Timeless Ideas | September 12, 2021
Here’s your weekly dose of timeless ideas to sharpen your mind, make smarter decisions, and live better.
Quotes
I.
When we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.
― T. S. Eliot
II.
By reading, a man already having some wisdom can gain far more; but it is equally true that reading can make a man already inclined toward foolishness far, far more foolish.
― Alan Jacobs
III.
Be careful of your moods and feelings, for there is an unbroken connection between your feelings and your visible world.
― Neville Goddard
Ideas
I.
To make any kind of gain in life – a gain of wealth, personal stature, whatever you define as “gain” – you must place some of your material and/or emotional capital at risk. You must make a commitment of money, time, love, something. That is the law of the universe.
Max Gunther in The Zurich Axioms
II.
If you’re interested in being your best, your inner monologue needs to support the best you want to be. In fact, when it comes to sustained performance, because doubt and disappointment are constant companions, controlling your thoughts is often the ball game.
Steven Kotler in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer
III.
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice ... it is conformity. And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity — people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.
Earl Nightingale in The Strangest Secret
Articles Worth Reading
I.
Meditation is like mountaineering: approach it with care
Nicholas Van Dam | Psyche
Mindfulness meditation is routinely portrayed as a simple, happy, pleasant mind-hack that can help improve almost every aspect of our lives. While it can lead to positive feelings or pleasant experiences, it can also cause discomfort. Sometimes meditation can also lead to new or worsened anxiety, depression or other mental illness.
II.
Joe Gough | Aeon
There’s no such thing as the mind and nothing is mental. This no-mind thesis is entirely compatible with the idea that people are conscious, and that they think, feel, believe, desire and so on. What it’s not compatible with is the notion that being conscious, thinking, feeling, believing, desiring and so on are mental, part of the mind, or done by the mind.
III.
20 years, $6 trillion, 900,000 lives
Dylan Matthews | Vox
When you step back and think about the cost of the war on terror and all the possible benefits that could have come from it, you would be hard-pressed to arrive at a place where the benefits outstrip the costs. Indeed, the former never comes remotely close to the latter. The war on terror was as wasteful, and morally horrific, on the balance sheet as it was in the collective memory.
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