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 11 July 2021

 

A Secret History of Consciousness

Gary Lachman

The cliff edge our civilization is moving toward is the end destination of “an increase in technological feasibility inversely proportional to man's sense of responsibility.” [Quoting Jean Gebser.]

New Pathways in Psychology

Colin Wilson

A stimulus is nothing else than a suggestion for a mental act (or any other kind of act), and an enriched consciousness contains its own suggestions within itself.

In Europe's Shadow

Robert D. Kaplan

Byzantine art was monotonously sensuous even as it was austere, and with an irresistible splendor that “dumbfounded,” revealing a civilization that encompassed at once stirring liturgies and fierce doctrinal debates over the nature of Christ and the possession of the True Cross.

The Wedge

Scott Carney

Broadly speaking, working with the immune system and our inner worlds means paying more attention to the bounty of sensations that are available to us. This includes the five main senses—sight, smell, touch, taste and sound—but also the interoceptive sense that we develop when we quiet the outside world and look inward.

The Future of History

John Lukacs

Huizinga: “There is in our historical consciousness an element of great importance that is best defined by the term historical sensation. One might also call it historical contact. … This contact with the past, a contact which it is impossible to determine or analyse completely … is one of the many ways given to man to reach beyond himself, to experience truth. The object of this feeling is not people as individuals. … It is hardly an image which our minds forms. … It if takes on a form at all this remains composite and vague: an Ahnung [sense] of streets, houses, as sounds and colours or people moving or being moved. There is in this manner of contact with the past the absolute conviction of reality. … The historical sensation is not the sensation of living the past again but of understanding the world as one does when listening to music.” (The Task of Cultural History, VII, 71).

Compare and contrast Huizinga's position with Collingwood's injunction for "re-enactment" of the historical past.

The Fifth Discipline

Peter M. Senge

Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. As such, it is an essential cornerstone of the learning organization—the learning organization’s spiritual foundation.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

Even when he was employed by the Council on Foreign Relations in the 1950s and 1960s, working with some of the finest minds in the foreign policy establishment, Kissinger felt a “European” superiority to the optimistic Americans, who tended to believe that peace was the normal state of affairs in the world, that the United States represented a universal prototype, that every problem had a solution, and that the solution was always the same: democracy, and then more democracy.

This America

Jill Lepore

To be a nationalist at the end of the eighteenth century meant to believe in a slew of revolutionary liberal ideas: that the peoples of the world are naturally divided into nations, that the most rational means of government is national self-rule, that nations are sovereign, and that nations guarantee the rights of citizens.

Robert Kaplan on Obama's Asian Tour & Strategic Balancing

This article by Kaplan in the NYT today is an interesting one. We are living through a period of rising new global powers, especially China, but also India, Turkey, and Brazil, among others. How the reigning hegemon, the U.S., reacts to these changes is a major challenge to U.S. leaders. Can we accommodate and reach a working understanding with the new players, or will we panic and try to spend all of them under the table? The latter was the Bush administration plan until 9/11 sent us scurrying off to Afghanistan and Iraq. It does seem that the rise of China poses many of the same challenges for the U.S. that the rise of Germany did for Great Britain at the beginning of this century. Let hope it all works out better than that relationship did.

Of course, one may ask if there is an alternative to all of this balancing of forces and such, and the answer is probably "no". However, as we pour lives and resources into Iraq and Afghanistan, can we afford an active role in all of this?