Reading time: About 4 minutes, 700 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/17
January 29, 2023 — #17 →
Full stop →
Death is a declarative punctuation mark – a period in a life full of commas and semicolons. Death is a full stop, the end of opportunities for the deceased and those who knew them. Death is cruel like that.
~ Hugh Hollowell, from «https://www.soverybeautiful.org/if-we-love-we-grieve/»
I like the punctuation metaphor. I like the finality of the imagery. When I read that turn of phrase, I heard the sharp crack of a mechanical typewriter striking the period. I’m just not sure that the metaphor is apt for the experience of someone else’s death. That’s always been more like turning the page, midway through a book, and discovering the next face—and alas all the subsequent pages—are inexplicably blank. That’s not a period or an ellipses or even a highbrow em-dash. That’s just
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Courage →
Courage exists, not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing and conquering it.
~ Jean Paul
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And in the end →
It’s great to live a life of courage and compassion… but all the courage and compassion in the world doesn’t make any of it any easier. All it can do is hopefully make it more meaningful, somehow.
~ Hugh MacLeod, from «https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2022/07/12/the-one-choice-all-fulfilled-people-make/»
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I’d go further: The more courage and compassion I muster, the harder it gets. Compassion gives me a big “why” that burns inside, driving me to the next, harder challenge. Courage begets more courage; With each win won through courage, it becomes easier to again deploy courage intentionally. It seems that courage and compassion lead to the tackling of increasing great and difficult challenges. Meaning is great, but I haven’t yet figured out how to use any of it to pay the proverbial rent.
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Journalism →
The point of journalism is the truth. The point of journalism is not to improve society. There are things, there are facts, there are truths that actually feel regressive, but it doesn’t matter, because the point of journalism isn’t to make everything better. It’s to give people accurate information about how things are.
~ Sebastian Junger
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Bootstrapping →
What’s the difference between a good leader vs. bad leader? What do good leaders do differently?
It’s an essential question every leader must ask themselves.
~ Jason Evanish, from Good Leader Vs. Bad Leader
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“What do good leaders do differently?” They ask themselves that question. It’s a good article (an actual article, not just a wee listicle) worth glancing at simply for the first graphic which should make you chuckle and stick with you.
I want to ask the next question: What do effective leaders do differently? Because I’m emphatic that it’s possible to be a good leader—even a great leader—but end up not being effective. Great leader, great goal, and yet… sometimes failure. There are also some horrific examples of bad leaders who manage to be extremely effective. It really feels like the quality of a leader and the effectiveness of a leader aren’t interdependent. What’s up with that?
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Tastes →
Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you—they might have different tastes.
~ George Bernard Shaw
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What is technology →
As for technology, my working definition is: “a tool that radically solves problems.” After all, technology pre-dates scientific knowledge (and mathematics), as does engineering. Indeed, the printing press was once technology, as was writing — as was the wheel. If your technology is not radically solving a problem, perhaps it isn’t technology. Perhaps it is simply software, or simply a business on the internet. Food for thought.
~ Kanyi Maqubela from, Wait, What Is Technology?
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I don’t recall having actually wondered what, specifically, constitutes technology. Upon reading this, I thought about it…
Let’s see, what is a screw driver? Well, that’s obviously a tool. It drives screws. Is a screw an example of a technology? …yeah, I suppose so. And what, really, is a screw? It’s an application of the concept of an inclined plane. So I came up with: A tool is a thing which operates some technology—it facilitates me applying the technology to some situation. And the technology is the application of some knowledge. Printing presses and pencils are tools; they facilitate the technology of writing. It’s interesting to note that each tool is itself composed of multiple technologies. All of which gives humanity a woven, layered-up, system of technology, tools, technology, tools.
Food for thought, indeed.
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January 22, 2023 — #16 →
Reading time: About 5 minutes, 1000 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/16
The gap →
The Wrights’ story shows something more common than we realize: There’s often a big gap between changing the world and convincing people that you changed the world.
~ Morgan Housel, from When You Change the World and No One Notices
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On one hand, we could simply define “changed the world” to be when people have actually noticed, or when the change is wide-spread. On the other hand, it’d be much more interesting to acknowledge that the change happens at the moment of the advance—the moment the Wright Brothers figured out controlled, powered flight. (It’s the “controlled” part that really made them first.) The challenge for us creatives… for those of us out trying to change the world… is how do we act during the gap. Do we keep working, quietly changing the world further? Do we stop working and start marketing? Or… something else? To quote William Gibson: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”
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