The cure for the horror is story We know how this ends. You’re going to die and so will everyone you love. And then there will be heat. All the change in the universe will cease, the stars will die. And there will be nothing left of anything but infinite dead freezing void. Human life, in all its noise and … Read More
Being “nobody-but-yourself”
In the face of “a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else” and to make you a “consumer”, it feels very easy to follow the crowd and feel like you are “losing yourself”
Facts, Stories & Brain Scans
“We tend to use the word story casually, as if stories and narratives were ephemeral decorations for some unchanging underlying reality. The deeper neurological truth is that stories do not cloak reality but create it, triggering cascades of perception and motivation. The proof is in brain scans: When we hear a fact, a few isolated areas of our brain light … Read More
Blessed Unrest
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not yours to determine how good … Read More
Democracy and docility
“Why do we demand and go to war for democracy as nations, yet accept with docility that no one has the right to choose their own boss?” – Ricardo Semler
St Exupery and The Immensity of the Sea
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Asimov on Intelligence
Asimov has a great article called “What is intelligence, anyway?” When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. … All … Read More