Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.
~ Viktor Frankl
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Depending on how willing a person is to take this experiment seriously, they will at some point discover why human beings have made such a big deal of the Great Ability. To the degree you can meet experience exactly as it is, without resentment, it ceases to cause you suffering and drive your behavior.
~ David Cain from, The Inner Superpower That Makes Us Human
slip:4urate7.
Unless you live under a rock—or “lived” under a rock since you’re not now under a rock; Welcome to the Internet! :)
Unless you live under a rock you’ve heard about “mindfulness practice” and “meditation” and probably “Metta” and maybe “one-point” and “zen” for sure. Cain hits it right out of the part, without even swinging, just by setting it out clearly. Every single time I realize I’m not currently exercising the great ability, I immediately pull myself back to it.
Now if only I could realize it more frequently.
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This is what great artists do. But in order to connect the magnificent great big idea dots, they have to have boatloads of smaller idea dots.
~ Steven Pressfield from, What It Takes: The Professor, The Artist, The Writer, And The Dots
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Sometimes I don’t have a single, specific take-away to share. Sometimes there are one, or two, things which strike me as being related; I just toss these posts up as a, “Hey, did you see…” for the world.
But in the case of this little missive from Pressfield, I lost count of the things this is related to in my personal thinking. It’s apropos of a personal conversation I had the other day about feeling a general malaise around doing things. It’s apropos of trying to find a mission. …of trying to get bored enough, to do random, deep-enough work, to create space for one’s brain to have fresh insights. However the final straw was stumbling upon something written in 2017 which has a frickin’ Sarat reference, after I was just recently using Pointillism as a metaphor.
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But life is ample, of course, for men who keep themselves detached from involvement. None of their time is transferred to others, none is frittered away in this diretion and that, none is committed to Fortune, none perishes of neglect, none is squandered in lavishness, none is idle: All of it, so to speak, produces income. A very little is therefore amply sufficient, and hence, when his last day comes, the philosopher goes to meet his death with a steady step.
~ Seneca
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The Stoics argued that it’s not feelings and pleasure that control our primary impulses but reason—and because of this, reason, like a craftsman, overrides impulse. Sometimes what feels good leads to bad results. What we feel is good for us often isn’t. Reason alone allows us to keep our individual nature (what’s good for me) and universal nature (what’s good for my kind) in harmony.
~ Stephen Hanselman from, Oikeiosis – Stoic Ethics and the Unbreakable Connection Between Self-Interest and the Interests of Others
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I believe the key thing which distinguishes us from the other animals is our faculty of reason. If any of my myriad ramblings about Stoicism have peaked your interest, this article is a proper discussion of Stoic ethics.
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They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”, and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone’s revenue. That’s how you make Big Money. And it usually works.
~ Marco Arment from, Pragmatic app pricing – Marco.org
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Somehow, five whole years ago(!), I missed this beautiful little article by Ament.
Fortunately, now you’ve read it too.
…also, podcasting can be saved—saved and kept open, the way the World Wide Web will always be open—with one small idea. Free idea, take it, tell others, the Open Podcast Directory.
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The worker must be stronger than his project; loads larger than the bearer must necessarily crush him. Certain careers, moreover, are not so demanding in themselves as they are prolific in begetting a mass of other activities. Enterprises which give rise to new and multifarious activities should be avoided; you must not commit yourself to a task from which there is no free egress. Put your hand to one you can finish or at least hope to finish; leave alone those that expand as you work at them and do not stop where you intended they should.
~ Seneca
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Worse, this combines really badly with my default working style. I have a strong neurotic desire to finish things, and to fixate on my total output rather than time spent working. I’ll often push myself to complete my current task, going well beyond my allocated working time, and not being willing to take a break until I’m done.
~ From Meaningful Rest — LessWrong
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This is an article examining what it means to rest, and how breaking one’s default behavior is critical. The bit I’ve quoted was definitely a problem for me. Changing my default thinking in the form of “shoulding” on myself has opened up several other doors to change. (Note that I still, very carefully grammared around implying I’ve been successful at change—that’s a default I’m still working on. :)
What’s your default that’s holding you back?
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From the Roman historian Suetonius, we learn that festina lente became Octavian’s motto. Octavian, making Athenodorus’ influence clear, “thought nothing less becoming in a well-trained leader than haste and rashness.” His favorite sayings were: “More haste, less speed”; “Better a safe commander than a bold”; and “That is done quickly enough which is done well enough.” The first one is rendered simply enough in Latin that it’s worth saying again: Festina lente. Make haste, slowly.
~ From Who Is Athenodorus Cananites?
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I’m taking up the phrase Festina Lente, (make haste, slowly,) in place of “unrestrained moderation.”
There are countless examples of this idea throughout history. The archetype is, I think, “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.” Perhaps, “festina lente,” though, is the archetype? …or maybe the original Greek? Anyway.
I’m trying to keep it in mind as a touch phrase for those moments—say, when I’m literally knee deep in tree trimmings stumbling around my yard, exhausted and I should quit soon before I get hurt… “festina lente.”
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The days of our present come one by one, and each day minute by minute; but all the days of the past will appear at your bidding and allow you to examine them and linger over them at your will. Busy men have no time for this. Excursions into all the parts of its past are the privilege of a serene and untroubled mind; but the minds of the preoccupied cannot turn or look back, as if constricted by a yoke. And so their life vanishes into an abyss.
~ Seneca
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