Quote of the day

 "In the constitution of a rational creature I see no virtue that pits itself against justice; but I see one that can pit itself against pleasure: self-control." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Quote of the day

 "No one grows tired of receiving benefits, and to bestow benefits is to act according to nature; so never grow tired of receiving benefits by bestowing benefits on others." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

In other words: helping people is human nature and so we help ourselves when we help others. Or, as Seneca put it: "You must live for another if you would live for yourself."

Quote of the day

 "Pride's greatest secret is that it is always under threat." - Sabrina B. Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

Quote of the day

"The word compete means 'strive together' or 'strive in common.' It is a concept that is more collaborative than antagonistic, but this is not the sense we get when the word is used today." - Sabrina B. Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

Quote of the day

 "Here is a running tip: You can't feel grateful and bad for yourself at the same time. Gratitude decreases negative affect." - Sabrina B. Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

Quote of the day

 "There is clear guidance for how to develop a good character, and it is guidance that will especially resonate with an athlete: We develop good characters in the same way that we become better runners. We practice." - Sabrina B. Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

Quote of the day

 "Adapt yourself to the circumstances in which your lot has cast you; and love these people among whom your lot has fallen, but love them in all sincerity." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Quote of the day

"We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest." - Russell-Einstein Manifesto (July 9, 1955)

This was in reference to the prospect of nuclear war between nations, but as more and more citizens see each other as enemies and the fabric of American democracy seems to be unraveling, I'm finding this message Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell gave us particularly poignant.

Quote of the day

 "We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world." - Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Quote of the day

 "History has a lot to teach us, but only if we are willing to listen and learn. If we see the same sort of things taking place now that happened in the past, including drought and famine, earthquakes and tsunamis, then I ask again, might it not be a good idea to look at the ancient world and learn from what happened to them?" - Eric H. Cline, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

Quote of the day

 "[S]he changed her mind on a number of issues (e.g., using or refusing to use certain pronouns, and the significance thereof), and some of the things she once said she later preferred to say differently. And so she corrects herself, pushes herself, forgives herself - this is what a living understanding looks like, instead of dead dogma. We should all be so willing to collaborate with our old selves throughout our life journey." - Ken Liu, describing Ursula K. Le Guin in his introduction to her The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction and Fantasy

Quote of the day

 "They do not come to you, the objects whose pursuit or avoidance causes you such disquiet, but in a certain sense you go to them; so if you will only let your judgement about them remain at rest, they too will remain unmoved, and you will be seen neither to pursue them nor to avoid them." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

In other words, things/people do not force us to think or feel a certain way, it is our own judgements and thoughts about them that cause our distress - we do it to ourselves. Marcus is telling himself that if he doesn't form, accept or fixate on such thoughts in the first place the distress will not come; so don't go to those thoughts in your mind.

Thought of the day

 The most important word in the English language: equanimity.

Quote of the day

 "What the idea of 'doing one's moral best' comes down to, when it is sincere and genuine, is something close to Aristotle's idea that, in effect, one lives an ethically good life by trying to do so. The trying is itself the succeeding" - A.C. Grayling, Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life

Quote of the day

 "The rightful first subject of skepticism isn't others. It's ourselves." - Ward Farnsworth, The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook

Quote of the day

 "So after you work a lifetime to get yourself all set up and then delude yourself into thinking that you have some kind of ownership claim on your station in life, you're riding for a fall. You're asking for disappointment. To avoid that, stop kidding yourself, just do the best you can on a commonsense basis to make your station in life what you want it to be, but never get hooked on it. Make sure in your heart of hearts, in your inner self, that you treat your station in life with indifference. Not with contempt, only with indifference." - James Stockdale, Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot

I can say from (current) experience this is very good advice as your station in life is something that you can influence, but it is subject to vast other influences that are beyond your control, rendering itself beyond your own control. "What are we to do, then? To make the best of what lies within our power, and deal with everything else as it comes."*

*Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.17

Quote of the day

 "[Socrates] was ... the first to show that life affords scope for philosophy at every moment, in every detail, in every feeling and circumstance whatsoever." - Plutarch, "On Old Men in Public Life"

Via The Socratic Method: A Practioner's Handbook by Ward Farnsworth

Quote of the day

 "To the Stoic, the greatest injury that can be inflicted on a person is administered by himself when he destroys the good man within him. For the non-Stoics, almost all great injuries are based on deprivations of 'things' controlled by external persons or forces. To a Stoic, there is no such things as being a 'victim'; you can  only be a 'victim' of yourself." - James Stockdale, Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot

Crossing the Rubicon

 I wake up today feeling the same. Except not. It has unofficially been the case for decades now that the President is above the law, as we have "looked forward, not backward" at crimes committed in office. But now we have the Supreme Court giving the presidency "absolute immunity" to commit crimes while in office. In a country where one person is set above the law we are all less safe, less free. So much for the Jeffersonian sentiment: "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

This 4th of July we should not celebrate our liberty, but mourn its loss.

Baleful quotes of the day

 "Surveillance capitalists work hard to camouflage their purpose as they master the uses of instrumentation power to shape our behavior while evading our awareness." - Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

"I want you to imagine walking into a control room with a hundred people, hunched over a desk with little dials, and that that control room will shape the thoughts and feelings of a billion people. This might sound like science fiction, but this actually exists right now, today." - Tristan Harris, "How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day"*

*Via Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading by Chris Anderson