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“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” — John Stuart Mill Years ago,…
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One of my many favorite Emily Dickinson poems is often referred to as “Forever” or Poem #690. I’ve always been particularly fond of her poems that deal with two of her favorite themes, time and mortality. But this poem contains a line that has haunted me since I first read it, not for its beauty,…
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“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” – Erich Fromm, German philosopher and psychoanalyst When I first read this quote some years ago, I imagined a scientist overturning a law of physics or an artist inventing a new genre. Back then, I understood the certainties that Fromm suggested as being something external, like…
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“Your value will be not what you know; it will be what you share.” – Ginni Rometty This quote was suggested to me by the Stoic journaling app I was suggested on the Apple App Store. It’s a guided journal app, which seems like it would be something I needed, since I have a whirlwind…
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“For when too large a proportion of the populace is supporting itself by the indirections of trade and business and commerce and art and the million schemes of men in cities, then the complexity of society is likely to become so great as to destroy its equilibrium, and it will always be out of balance…
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“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” – Rene Descartes How do you seek the truth? Do you try to verify what you already believe, or do you put your own beliefs up to scrutiny…
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And If So, What Can We Do to Patch It? If we were to render modern existence as a video game environment, it wouldn’t be a high-fidelity masterpiece like what the big game studios seem to produce monthly these days. Instead, it would look like a grainy, grey, overpopulated digital world, rendered in the glitchcore…
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When I was watching Scott’s Thoughts YouTube video on Vespiquen in a Pokemon Platinum solo run, he said something interesting. He was talking about how we need to save the bees, which I entirely agree with. But for those saying that such a discussion doesn’t belong in a Pokemon video, his response is that these…
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“We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.” – Henri Poincare This observation by Henri Poincaré—later referenced by Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World—hits harder today than perhaps either man intended. It suggests that delusion isn’t just an error in judgment; it is a refuge.…
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“The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.” – Paul Valery, French poet and essayist. French poet & essayist Paul Valery once wrote about how sometimes knowledge isn’t exactly what…