Thoughts for the Day: Monday 26 July 2021

 

Giannis acting in the moment

“When you focus on the past, that’s your ego. ... When I focus on the future, that's my pride. I try to focus on the present. That's humility.”

— Giannis Antetokounmpo

William Walker Atkinson Premium 7 Book Collection

WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON

Desire is the motivating power behind all actions – it is a natural law of life. Everything from the atom to the monad; from the monad to the insect; from the insect to man; from man to Nature, acts and does things by reason of the power and force of Desire, the Animating Motive.

In Europe's Shadow

Robert D. Kaplan

I refer to understanding the true character of objectivity. For what is taught in journalism schools is an invaluable craft, whereas properly observing the world is a matter of deliberation and serious reading over decades in the fields of history, philosophy, and political science. Journalism actually is not necessarily, whatever the experts of the profession may claim, a traditional subject in its own right. Rather, it is a means to explore and better communicate subjects that are, in fact, traditional areas of study: history and philosophy as I’ve said, but also government, politics, literature, architecture, art, and so on. I’ve never altogether trusted what journalists say about themselves.

Beyond the Robot

Gary Lachman

The ego needs to assume its position as captain of the ship. It is, as Wilson argues, the controller of consciousness, and not, as we have mistakenly believed ever since Freud, a mere puppet of the dark forces within us. As it is now, when we want a change in consciousness we look for some stimulus to trigger it.

Bonds That Make Us Free

C. Terry Warner

We are seeking to understand the source of our troubled, afflicted emotions and attitudes and the way they foul our relationships with others. Here is a clue: those times when we feel most miserable, offended, or angry are invariably the occasions when we’re also most absorbed in ourselves and most anxious or suspicious or fearful, or in some other way concerned about ourselves. Why is this? Why do we get so caught up in ourselves and so ready to take offense at what others do?

Dao De Jing

Roger Ames & David Hall

The processive and synergistic forces at work in way-making render the language of discreteness and closure inappropriate. The road is always under construction, and the hands at work are many. While there is the punctuation of consummatory events that separates the paragraphs of one’s lived experience, still the narrative is coherent and continuous: a never-ending story.

Thoughts for the Day: Sunday 3 January 2021

Dao De Jing

Roger Ames, David Hall

The processive and synergistic forces at work in way-making render the language of discreteness and closure inappropriate. The road is always under construction, and the hands at work are many. While there is the punctuation of consummatory events that separates the paragraphs of one’s lived experience, still the narrative is coherent and continuous: a never-ending story.Sco

The Wedge

Scott Carney

Evolution has gifted humans (and vertebrates in general) two immune systems: the innate immune system and the adaptive one. The innate immune system is the front line of defense and has a standard set of responses—fevers, inflammation, mucus generation, attack cells—to biological threats that are quick and easy to deploy. The innate immune system is a blunt instrument that has a pretty dramatic effect on how you feel. It alters your internal environment to make it hostile to invaders. The adaptive immune system is more selective (this is the Special Forces rather than the regular Army); it identifies the specific threat to the body, learns its weaknesses, then deploys a very targeted response.

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

[I]t’s important to acknowledge that there’s no clear boundary between human beings and their surrounding natural world— that the natural world is intimately part of us. This means that the boundary of our identity— of our “we”— must expand to encompass nature too. “To regain our full humanity,” writes the systems theorist Fritjof Capra, “we have to regain our experience of connectedness with the entire web of life.”

Big Fat LiesDa 

David Gillespie

Sugar makes us fat. It's directly converted to fat by our liver and it destroys our appetite control so we want to eat more of everything. The more sugar we eat, the fatter we'll be.

Thoughts of the Day: Wednesday 7 October 2020

 

Dao De Jing

Roger Ames, David Hall

At a common sense level, anyone who is irreverent about his or her own well-being cannot be charged with any other responsibility, and certainly not with important matters of state.

The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus

Gary Lachman

The difference between the Gnostics and the Hermeticists is that Hermetic man doesn't want to escape from the world, but to realize his full potential within it, in order to embrace his obligations, so that, as Hermes tells Asclepius, he can 'raise his sight to heaven while he takes care of the earth'.

Buddha Takes No Prisoners

Patrick Ophuls and Jack Kornfield

To reiterate, the spiritual and political realms are necessarily governed by different moral codes, meaning that absolute standards cannot be applied to politics. Like Jesus, who rendered unto Caesar what was Caesar’s, the Buddha therefore left worldly affairs to the civil authorities. So it may be that the best and noblest political act is to forget politics and to devote ourselves primarily to training our minds in wisdom and our hearts in compassion, even as we continue to live as householders. The above is not a call to apathy or passivity. But the Buddha’s way is to be clearly aware of the world as it actually is—not as we conceive it to be or would like it to be—and then to respond accordingly.

And for the deeper dive, back to Hannah Arendt's Essays in Understanding and in particular, her "On the Nature of Totalitarianism: An Essay in Understanding."

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Montesquieu was the last to inquire into the nature of government; that is, to ask what makes it what it is (“sa nature est ce qui le fait être tel,” L’Esprit des Lois, Book III, ch. 1). But Montesquieu added to this a second and entirely original question: What makes a government act as it acts?

....

What is it that makes a state recognizable as a republic, a monarchy, or a tyranny? After giving the traditional answer to the traditional question—affirming that a republic is a constitutional government with the sovereign power in the hands of the people; a monarchy, a lawful government with sovereign power in the hands of one man; and a tyranny, a lawless government where power is exercised by one man according to his arbitrary will—Montesquieu adds that in a republic the principle of action is virtue, which, psychologically, he equates with love of equality; in a monarchy, the principle of action is honor, whose psychological expression is a passion for distinction; and in a tyranny, the principle of action is fear.

Arendt, Hannah. Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954 (p. 330). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation by Roger Ames and David Hall

"Making This Life Significant"

This book is one of the fundamental texts of civilization. It is distinctly Chinese, yet it now belongs to the world. Or at least it should belong to anyone interested in a unique and inviting perspective on the world. Of course, English language readers have a huge number of translations to choose from, but of the several that I’ve read, this is my favorite.

Ames is the China scholar, while the late David Hall comes out of the traditions of process philosophy and pragmatism. Together, they bring a sense of scholarly precision about the source and context of the original texts (and sources and completeness always becomes an issue with a text this old and revered) along with a perspective about how we can understand this work in the contemporary world. For instance, they identify the concept of the focus and field as a central metaphor in the work. Their commentaries on each chapter often refer to ideas familiar to current readers as consistent with process philosophy and pragmatism. (Daoism isn’t consistently with a static metaphysics, that’s for sure.) The commentary helps readers grasp the often allusive words and implicit references in the text that would otherwise leave readers baffled and confused. For contemporary readers from the West, the text communicates in terms of metaphor and allusion that are alien to our normal way of thinking. This is how they define their project: 

We will argue that the defining purpose of the Daodejing is bringing into focus and sustaining a productive disposition that allows for the fullest appreciation of those specific things and events that constitute one’s field of experience. The project, simply put, is to get the most out of what each of us is: a quantum of unique experience. It is making this life significant.

Ames, Roger; Hall, David (2010-05-12). Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation (Kindle Locations 285-288). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

There are no doubt many fine translations available for this classic, and each one no doubt sheds insight and re-creates the intention of the text, but this one is my reigning favorite. I feel like I’m viewing a new field with two trusted guides who help me gain the proper focus.