Don’t let ease tempt you. Don’t fall for its false promises. What you gain in ease, you lose in meaning. What you gain in ease, you lose in excellence.
~ Hugh MacLeod from, «https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2022/07/08/follow-the-yellowbri-road-to-greatness/»
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This topic came up today in an outdoor Parkour class. Being outside, training, sweating, and overcoming challenges with friends old and new is always a treat. (“If this isn’t nice…“)
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Never throw mud. You may miss your mark: But you must have dirty hands.
~ Joseph Parker
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It’s the relative appeal of the two paths that determines which one you take. You can equalize these by improving the intended path (making public transit better), obstructing the desire path (making driving worse), or a combination.
~ “Dynomight” from, Things you’re doing but don’t want to be doing
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This article starts with a simple concept and then iteratively goes far into the weeds to see where else it can be applied. I love minds which explore that way. I have so many habits, idiosyncrasies, and ancient brain quirks that it’s a miracle I ever get anything done. Everything figuratively within my reach is wearing down and coming undone, (entropy wins in the end.) I’ll take any opportunity—as this article suggests—to tip things towards my desired path.
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It’s pretty safe to say, that when you finally come up with your million-dollar idea, nobody is going to understand it at first. They many not laugh in your face outright, but they’ll probably scratch their heads, at least.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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But then, in order to make use of the thing, you must also pay a second price. This is the effort and initiative required to gain its benefits, and it can be much higher than the first price.
~ David Cain from, Everything Must Be Paid for Twice
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This is such a clear and important point! I’ve never seen it put in just this way, but it will be forever how I talk about the true costs of things, experiences and opportunities. There’s what feels like a variation of Occam’s Razor here too: Even if you understand the second price, don’t buy things, (through payment of money, time, or allocation of storage space,) unless you are also ready and able to make the second payments. If not, leave those opportunities for someone else.
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Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise.
~ Christopher Sommer
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For millennia, we have considered language — the magic-box of words — the hallmark of our species. Only in the last blink of evolutionary time have we begun to override our self-referential nature and consider the possibility that other types of channels might carry the magical energy of creatures telling each other what it is like to be alive, in the here and now of a shared reality.
~ Maria Popova from, Sonic Hieroglyphics and Acoustic X-Ray Vision: The Fascinating Science of How Dolphins and Whales Communicate – The Marginalian
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It never ceases to amaze me how my brain—I’d write “our brains” but I can only hope yours works at least slightly like mine does—finds salience in the chaos of everyday life. I found Popova’s short piece a couple of weeks ago, and more recently saw a special about humpback whales; the whales that save humanity in a Star Trek movie, if you recall.
In the documentary, one scientist is trying to understand exactly how Humpbacks use sound as language. She’s literally hoping her research enables the beginning of a conversation, (between humans and whales.) And she found this sound, she calls a “whup.” It seems that each humpback’s “whup” is unique the way our voices are said to be unique. So she composed a “whup”… and supposed it was how they say, “hey what’s up”. Seriously, it even sounds like a mumbled, “wassup.” Her question was, if whales say “whup” to announce themselves, what happens if I say “whup”?
Turns out, they say “whup” in response.
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The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliance.
~ Rochefoucauld
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What do we mean when we say the word “intelligence”? The immune system is the fascinating, distributed, mobile, circulating system that learns and teaches at the level of the cell. It has memory, some of which lasts our entire life, some of which has to be refreshed every twenty years, every twelve years, a booster shot every six years. This is a very fascinating component of our body’s intelligence that, as far as we know, is not conscious, but even that has to be questioned and studied.
~ Caroline Jones from, Questioning the Cranial Paradigm | Edge.org
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I often think of my conscious self as the only part of me that really matters. But when I read articles like this one I’m reminded of the rider-and-elephant metaphor. A case can even be made that our entire body, consciousness, and societies at large are just very clever ways for all the non-human things that live in our guts to get moved around… a sort of human-body-as-spaceship, for microbes.
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There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
~ Henry David Thoreau
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