
inequality,
jobs,
misery,
modernity,
politics,
rage,
society,
technology,
US
Friday, September 15, 2017
Tuesday, September 05, 2017
Friday, August 18, 2017
No one departs out of life otherwise than if he had but just before entered into it.... We should always, as near as we can, be booted and spurred, and ready to go.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
contemplation,
death,
existence,
life,
life ideas,
Montaigne,
philosophy,
reflection
Monday, August 14, 2017
All of our memories are subjective.... The loss of pleasure and pain is a loss of subjectivity, of an ability to relate to objects, to persons, and to oneself.... All of our memories are subjective—they are created from the point of view of the individual who is remembering.
Israel Rosenfield and Edward Ziff, The New York Review, August 17.2017
Israel Rosenfield and Edward Ziff, The New York Review, August 17.2017
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
The
real benefit of complex inferences like weighing uncertainty may not be
apparent unless the uncertainty has complex structure.
Quoted in Science News, "There’s a long way to go in understanding the brain," 7/25/2017)
Quoted in Science News, "There’s a long way to go in understanding the brain," 7/25/2017)
Labels:
brain,
complexity,
consciousness,
evolution,
intuition,
mind,
neural networks,
uncertainty
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
The
urgent project at the moment isn’t adding more information to the
cultural file; it is understanding how meaning is produced.
Nathan Heller, The New Yorker (July 24, 2017)
Labels:
culture,
internet email style,
meaning,
modernity,
writing
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Sunday, July 02, 2017
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Friday, June 09, 2017
Virtue and ambition, unfortunately, seldom lodge together.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
ambition,
bureaucracy,
diplomacy,
government,
international relations,
Montaigne,
politics,
power
Friday, May 19, 2017
The only remedy, the only rule, and the sole doctrine for avoiding the
evils by which mankind is surrounded, whatever they are, is to resolve
to bear them so far as our nature permits, or to put an end to them
courageously and promptly.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
courage,
life ideas,
Montaigne,
purpose,
reason,
reflection
Sunday, April 02, 2017
Sunday, March 05, 2017
The Authoritarian Personality
• Rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values.
• Submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealised moral authorities of the in-group.
• Opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender-minded.
• Tendency to…condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values.
• The belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate….
• Preoccupation with the dominance- submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures….
• Generalized hostility, vilification of the human.
• The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses.
• Exaggerated concern with sexual “goings-on.”
From a March 23, 2017 New York Review piece on the Frankfurt School: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/03/23/frankfurt-school-headquarters-neo-marxism/
• Submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealised moral authorities of the in-group.
• Opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender-minded.
• Tendency to…condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values.
• The belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate….
• Preoccupation with the dominance- submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures….
• Generalized hostility, vilification of the human.
• The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses.
• Exaggerated concern with sexual “goings-on.”
From a March 23, 2017 New York Review piece on the Frankfurt School: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/03/23/frankfurt-school-headquarters-neo-marxism/
Labels:
authoritarianism,
capitalism,
criticism,
fascism,
Freud,
Marx,
personality,
politics
Friday, March 03, 2017
The real objective must always be the good life for all the people. International machinery will mean something to the common man throughout the world only when it is translated into terms that he can understand: peace, bread, housing, clothing, education, good health, and above all, the right to walk with dignity on the world's great boulevards.
Ralph J. Bunche, Mont Tremblant, Canada (1942)
Ralph J. Bunche, Mont Tremblant, Canada (1942)
Labels:
globalism,
international relations,
peace,
Ralph Bunche,
United Nations
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Voices in My Head
[W]hat a meditative poem contributes to the history of consciousness is a
reenactment in real time of the volatile inner life of a human being.
Such a poem does not present itself as plot or character portrayal or
argument, but rather ... as a hypothesis .... and include[s] waverings, self-contradictions,
repudiations, aspirations, and doubts; they are not offered as a
philosophical system.
Helen Vendler, The New York Review of Books (February 23, 2017)
Helen Vendler, The New York Review of Books (February 23, 2017)
Monday, January 16, 2017
The first step in dealing with the madness of the political world is not to let it make you crazy.... Fanaticism always seems foolish until it locks you up.
Adam Gopnik, Mixed Up: Montaigne On Trial (New Yorker, Jan 16, 2017)
Adam Gopnik, Mixed Up: Montaigne On Trial (New Yorker, Jan 16, 2017)
Sunday, December 11, 2016
During his later years he has often said—and many a man has had, and will have, to say the same—that he had learned these people too late.
Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome
Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome
Labels:
abroad,
Benin,
colonialism,
diplomacy,
international relations,
prudence
Saturday, November 05, 2016
All economies have winners and losers. It does not take a sophisticated
algorithm to figure out that the winners in the decades ahead are going
to be those who own the robots, for they will have vanquished labor with
their capital.
Sue Halpern, Our Driverless Future (New York Review of Noveber 24, 2016)
Sue Halpern, Our Driverless Future (New York Review of Noveber 24, 2016)
Labels:
change,
future,
inequality,
robots,
technology
Saturday, October 08, 2016
Modern media ... have always been based on the reselling of human attention to advertisers.
Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review (October 27, 2016)
Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review (October 27, 2016)
Labels:
advertisement,
capitalism,
civilization,
culture,
decline,
economy,
future,
history,
humanity,
illusion,
information,
internet,
media,
modernity
Monday, September 19, 2016
If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Labels:
decline,
democracy,
election 2016,
Shakespeare
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
The flight went really well and the only issue was when it landed.
From a spokesman for a airship with some problems (August 2016).
From a spokesman for a airship with some problems (August 2016).
Labels:
ambivalence,
boldness,
fortitude,
mistakes,
zen
Monday, August 22, 2016
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Gnostics.... We maintain that the world is an illusion. The unconscious self is
consubstantial with perfection, but because of a tragic fall it is
thrown into a foreign domain that is completely alien to its true being.
It’s always a fall, a tragic fall, and here we are. That’s it, in a
nutshell.
Stuff, Joy Williams (The New Yorker, July 25, 2016)
Stuff, Joy Williams (The New Yorker, July 25, 2016)
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Monday, May 23, 2016
As we move up our space/time-line, what will be has been, what has been remains, now is just now.
An errant thought.
An errant thought.
Labels:
awareness,
being,
contemplation,
existence,
life,
reality,
reflection,
time
Saturday, April 02, 2016
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Who can fathom the soundless depths?
Jules Verne, riffing on the Book of Ecclesiastes in his 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne, riffing on the Book of Ecclesiastes in his 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Labels:
Bible,
Jules Verne,
life,
oceanic,
universe
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Capitalism is a partnership between governors and merchants that secures the power of both.... merchants grow rich because state power protects them or looks away when the time is right.
Martha Howell, The New York Review (April 7, 2016)
Martha Howell, The New York Review (April 7, 2016)
Thursday, February 11, 2016
In essence, the planet runs on a cycle of water-splitting by photosynthesis to form oxygen and the production of water by respiration.
Paul G. Falkowski in Life's Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable
Paul G. Falkowski in Life's Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable
Sunday, February 07, 2016
Today, not carrying a smartphone indicates eccentricity, social marginalization, or old age.
Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review (February 55, 2016)
Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review (February 55, 2016)
Labels:
America,
change,
civilization,
modernity,
smartphone
Wednesday, February 03, 2016
It was impossible for any one to open his grief to a neighbor and to concert measures to defend himself, as he would have
had to speak either to one whom he did not know, or whom he knew but did
not trust.
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Love of country is what I do not feel when I am wronged, but what I felt
when secure in my rights as a citizen.... the true lover of his country
is not he who consents to lose it unjustly rather than attack it, but
he who longs for it so much that he will go all lengths to recover it.
Alcibiades, as quoted by Thucydides, (The History of the Peloponnesian War)
Alcibiades, as quoted by Thucydides, (The History of the Peloponnesian War)
Labels:
Alcibiades,
Athens,
democracy,
exile,
Greece,
imperialism,
patriotism,
Thucydides
Friday, January 22, 2016
It will be said, perhaps, that democracy is neither wise nor equitable,
but that the holders of property are also the best fitted to rule. I
say, on the contrary, first, that the word demos, or people, includes
the whole state, oligarchy only a part; next, that if the best guardians
of property are the rich, and the best counselors the wise, none can
hear and decide so well as the many; and that all these talents,
severally and collectively, have their just place in a democracy. But an
oligarchy gives the many their share of the danger, and not content
with the largest part takes and keeps the whole of the profit.
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
Labels:
democracy,
oligarchy,
politics,
Thucydides
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Saturday, January 09, 2016
Try to do what you do without mockery of our heartbroken little era. To mock is easy.
Anne Carson, 1=1, New Yorker of January 11, 2016
Anne Carson, 1=1, New Yorker of January 11, 2016
Friday, January 01, 2016
Athenians: Aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both;
since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only
in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can
and the weak suffer what they must....
Melians: As we think, at any rate, it is expedient —we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest— that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current....
Athenians: Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can..... It is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best.
Thucydides (Book Five), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Melians: As we think, at any rate, it is expedient —we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest— that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current....
Athenians: Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can..... It is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best.
Thucydides (Book Five), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Labels:
Athens,
conflict,
diplomacy,
empire,
Greece,
imperialism,
international relations,
justice,
prudence,
Thucydides,
war
Thursday, December 31, 2015
It is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for,
and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.
Thucydides (Book Four), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides (Book Four), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more gifted
fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws,
and to overrule every proposition brought forward, thinking that they
cannot show their wit in more important matters.
Thucydides (Book Three), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides (Book Three), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Labels:
ambivalence,
Athens,
Greece,
politics,
rhetoric,
Thucydides
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
There can never be any solid friendship between individuals, or union
between communities that is worth the name , unless the parties be
persuaded of each other's honesty, and be generally congenial the one to
the other; since from difference in feeling springs also difference in
conduct.
Thucydides (Chapter IV), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides (Chapter IV), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Labels:
conflict,
friends,
international relations,
Thucydides
Monday, October 26, 2015
[Pericles] told them to wait quietly, to pay attention to their marine, to attempt no new conquests, and to expose the city to no hazards during the war, and doing this, promised them a favourable result. What they did was the very contrary, allowing private ambitions and private interests, in matters apparently quite foreign to the war, to lead them into projects unjust both to themselves and to their allies— projects whose success would only conduce to the honour and advantage of private persons, and whose failure entailed certain disaster on the country in the war.... each grasping at supremacy, they ended by committing even the conduct of state affairs to the whims of the multitude.
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
"Or as [John Gray] put it in Straw Dogs: The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industralisation, 'Western civilization' or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate."
David Bromwich, "Are We ‘Exceptionally Rapacious Primates’?", The New York Review of Books (November 5, 2015)
David Bromwich, "Are We ‘Exceptionally Rapacious Primates’?", The New York Review of Books (November 5, 2015)
Monday, October 19, 2015
Human beings ... may be divided simply into those who know they are acting and those who do not. True philosophers belong to the first group. The second encompasses, among others, utopian capitalists and Communists, the fanatics of the religious wars of the seventeenth century and the jihadists of the twenty-first.
David Bromwich, "Are We ‘Exceptionally Rapacious Primates’?", The New York Review of Books (November 5, 2015)
David Bromwich, "Are We ‘Exceptionally Rapacious Primates’?", The New York Review of Books (November 5, 2015)
Labels:
fanaticism,
humanity,
naked apes,
philosophy,
religion
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
Why
are we so often awake? What is the purpose of being awake? I mean,
besides for ten minutes of eating, a little bit of romance. Once that’s
over, why are we not immediately again asleep?”
Rivka Galchen, Usl at the Stadium (The New Yorker, October 12, 2015)
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Your country has a right to your services in sustaining the glories of her position. These are a common source of pride to you all, and you cannot decline the burdens of empire and still expect to share its honors. You should remember also that what you are fighting against is not merely slavery as an exchange for independence, but also loss of empire and danger from the animosities incurred in its exercise. Besides, to recede is no longer possible.... For what you hold is, to speak somewhat plainly, a tyranny; to take it perhaps was wrong, but to let it go is unsafe.
Pericles, as quoted by Thucydides in The History of the Peloponnesian War
Pericles, as quoted by Thucydides in The History of the Peloponnesian War
Labels:
America,
Athens,
empire,
imperialism,
Pericles,
Thucydides,
war
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution.... they are adventurous beyond their power, and daring beyond their judgment, and in danger they are sanguine.... they are never at home.... they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others.
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War (Translated by Richard Crawley; Book 1, Chapter 3)
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War (Translated by Richard Crawley; Book 1, Chapter 3)
Labels:
America,
Athens,
Greece,
history,
Thucydides
Sunday, June 28, 2015
[The Greeks] never pretended that their gods were always benevolent or omnipotent in human affairs... What was important was the maintenance of dignity and self-respect in the face of what the gods or fate decreed.
Charles Freeman, Egypt, Greece and Rome.
Charles Freeman, Egypt, Greece and Rome.
Monday, June 22, 2015
The
early [Greek] philosophers were concerned with understanding the
nature of the cosmos.... They appear to have shared a belief that the
world system, the kosmos, was subject to a divine force which gave it
an underlying and orderly background. Where they got this idea,
which is a far cry from the Homeric world of gods, is unknown –
possibly from eastern mythology. It proved fundamental to the
speculations which followed.
Charles Freeman, Egypt, Greece and Rome.
Labels:
cosmology,
Greece,
Homer,
philosophy,
reason
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Do not bring down the men of the magistrates' court or incite the just
men to rebel. Do not pay too much attention to him clad in shining
garments, and have regard for him who is shabbily dressed. Do not
accept the reward of the powerful man or persecute the weal for him.
Advice from fathers to sons in Middle Kingdom Egypt as quoted by Charles Freeman in Egypt, Greece and Rome.
Advice from fathers to sons in Middle Kingdom Egypt as quoted by Charles Freeman in Egypt, Greece and Rome.
Labels:
advice,
Ancient Egypt,
civilization,
wisdom
Sunday, May 03, 2015
Everything likes to live where it will age the most slowly, and gravity pulls it there. The greater the slowing of time, the stronger gravity's pull.... At the surface of a black hole, time is slowed to a halt.
Kip Thorne, The Science of Interstellar
Kip Thorne, The Science of Interstellar
Labels:
black hole,
cosmology,
Einstein,
gravity,
relativity,
sci-fi
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
If I calculate the average annual quota required to limit global warming to two degrees this century I find that simply maintaining a typical American single-family home exceeds it in two weeks. Absent any indication of direct harm, what makes intuitive moral sense is to live the life I was given, be a good citizen, be kind to the people near me, and conserve as well as I reasonably can.... [Climate change] deeply confuses the human brain, which evolved to focus on the present, not the far future, and on readily perceivable movements, not slow and probabilistic developments.
Jonathan Franzen, "Carbon Capture: Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?" in the New Yorker of April 6, 2015
Jonathan Franzen, "Carbon Capture: Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?" in the New Yorker of April 6, 2015
Labels:
animals,
biodiversity,
birds,
climate change,
conservation,
ecology,
plants
Monday, March 16, 2015
Personal happiness is profoundly conditioned by the social and political surroundings.
Tim Parks, "Revolutionary Italy: The Masterwork," New York Review (April 2, 2015)
Tim Parks, "Revolutionary Italy: The Masterwork," New York Review (April 2, 2015)
Sunday, March 15, 2015
[T]wo centuries ago ... Europeans made a wager on history: that the more they extended human freedom, the happier they would be. ... [T]hat wager has been lost.
Mark Lilla, "Slouching Toward Mecca," New York Review (April 2, 2015)
Mark Lilla, "Slouching Toward Mecca," New York Review (April 2, 2015)
Labels:
civilization,
happiness,
history,
liberalism
Saturday, March 14, 2015
[R]elying on the Internet for facts and figures is making us mindless sloths.... a study in Science ... demonstrates that the wealth of information readily available on the Internet disinclines users from remembering what they’ve found out.
Sue Halpern, "How Robots & Algorithms Are Taking Over," New York Review (April 2, 2015)
Sue Halpern, "How Robots & Algorithms Are Taking Over," New York Review (April 2, 2015)
Labels:
algorithms,
artificial intelligence,
culture,
future,
humanity,
inequality,
modernity,
morality,
power,
robots,
society,
technology
Friday, March 06, 2015
Friday, February 27, 2015
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.
Live long and prosper.
Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
Live long and prosper.
Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
Labels:
existence,
Leonard Nimoy,
life ideas,
singularity,
understanding
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Friday, February 06, 2015
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Wednesday, February 04, 2015
All human rules are more or less idiotic, I suppose. It is best so, no
doubt. The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if
we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Monday, January 19, 2015
The totality of animals, the crushing majority of men, live without ever finding the least need for justification.
Michel Houellebecq, from his novel Submission as quoted by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker.
Michel Houellebecq, from his novel Submission as quoted by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker.
Labels:
blues,
humans,
morality,
naked apes,
wisdom
Saturday, January 10, 2015
We know the meaning of nothing but the words we use to describe it.
Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Twitter—that device helpfully enabling people to write faster than they can think.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, How the Murdoch Gang Got Away (New York Review, Jan 8, 2015)
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, How the Murdoch Gang Got Away (New York Review, Jan 8, 2015)
Labels:
cyberspace,
internet,
smartphone,
thinking,
Twitter
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of
our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome,
charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in
one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Monday, December 01, 2014
It was as if he had left home to climb a mountain and was now stuck on
top of it, bivouacked above the tree line, free, but freezing, with no
way forward.
Tim Parks, The New Yorker (Reverend)
Tim Parks, The New Yorker (Reverend)
Sunday, November 30, 2014
The smartphone-bearing zombies plodding blindly down our sidewalks still
inhabit the real world even if their souls have gone elsewhere.
James Gleick, The New York Review of Dec. 18, 2014.
James Gleick, The New York Review of Dec. 18, 2014.
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