The essence of restorative community building is not economic prosperity or the political discourse or the capacity of leadership; it is citizens’ willingness to own up to their contribution or agency in the current conditions, to be humble, to choose accountability, and to have faith in their own capacity to make authentic promises to create the alternative future.
~ Peter Block
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Reading time: About 5 minutes, 1000 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/38
Sometimes I sit and reflect on what it’s all been for. When I am able to briefly clutch a bit of perspective, it’s clear that it’s not all “for” anything specific. Life’s a journey, is none the less true for its being cliché.
The naive activist wants to change the world. But that isn’t necessary: the world is changing anyway.
~ Ed Lake from, Aaron Swartz was on a crusade, that is clear, but for what? | Aeon Essays
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Lately I seem to be stumbling over a large number of “I should probably know who that is” essays. This one about Swartz is one such essay and it filled in some blanks.
But that little bit which I’ve quoted leapt out at me. The world—all of it, from microbes to society, from rock to Gaia—is so absolutely not static. Any urge I’ve ever had to change anything was actually not an urge for a specific change, rather it was an urge for control.
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Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.
~ Gordon Hempton
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Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the web: They might as well not exist.
~ Steven Pinker
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At one point I made a serious attempt at gratitude journaling. I learned that the many moments of delight I encounter on any given day don’t stick in my memory. In those moments I am aware of the experience (I really do think “if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is” often) but it drifts into the forgotten realms. I don’t randomly have thoughts like, “hey Craig, remember that delightful thing from that other moment?” I have to intentionally pause to make a space for those thoughts to appear.
Humans by nature have a strong desire to control and predict. We want to know what happens at the end of the story, and we focus on those things we can measure and easily influence.
~ Cierra Martin from, «https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2022/11/21/more-dancing-less-box-checking/»
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Can one remove a desire? This desire which I definitely have, has not abated through familiarity (something which I believe can cause a desire to fade.) I think the only way is to connect the many experiences which did not go through my control-it desire, and led to happiness. “See brain, we got to delight and there was not even an attempt at control there.” Pausing in moments of delight, as it were, to ask, “well… how did I get here?“
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Gnosce teipsum—know yourself. Know yourself in relation to your overt intentions and your hidden motives, in relation to your thinking, your physical functioning and to those greater not-selves, who see to it that, despite all the ego’s attempts at sabotage, the thinking shall be tolerably relevant and the functioning not too abnormal.
~ Aldous Huxley
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A good upbringing means not that you won’t spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won’t notice it when someone else does.
~ Anton Chekhov
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Do you think it is easy writing all these thoughts for this blog/email? It’s a strange experience for me. The writing is really easy—I’m just tapping some little keys and moving a few ones-and-zeros—and my brain has never not been full of thoughts and questions. The writing is really hard—for over a decade I’ve been crafting digital output in various forms for this site, using various systems and routines but it’s an endless task.
So what [is it]? What determines success? Hard work or good fortune? Effort or randomness? I think we all understand both factors play a role, but I’d like to give you a better answer than “It depends.”
~ James Clear from, Absolute Success is Luck. Relative Success is Hard Work.
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The odd thing is that whether I think the writing and all the web site work is hard or easy depends on what I think I am trying to accomplish. To be widely read? …to generate income? …to help others? …to write a certain amount, or for “the most years”? —yikes, this is extremely difficult and arduous work. If my goal is a bunch of stuff over which I have no control, ouch.
On the other hand, when I manage to write because I enjoy fiddling with technology, because I’m curious and love to see/hear others be curious, because thinking and writing and thinking more lead me to clarity and insight… well suddenly it seems so easy.
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It’s a choice. The choice between being the linchpin (the one people can’t live without) and the cog (who does what she’s told). The choice between doing art (and forging your own path, on your own terms, and owning what happens) and merely doing your job (which pushes all the power and all the responsibility to someone else).
The good news is that it’s your choice, no one else’s.
~ Seth Godin
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