Timeless Ideas | June 13, 2021
Here’s your weekly dose of timeless ideas to sharpen your mind, make smarter decisions, and live better.
Quotes
I.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.
― Aldous Huxley
II.
Nobody is perfect until you fall in love with them.
― Cheryl McIntyre
III.
Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.
― Immanuel Kant
Ideas
I.
A man minds his own private business as long as he has business and as long as he has privacy. In their absence, for fear of the emptiness of his life, he turns feverishly to other people’s business. To straighten them out. To chastise them. To enlighten every fool and crush every deviant. To bestow favors on others or to persecute them savagely. Between the altruistic zealot and the murderous zealot there is of course a difference of moral degree, but there is no difference in kind. Murderousness and self-sacrifice are simply two sides of the same coin. Domination and benevolence, aggression and devotion, repression and self-repression, saving the souls of those who are different from you and annihilating them: these are not pairs of opposites but merely different expressions of man’s emptiness and worthlessness.
Amos Oz in Black Box
II.
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
George Bernard Shaw in Getting Married
III.
“If only I had more money” is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment―now and not later. By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: “John, I'd love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I've got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said 'no' yesterday. Gotta run!”
Timothy Ferriss in The 4-Hour Workweek
Articles Worth Reading
I.
What did COVID do to friendship?
Jane Hu | The NewYorker
The pandemic reoriented our economy of attention, redefining the limits of who and what we could care about. The structural work of friendship stems from a fundamental social obligation—that we owe others, whether strangers or friends, the minimal formalities we would desire ourselves. The ebbs and flows of friendships over this past year feel embarrassingly banal—more often prompted by no one thing, and the source of no one’s fault. But, just as the dissipation of a friendship might be blamelessly shared, so, too, is the work of its possible return.
II.
Tom Chatfield | Psyche
By learning to question and clarify your thoughts, you’ll improve your self-knowledge and become a better communicator. As you think about your personal preferences, the twin realms of the possible and the desirable might look very different. We both need to take a close interest in the times, places, habits and contexts that bring out the best in us – and that give us permission to contemplate, then try to explain, what’s really going on when it comes to the questions that matter most.
III.
Joe Zadah | Noema
The clock is a useful social tool, but it is also deeply political. It benefits some, marginalizes others and blinds us from a true understanding of our own bodies and the world around us.
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