Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 28 April 2021

 

An outstanding consideration of Keynes & his legacy

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

Keynes was also convinced that the economic problem of the twentieth century was not scarcity but mismanagement. Depressions were caused not by production shortfalls but by financial instability and uncertainty. The British general strike of 1926 and the rise of Hitler had been driven by desperate people seeking radical solutions to intractable domestic misery.

Isn't the second sentence the key to understanding some of the despair of the Great Depression and others before & since? Nothing happened, such as a war or natural disaster, to cause such to cause the disaster. I was simply a failure of a purely human (as opposed to natural) system.

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now." [Emerson]

Time Warrior

Steve Chandler

So now I just do it. Because it’s on this structure I call a calendar.

Time Warrior

Steve Chandler

How do I distinguish between waiting (listening inside for inspiration) and procrastination?

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt 

Since Bergson, the use of the sight metaphor in philosophy has kept dwindling, not unsurprisingly, as emphasis and interest have shifted entirely from contemplation to speech, from nous to logos. With this shift, the criterion for truth has shifted from the agreement of knowledge with its object—the adequatio rei et intellectus, understood as analogous to the agreement of vision with the seen object—to the mere form of thinking, whose basic rule is the axiom of non-contradiction, of consistency with itself, that is, to what Kant still understood as the merely “negative touchstone of truth.”

The Science of Conjecture

James Franklin

It has been common to see, in consequence of the (true) ellipse theory and the (false) Platonic solids theory, two Keplers, or at least two opposing aspects of Kepler’s thought—one, rationalist and looking forward to modern scientific method, with its curve fitting and hypothesis testing; the other backward looking and “mystical,” misled by all manner of unlikely Pythagorean speculations. Kepler’s works reveal no such split. The difference between the two theories is simply that the ellipse theory turned out to be right, the solids theory wrong. Kepler’s manner of thinking, and of argument, is the same in both cases and is the one that lies at the bottom of the success of modern mathematical science. It involves finding the harmonies of the world, to use Kepler’s words, or in the language of a more pedestrian century, argument from concomitant variation.

The Machiavellians

James Burnham

The point is not that . . . slogans, ideals, programs, and declarations do not influence action. Under certain circumstances they undoubtedly do, and tremendously. But they are not and cannot be part of logical or rational action.

Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 27 March 2021

 

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

Save when the economic system is threatened with collapse, American Democrats repeatedly prove wary of Keynesian, welfarist, or social-democratic policies, misleadingly called “socialist.” In the absence of effective party-political or intellectual opposition from the left, partisan argument is being reshaped by a fight among conservatives for control of their tradition.

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Totalitarian government is unprecedented because it defies comparison.

Why Read Hannah Arendt Now?

Richard J. Bernstein

“The first loss which the rightless suffered was the loss of their homes, and this meant the loss of the entire social texture into which they were born and in which they established for themselves a distinct place in the world” --Hannah Arendt

Breath

James Nestor

By day, we unconsciously attempt to open our obstructed airways by sloping our shoulders, craning our necks forward, and tilting our heads up. “Think of someone who is unconscious and about to receive CPR,” Mike said. The first thing a medic does is tilt the head back to open the throat. We’ve adopted this CPR posture all the time.

Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 3 March 2021

 

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

Readers will wait in vain for a clearly stated claim or carefully reasoned conclusion [from Sloterdijk]. Never wholly lost is a preoccupying question Sloterdijk that shares with Scruton: what in the ethico-cultural turmoil of the present is a thoughtful person to shelter and preserve?

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

[The American journalist H.L.] Mencken was a deep, uncritical admirer of Nietzsche’s writings on morality. As a moral skeptic, Nietzsche’s problem was that to knock down morality, you needed to leave some of it standing. As a conservative oppositionist, Mencken always seemed to know which opinions were wrong. But he rarely, if ever, could say which were right.

Time of the Magicians

Wolfram Eilenberger

Being a philosopher is a way of leading one’s own life consciously, giving it pull, form, and direction through constant, probing questioning.

Between Past and Future

Hannah Arendt

What Kierkegaard wanted was to assert the dignity of faith against modern reason and reasoning, as Marx desired to assert again the dignity of human action against modern historical contemplation and relativization, and as Nietzsche wanted to assert the dignity of human life against the impotence of modern man. The traditional oppositions of fides and intellectus, and of theory and practice, took their respective revenges upon Kierkegaard and Marx, just as the opposition between the transcendent and the sensuously given took its revenge upon Nietzsche, not because these oppositions still had roots in valid human experience, but, on the contrary, because they had become mere concepts, outside of which, however, no comprehensive thought seemed possible at all.

Collingwood's the Idea of History

Peter Johnson

The past, then, does not come to us as light from a distant star. Without the historian’s critical engagement the past could not come alive at all, but critical engagement with what? If the answer is with decisions as actually arrived at and made, then history is going to be a rather lifeless affair. If, on the other hand, it is with what may have happened as well as what did happen, then Collingwood seems to be giving historians the freedom to say what they like. In fact, Collingwood strikes a persuasive course in addressing these questions. The political historian trying to understand the actions of, say, Lloyd George during the munitions crisis in the First World War will re-enact his intentions and the situation he faced. This will include ‘possible ways of dealing with it’ (The Idea of History 215) as well as the policy he actually followed. Does this make history too conjectural? Not at all, so as long as the alternatives which the historian re-enacts are those that were considered by the agent at the time. But does this mean alternatives that actually were considered or those that could have been considered? Once again Collingwood is permissive. The historian in re-enacting past thought, both theoretical and practical, subjects it to criticism, ‘forms his own judgment of its value, corrects whatever errors he can discern in it’ (IH 214). It would be a poor sort of historian, Collingwood suggests, who treats the past as immune from revision, even if the revision takes place in the historical imagination and the historical imagination takes place in the present. Re-enactment, in other words, includes counter-factual discussion as well as the delineation of what actually occurred.

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

Fareed Zakaria

Economists have their own version of this idea, the “policy trilemma,” which posits that countries can have two of the following three: free-flowing capital, independent central banks, and a fixed exchange rate. They’re a bit wonkish, but all these trilemmas get at a simple notion—if everything is open and fast-moving, the system can spin dangerously out of control.

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

I'm keenly aware of the Principle of Priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what's important first.

Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 13 February 20212

 

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else.

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

We must reinvent civilization so that it once again rests on a moral foundation by discovering a new “rule of life” that moderates, rather than magnifies, the five great ills.

Breath

James Nestor

While we can’t simply decide when to slow or speed up our heart or digestion, or to move blood from one organ to another, we can choose how and when to breathe.

The Wedge

Scott Carney,

The tricky thing about understanding the Wedge, and what makes it so incredibly difficult to explain, is that you—or rather, your ego—is not always the thing in charge. Remember, there is no self. All the parts of an individual and environment work together to generate an illusion of a self. Ego is just a perspective on the reality that we’re part of a superorganism.

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

To do that [compete in democracy], conservatives would have to accept a politics of contested authority and endless argument. They would have to fight for control within a framework of government that liberals favored. That liberal framework included parliamentary sovereignty, wider franchise, and civic equality. It gave body to the core liberal ideals of limited power and equal respect.

Thoughts for the Day: Monday 1 February 2021

 

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Insofar as ideological thinking is independent of existing reality, it looks upon all factuality as fabricated, and therefore no longer knows any reliable criterion for distinguishing truth from falsehood.

Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it.

--Hannah Arendt

What is most difficult is to love the world as it is, with all the evil and suffering in it.

--Hannah Arendt

(HT to @Samantha RoseHill for sharing the above two quotes.)

The Future of History

John Lukacs

Multa stultitia regnat mundus—how much stupidity now hangs over the world.

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

Thus the New York Times expends its editorial might promoting transgender rights, the concern of a tiny minority, while Fox News rants in opposition to them. So climate change and other vital concerns for the society as a whole get pushed to the media margins.

New Pathways in Psychology

Colin Wilson

It comes back, then, to the question of the self-image. Miseries, humiliations, embarrassments, accidents, have the effect of creating partial self-images—self-images which, since they present themselves as complete, are bound to be false. Consciousness narrows, and my self-image becomes as false and distorted as if I was seeing myself in a trick mirror at a fairground. But a trick mirror at least shows you your whole self, from head to foot; the partial self-image is a pocket-size distorting mirror.

Thoughts of the Day: Wednesday 27 January 2021

 

Collingwood's The Idea of History

Peter Johnson

History is not just about lists of dates – the Kings and Queens of England, say, or the Reform Acts; nor is it just about events and the causes of events – the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, say, or the assassination of an American President. Nor is history about the treatment of past experience as fact, since facts do not come to historians with their explanations already made.

I have a slight disagreement here: history isn't at all "about a list of dates." History is about "dates" in the same way that receiving a vaccine is "about" the needle and syringe. There's a danger of confusing the ends (purpose) with the means. Dates are tools, not ends--and this illusion about history is something that Collingwood (and any serious student of history) detests.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

“For a world that is always in equilibrium there is no difference between the future and the past,” [Joan] Robinson once said. “There is no history and there is no need for Keynes.”

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

“Unemployment is a problem of wages, not of work,” Keynes’ Austrian contemporary Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1927.

I include this to demonstrate how daft--or downright callous--one of the patron saints of neoliberalism can be.

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

Here's what I think. I think angels make their home in the Self, while Resistance has its seat in the Ego. The fight is between the two. The Self wishes to create, to evolve. The Ego likes things just the way they are. What is the Ego, anyway? Since this is my book, I'll define it my way. The Ego is that part of the psyche that believes in material existence. The Ego's job is to take care of business in the real world. It's an important job. We couldn't last a day without it. But there are worlds other than the real world, and this is where the Ego runs into trouble.

The Secret Teachers of the Western World

Gary Lachman

Gebser speaks of such a consciousness as being “ego-free,” which he insists does not mean “ego-less.” Gebser is not speaking of a return to the whole, a blending of our consciousness with that of the All, as some mystical paths suggest. In “ego-freedom,” as I understand it, we are aware of the whole and our relation to it, while retaining our clear awareness of our independent self. We are “ego-free” insofar as we transcend the limited perspective of the ego, the small self, aware of little more than its appetites and complaints, and gain a “bird’s-eye view” of the larger world beyond ourselves.

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt

In Kant judgment emerges as “a peculiar talent which can be practised only and cannot be taught.” Judgment deals with particulars, and when the thinking ego moving among generalities emerges from its withdrawal and returns to the world of particular appearances, it turns out that the mind needs a new “gift” to deal with them.

A Review of Time Warrior: How to defeat procrastination, people-pleasing, self-doubt, over-commitment, broken promises and chaos by Steve Chandler

This book serves as a fine companion work to Steve Pressfield’s The War of Art and Do the Work!. While Chandler focuses on the familiar theme of “time management”, both he and Pressfield focus on getting things done (and not necessarily as David Allen would have you do it). This book is pithy and easy to read. It could be shorter, and it’s no literary giant. But the message is worthwhile. In fact, in tight, short sentences, Chandler packs some wallop. His style, in addition to his quotes, tends toward the aphoristic. Accordingly, what follows are my quotes of him, his sources, my aphoristic thoughts generated by his insights, and my meta-comments [in brackets]. (I capitalize some words on my own accord as key terms taken from or inspired by Chandler.)

• Non-linear time management involves three options: Now, Not Now (but a date certain), & Never. [I think he should include a fourth: Now Later. For instance, one can use almost any Now to take out the garbage or do the dishes, but some Nows are better than others for productivity. Some tasks are Labor (Arendt), which is by nature  repetitive and doesn’t need special attention. Chandler implies that all Time is equally valuable, but this isn’t so. Some, like me for instance, prefer to perform more demanding, creative tasks in the morning, with less demanding tasks—dishes, reading & answering emails, garbage, etc.—left to the afternoon.]

• Empty the Mind about the Future because the Future = Fear.
• Develop a bias for Action
• Develop a laser-like Focus like Bruce Lee or Rocky Marciano (via Joyce Carol Oats).

  

  Joyce Carol Oats

  [Yes, you read that correctly. It seems she has a thing about boxing.]
• Act as a Warrior, not as a Worrier.
• Keep your Soul alive by not seeking to Please Others. Do what you choose
• Make Time, don’t expect to Find Time.
• Thinking makes it so. We act (or refrain) based on our beliefs. 
• Sustain Focus. Avoid Distraction. Use the rifle, not the shotgun. 
• “We use our crayons (our imagination) to scare ourselves instead of to create.” Chandler, Steve (2011-02-14). Time Warrior: How to defeat procrastination, people-pleasing, self-doubt, over-commitment, broken promises and chaos (p. 15). Maurice Bassett. Kindle Edition.
• Use Process Goals, not big, long-term goals. [Compare Scott Adams of Dilbert fame: use Practices not Goals to create Future.]
• “Be brief. Be swift. Be effective.” (19).
• Create Now. 
• “Don’t think in terms of patterns. None of this: “I always” or “I never” because those globalizing thoughts will never serve you. They will scare you and make you a pessimist.” (22).
• Start small. 
• Slow down. 
• Don’t over value Information. “[I]t is active creation that will produce wealth and well-being. Not information.” (27).
• Create Value by serving others. 
• Incubation vs. Procrastination. Incubate but Act. 
• “No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.—Alan Watts (30). 

  

  Alan Watts

• The time warrior steals from the future. Then she pours her stolen gold—all of it—into the present moment.” (30). 
• Don’t Know, Choose. Choosing is the key to Acting. 
• “I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost more than 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life... and that's why I succeed—Michael Jordan (37). 

  

  MJ

• “It really isn't fear of failure that stops us from trying exciting things. It's fear of the appearance of failure. It's the fear of looking like a failure.” (37).
• Theory is good for the intellect, but action is good for the soul. It's also good for your mental health, your physical health, and your pocketbook.—Robert Ringer (39).
• Act, then Feel. Not vice versa. 
• Serve, don’t seek to Please. 
• Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.—Rumi (49). [I have to issue a small dissent here. My reading, especially in the morning (preferably after meditation) isn’t a passive act. It’s creative. I don’t just read, I Learn. For me, reading is a very creative activity. Besides, I don’t play a musical instrument & C would kill me if I started singing in the morning.]
• Change Others through an Inspiring example.
• Be in the Moment. Don’t cling to an Identity. I’m a . . . [fill in the blank]. You can be that—or more—or less. 
• The question isn't, Who is going to let me; it's Who is going to stop me?—Ayn Rand (57). [I haven’t “been Ayn Randed”, but I can’t argue too much with this one thing. See, I’m not going to cling to my identity as knowing her to be full of . . . “well, never mind”.] 
• Create, don’t React. 
• Issue is Problem Management, not Time Management. Deal with a Project or Challenge, not Time. 
• We love to solve problems—if they’re not ours. 
• Problems of Time are often problems of Emotion (Feelings). 
• Complete. Finish strong. Keep a “killer instinct”. 
• Unfinished Projects become Worries that become Energy Vampires! 
• Completion Creates Energy. Procrastination drains Energy. 
• Don’t Feel like doing It? Do It! 
• In the face of suffering, ask “How can I help?”, not “How to do I feel?”.
• Not “How do I survive this [catastrophe]?”, but “How do I use this?”. 
• Warriors make friends of deadlines, which seem (and sound) so ominous. 
• “The human brain is a magical bio-computer. It sends us energy when we send it something clearly inspiring. But it drags us way down when we feed it something that is negative or depressing. The key to all of this is that we send it.” (88)
•  “The breakdown of language foretells the breakdown of results. Always. . . .[If I don’t keep a commitment] I have misused the word commitment, and language no longer means anything. So now anything I say is just noise that conveys no power at all. My language can no longer make anything happen. It can still be descriptive (it can tell you how I feel, it can describe the past) but it can no longer be generative (it can't make things happen). . . . [A] commitment is something you keep, no matter what.” (90). 
• What gets measured gets done.
• Emerson has written many wonderful essays on [acting] and one of the things he said is “Do the thing and you shall have the power.”(110)
•  “Creative people need some kind of structure. . . . Paradoxically, the best creativity comes from working with the most structure you can possibly impose on yourself.” (114).
• “What do I feel like doing right now? That is the worst question I could ever ask myself during my workday. On a weekend that’s a fine question. “What do I feel like doing? I’ll watch a little baseball, I’ll play the guitar.” That’s fine, but in my workday, the feeling question is the worst question I can ask myself. The best questions are: “What do I want to produce?” and “What structure would guarantee that?”. (115). 
• Create your own Urgent. 
• Skip Willpower and simply Choose to Begin. 
• Begin—to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.—Marcus Aurelius (121).
• “Why do I want my lack of action to be about a “thing” inside me I don’t have? The answer is this: I would rather find and identify some defect in myself than take that first step. Isn’t that the easier, softer way to live? Identifying flaws and defects all day?” (122). [Pressfield names “the thing”: Resistance. But whether you name it to overcome it or you simple ignore it to overcome it, the only weapon that can work is Action. Do, do, do.]
• “Whatever it is you are not doing, notice that you are choosing not to do it. There’s no defect in you! There’s the opposite of a defect. There is, instead, a power. A power to choose. Choose to, choose not to, same power. Always power.” (122-123). [My only quibble is that some people fail to recognize that they are making a choice (always making a choice) and therefore don’t exercise the conscientiousness or self-reflexivity necessary to realize what’s going on. I think that this requires a great deal of self-awareness. If not, why would Chandler have to teach this? Why would piles of books have ever been written about the Will and Willpower? (I know because I’ve read a lot of them.) Why would we worry about weakness of will? What if the choice is do or not do, such as whether to eat a Twinkie when you’re hungry? What if “not doing” is the best choice, then the default “Do” will fail us. We see weakness of will (akrasia) all of the time in ourselves and others. We discount the future hyperbolically. We make a choice—and we know damn well that we’ll later regret it. St. Paul and St. Augustine and others after them weren’t addressing a non-existent problem. So, grading as the Chinese might, I’d say Chandler is about 60% right on this issue.]
• Love what you’re doing, whatever it is. [Can be challenging.]
• “The perception you have of anything is always what drives your feelings and your actions and your thoughts.” (133). 
• Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.--Vincent van Gogh (141). 

  

  Van Gogh

• Fear is the absence of Love, as dark is the absence of light.
• “Live Now, Procrastinate Later”: great title (Robert Holden). 
• “I experience a stressed-out feeling whenever I think about the deadline for a creative project. But my stress comes from having that project be in the future. Non-linear time management doesn’t allow that line that stretches into the future. Because the linear thought process always produces stress. Unreasonable stress.” (175). 
• “You can create the future—through process-goal-setting and achievement—without living in the future. Just like studying a map before you go somewhere. Or looking at a menu before the meal. You don’t walk on the map. You don’t eat the menu. Once you’ve created your goal and project you set the future aside.” (182). 
• “All creativity emerges from inquiry.” (188). 
• “Thought always comes before a feeling and causes the feeling.” (196). [A key component of Stoic thought per Richard Sorabji.]
• Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.—Walter Elliott The Spiritual Life (202).
• Stop lying to yourself.

  

  Aristotle

• Aristotle: “Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it. People come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just. By doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled, and by doing brave acts we become brave.” (206-207). 

Let’s stop here. Lots of excellent ideas and perspectives. A fine and lasting tonic.