Science fiction has the capacity to inspire by setting the vision of a radically better future, and by making it clear that the future won’t happen unless we put in the work.
~ Dan Wang
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7 for Sunday
7 for Sunday is a weekly serving of 7 things for you to savor. — It’s an email containing my reflections on interesting things I find laying about, seasoned with some quotes from my collection. See https://7forsunday.com/.
Everyone else
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
~ Haruki Murakami
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Knowing
This is the game we play: The only thing you really know is what you can put into words.
~ Alan Watts
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Point of view
A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
~ Marshall McLuhan
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Moments you weren’t expecting
What I’m looking for, in both fiction and documentary, are moments that you weren’t expecting, and which the audience don’t feel prepared for, moments that are candid, like something that just happened in front of the camera, and it’s not going to happen again. Those are the moments you live for as a documentary maker.
~ Kevin Macdonald, from Kevin MacDonald – The Talks
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I’ve lately been on a bender reading many of these really interesting, really short, interviews with countless people. Most of them don’t particularly interest me. “But wait,” you’re thinking, “those two sentences seem contradictory.” I’m glad you asked about that!
You see, once I know that there’s some large body of work and it’s pretty uniform, then I wonder: Why should I think that the ones I like are the really good ones? Since the work is (pretty) uniform, maybe they’re all really good (or pretty good, at least) and the reason I don’t like most of them… is me. If I sift through the work am I identifying the good ones? …or am I reinforcing, via confirmation bias, my narrow view points? If I wanted to grow—growth often being uncomfortable, especially when it comes to shifting one’s own perspectives—maybe I should intentionally read the ones that I think aren’t that good. Maybe I should be seeking out things which I’m misjudging, and that would by definition be the things I think aren’t that good.
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Distraction
The defenders of our freedom have failed to take into account our infinite appetite for distraction.
~ Aldous Huxley
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Lists
To-do lists tend to be long; Success lists are short. One pulls you in all directions; The other aims you in a specific direction. One is a disorganized directory and the other is an organized directive. If a list isn’t built around success, then that’s not where it takes you. If your to-do list contains everything, then it’s probably taking you everywhere but where you really want to go.
~ Gary Keller
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Time well spent
‘Dagon’ has all the elements of a classic Lovecraft tale. Here, as in many of his later works – including ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ (written in 1926), The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927), and At the Mountains of Madness (1931) – optimistic endeavours for knowledge, even the simple act of seeing what’s on the other side of a hill, are thwarted by incomprehensible terrors and a horrifyingly arbitrary cosmic order. These revelations shatter the minds of Lovecraft’s truth-seeking characters, including doctors, archaeologists, lost sailors, metaphysicians and scientists of all kinds.
~ Sam Woodward, from Terrifying vistas of reality
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Some people must think that reading a bunch of Lovecraft’s work was time I wasted. I loved it. I didn’t find it scary (I’m not sure I’ve ever found any book scary. Movies, on the other hand, can scare the hell out of me.) But I deeply enjoyed Lovecraft… and yet I could never quite express why. After reading Woodward’s thoughts I’m thinking I enjoyed the experience—being myself one of those “doctors, archaeologists, lost sailors, metaphysicians and scientists of all kinds”—of seeing people like me get the hell scared out of them.
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Precious
What is this little, agile, precious fire, this fluttering motion which we call the mind?
~ Prior
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Strangeness
This planet is genuinely strange. If we were all flown to the moon or to Mars and walked around on them, they wouldn’t seem that strange to us because there would be no yardsticks or anything to measure their strangeness by—they’re just vast museums of geology. Whereas the Earth is a deranged zoo, and somebody left the doors of the cages open. We have real strangeness because we can measure the degree to which things are or are not what they ought to be.
~ J. G. Ballard
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Start the clock
I sometimes talk about “moving forward” as a default mindset I have. For example, all other things being equal, go to the airport and wait in the terminal, not a home. But in the end, it all boils down to my having deeply apprehended the lesson that the first 90% of everything is vastly easier than the second 90%. So I generally tend to do-now, rather than wait.
It struck me that this has become a kind of dividing line between success and failure within my team. Those who haven’t worked out haven’t been able to start the clock or return the ball very quickly. It’s not just my team—it’s a source of frustration that fills the letters and dispatches of just about every great general, admiral, and leader throughout history.
~ Ryan Holiday from, You Can’t Succeed In Life Without This Skill – RyanHoliday.net
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Unfortunately, in my case, do-now can become a millstone upon which one can be ground to oblivion.
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Discovery
Part of the act of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don’t look for them in the wrong places.
~ Henry Miller
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Auto-pilot
Auto-pilot is great. Presuming of course that one understands all the things that one is handing over to be controlled by the auto-pilot. Auto-pilot as a tool for relieving us of drudgery and opportunities for mistakes? Yes, please. As a way to shirk our responsibility to lead our lives in a fulfilling way? Not so much.
The reality is, behaviour change is hard, and many people have not been taught effective goal-setting. For example, someone might know that they’re unhappy and have intentions to change, but they focus on something too broad (‘I want to be happy’) or on what they don’t want (‘I don’t want to be depressed’). An ill-defined focus can lead to trying many things without following through on any one thing.
~ Kiki Fehling from, How to stop living on auto-pilot | Psyche Guides
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I wasn’t taught effective goal-setting, but I’ve got it sorted now. I find it super-effective to not always set clear goals. Set instead, aspirations. Better yet, identify inspirations and regularly update them.
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Patience
Be patient. You’ll know when it’s time for you to wake up and move ahead.
~ Ram Dass
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Consciousness
Thinking about consciousness never fails to induce something like vertigo. I always have this sense of myself tipping over into some abyss. I simply, truly, have no idea at all about how consciousness works, or what my consciousness is. All the world is but a dream within a dream?
I think mindfulness’s true purpose is insight into the fundamental nature of consciousness. Mindfulness is good for producing fundamental insights into the nature of mind.
~ Sam Harris from, Sam Harris – The Talks
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That’s a wonderfully concise way to describe it.
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Books
Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life.’
~ Helen Exley
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In the beginning
Perspective is endlessly fascinating to me. What is it like to look back on decades of one’s own efforts? What’s it like to look back on one’s efforts if they’ve shifted the world?
Three and a half decades ago, when I invented the web […]
~ Tim Berners-Lee from, Marking the Web’s 35th Birthday: An Open Letter – World Wide Web Foundation
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Well, that’s an ‘I’ statement with a little punch.
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June 09, 2024 — #88
Reading time: About 5 minutes, 1000 words.
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/88
Calm
Calm technology. Slow thought. Peace.
We need a philosophy of Slow Thought to ease thinking into a more playful and porous dialogue about what it means to live.
~ Vincenzo Di Nicola from, Take your time: the seven pillars of a Slow Thought manifesto | Aeon Essays
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We can each do some things, and not everything. Choose wisely.
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Journaling
I find that whatever hindrances occur I write just about the same amount of truth in my journal; For the record is more concentrated, and usually it is so very real and earnest life, after all, that interrupts. All flourishes are omitted.
~ H. D. Thoreau
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