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/.
To be an artist, you don’t have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It’s just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.
~ Viggo Mortensen
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But at our core, whether we’re an insecure teenager from Quebec, an overworked woman from India, a worrisome grandmother from Texas, or a desperate immigrant living in Australia, we all seem to struggle with the same small grouping of stressors and anxieties[.]
~ Mark Manson from, https://markmanson.net/biggest-lesson-learned-from-you
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In recent years—particular in that one where I regularly had a therapist—this became glaringly obvious to me. First, I started noticing when my petulant child arrives with a list of grievances, and using that as a cue that it’s time to shift gears, shift tasks, take a nap, or something. I note that my mind loves to believe it’s, at the very least, in control of itself. But that turns out to be absolutely false, because about half of my central–nervous system is in my skull, and the other half is hanging down connected to all sorts of non-conscious things.
Second, rather than try to help everyone else with the same problems I have—uh, hello, if I have the problem it’s clear I don’t know how to fix it. Instead, I’m dashing off into the mountain flowers working on things which are fun. Because that really does help me. How cool would it be if some other people (with the same problems as me) would also be helped?
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From this experience I learned what legendary writers call ‘killing your darlings’—the plot points and characters that detract from a novel. Sometimes you need to stop doing things you love in order to nurture the one thing that matters most.
~ Scott Belsky
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But I have this very strong belief in the unconscious. And the idea that like, that we spent that it is driving us, it’s like this massive river that we’re floating on. And we’re sort of unaware, obviously, sometimes where we’re going, and I don’t think we have much control over it, because that brings in the question of like, Fate, destiny and free will. But I believe that there’s a way in which you can kind of hop on to as in performance as an actor, like onto another river a little bit, if you work hard enough, you kind of like, move your unconscious into a space.
~ Jake Gyllenhaal ~5′, from episode 37 of Off Camera, https://offcamera.com/issues/jake-gyllenhaal/listen/#.Y1xEtC-B2Zw
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This is an early episode of Sam Jones‘ podcast, Off Camera. At just under an hour, it feels a little shorter than most of his other episodes—but it’s full of great things none the less.
They talk about Gyllenhaal’s work ethic—where he got it, and what it means to him. There’s also some fun side-tracks into some of the movies he’s made, Southpaw in particular gets discussed. If you’re in any way a fan of Gyllenhaal, you’ll enjoy this.
Being interested in the art of conversation, one of the details I keep an eye on is the balance of how much of myself (as a host) and the guest are talking in the episode. My personal preferred balance is 3:1 for the guest—25% host and 75% guest. It turns out (transcription services report the percentages) that this episode is exactly that balance.
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Reading time: About 5 minutes, 1100 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/5
Particularly radical was Franklin’s idea about who could pursue happiness in this way. In Europe at the time, mainly aristocratic men with means would have been able to pursue lifelong learning in a formal sense. Franklin rejected this. He believed that “this pursuit was not the province of the upper classes,” Burns told me, “but rather for everyone, from the wealthy to the masses.” Burns hastened to add that this idea was nowhere near expansive enough in Franklin’s time—Franklin himself had slaves in his household, and equal rights for women were still far off—but this philosophy set the unique American aspiration in motion.
~ Arthur C. Brooks from, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/05/ben-franklin-happiness-self-improvement-advice/629767/
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There’s certainly a lot one can say about Franklin ranging from great to terrible. He feels close enough in time that he should be at least partly relatable and understandable, like a quirky uncle who has some sketchy ideas but is generally a good egg. But he isn’t; He isn’t that close in time and the reality of his life is all over the map. It’s difficult, but important, to try to give proper credit for radical, positive ideas despite other blemishes, mistakes, or egregious errors. Brooks does a tidy job of focusing on Franklin’s advancement of the batshit–crazy notion that everyone could do the absolutely selfish thing of pursuing their own happiness, and that would actually make the communal society better. Alas, it’s humanity’s loss that such radical ideas didn’t surface sooner.
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You cannot be completely just. One time you do too little, the other time you do too much. There is only one way not to sin against justice; Always to change things, to improve things, to make them better.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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So people are getting what they asked for. Autonomy. Responsibility instead of authority. The chance to speak up and be heard. Most of all, the opportunity to be on the hook.
Not surprisingly, some people, particularly if they’ve been indoctrinated into the industrial mindset, don’t like this.
They can’t ask, “just tell me what to do.” The search for an A, the hope to be picked by someone in charge, the desire for perfect–it’s gone. So is the deniability that comes with following instructions.
~ Seth Godin from, https://seths.blog/2022/05/the-post-industrial-collision/
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I don’t know if what Godin points out is a common problem. I’m wondering if those who can’t make the shift mentioned by Godin are simply surrendering too soon. Modern life is complicated—the most clever thing the devil ever did was convince people the Internet was easy! The more time you spend knee-deep in technology the sooner you learn that you have to be able to throw your arms up and tap-out. That’s useful in some situations (all of life that touches technology) but would look exactly like idunnoitis in a business setting.
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Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves. To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul. To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.
~ Henrik Ibsen
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This was a particularly interesting (and difficult) post to research and write. There is a wealth of literature about empathy, and I found a lot of it surprising. I feel kind of like the kid who opened up the back of dad’s watch to see how it works and now is sitting amidst a cubic yard of springs and gears wondering how to put it all back together.
~ David Gross from, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SMziBSCT9fiz5yG3L/notes-on-empathy
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At 19,000 words and 77 minutes of reading, this is a small book. If you click through, you’ll quickly discover that it is also one of 50–or–so, similarly–sized “posts” by Gross on lesswrong.com. Fortunately, he didn’t let his “wondering how to put it all back together” stop him from taking it all apart. Entirely apart, dissected from every direction, and including diagrams.
Even if this topic, author, and specific linked-article aren’t of interest, I encourage you to click over to Lesswrong. It is a magnificent web site, beautifully simple to behold, and easy to read for hours on end. It is one of the very few websites on the Internet that I don’t instinctively glip to my browser’s show-reader-view. Lesswrong is jammed full of useful features for a reader. Lesswrong is quite literally what Wikipedia should be in terms of user experience and appearance.
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The world simply exists as it is—things or events are not good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful. It is we, with our particular perspectives, who add color to or subtract it from things and people. We focus on either the beautiful Gothic architecture or the annoying tourists.
~ Robert Greene
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This was Seth Godin’s second appearance on Brian Koppelman’s show The Moment and captures a slightly less polished version of some of his usual messaging. It’s easier to see his path to really polished books like This is Marketing and The Practice.
I think we talked last time about watching the light go on for people. That is my mission. That is what I’ve been doing since I was 18 years old, that when I’m doing my best work, what I’m doing is engaging with someone and helping them see the world differently and let them do work that they care about. And sometimes you can do that with a book. And the magic of books used to be that millions of people would go to a store waiting for a light to be turned on. So it’s scaled. And it was a combination of solitary endeavor, but a community one as well. I do it in person with people I care about. But that doesn’t scale. So the question is, is there a way in this post book world to be able to create environments where people change.
~ Seth Godin ~3:17 in the July 7, 2015 episode of The Moment with Brian Koppelman
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Depending on where you normally listen, this episode might be hard to find. It’s more than 300 episodes back (7 years) in Koppelman’s The Moment podcast. I couldn’t find it on the main web site for the show. (I originally found it because I have a way of manually, human-reading RSS feeds, beginning from the first entry in a “drip” system.)
The link below is to a service from Overcast (the podcast player app) which will let you play it in your favorite web browser.
https://overcast.fm/+HS-ViyTws
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Reading time: About 5 minutes, 1000 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/4
In some fields our knowledge and discoveries are seamlessly passed down across generations. In others, it’s fleeting. Knowledge in some fields is cumulative. In other fields it’s cyclical (at best).
There are occasional periods when society learns that debt can be dangerous, greed backfires, and more money won’t solve all your problems. But it quickly forgets and moves on. Again and again. Generation after generation.
I think there are a few reasons this happens, and what it means we have to accept.
~ Morgan Housel from, https://collabfund.com/blog/cumulative-vs-cyclical-knowledge/
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I spend significant time worrying about how to learn from all the experiences I have. Worrying, of course, is not good. When I stop and honestly assess however, I realize that I do a really good job closing loops and bringing what I’ve learned forward into my ongoing work and life.
And then I read pieces like this. If humanity keeps making these cyclical reset-lurches, forgetting hard-won and important lessons, does that bode well for my ability to keep learning and improving? Or is the problem the inter-personal, or inter-generational learning?
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[T]oday, let’s seek to be better than the things that disappoint or hurt us. Let’s try to be the example we’d like others to follow. It’s awful to be a cheat, to be selfish, to feel the need to inflict pain on our fellow human beings. Meanwhile, living morally and well is quite nice.
~ Ryan Holiday
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[The common refrain is t]hat what you do for work doesn’t define you. That the health, hobbies, and relationships you cultivate outside the office are more important. That you’re a human being, and not a human doing, damnit.
It’s the kind of thing that sounds great in the abstract. Yet, no matter how often we rehearse it cognitively and rhetorically, it never entirely resonates viscerally.
~ Brett McKay from, https://www.artofmanliness.com/career-wealth/career/you-are-kind-of-your-job/
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I define “work” as: The things I do so that I can trade the results with others. We can all trade in many ways, but a common way to trade is to use money as a way of storing and exchanging value. I don’t think I’m veering off into economics. That definition is critical. There are an enormous number of things which I do that, by that definition are not what I’d consider “work.” How much work one does in terms of hours-spent is going to vary tremendously (and it’s going to vary for countless reasons). There are 168 hours in a 7-day week. If one works 50 hours a week, that’s fully 30% of your total time. Conversely, if one works 5 hours, it’s 3%.
Let’s take it as true that what one does for work matters. That it matters in a real way, which affects your physical and mental health. I do believe that one is able to outgrow this need for meaningful work; I do think one can grow from our inherent nature of a being in need of meaningful doing, to become simply a human being as Mckay (and many others through history) has pointed out.
As one works less, doesn’t it become increasingly important that each moment of work be good work? A couple good hours a week used to make those 50-hours-a-week good. Where’s the “good work” balance for 5-hours-a-week? This inherent need to do work that matters gets stronger as one’s trading-with-others needs diminish. This seems to me, to suggest that the necessity of shifting to the “human simply being” becomes more urgent.
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It is essential to get lost and jam up your plans every now and then. It’s a source of creativity and perspective. The danger of maps, capable assistants, and planning is that you may end up living your life as planned. If you do, your potential cannot possibly exceed your expectations.
~ Scott Belsky
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Titan is like Earth with its rivers, lakes, and seas filled by rain, but as stated, this is liquid methane and ethane as opposed to liquid water on Earth. Like Earth, Titan also has sand dunes, but they are made of hydrocarbons instead of silicate-based substances. Also, much like Earth, Titan is known for having a seasonal liquid transport cycle, also known as the water cycle on Earth, linking atmosphere, land, and oceans.
~ Laurence Tognetti from, https://www.universetoday.com/155659/titan-is-an-alien-world-but-surprisingly-familiar/
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Back in the 1980s I read a lot of science fiction weaving epic tales and describing alien landscapes. These days, I continue to read things which are weaving epic, and describing alien—but they are no longer fiction.
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People can live without need and without jealousy only when they lead a life of moderation.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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If you stop to listen to a musician or street performer for more than a minute, you owe them a dollar.
There is no such thing as being “on time.” You are either late or you are early. Your choice.
~ Kevin Kelly from, https://kk.org/thetechnium/103-bits-of-advice-i-wish-i-had-known/
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Alas, though I’ve provided you a link, it has already rotted. (I lamented this just a few weeks ago too.) You’re welcome to click through, but it leads now to a teaser version of the original piece… and links to the it’s-now-a-book on Amazon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’m all for people making money off their own work. It’s just weird to me, because it was only just 5 months ago that I marked that URL for later reading (my read–things–later tool saved me a copy of the page) and yet now it is no more.
Pro-tip: If you have the URL to something (as I’ve given you above) the Internet Archive probably saved you a copy. For example, here’s 103 Bits of Advice… from May, 2022.
As for the specific bits of advice, above I’ve chosen just two to quote. The bit about being late or early is my favorite; The world would be infinitely better off if everyone learned that bit. And the bit about owing money to street musicians is one I learned later in life, but to which I strictly abide; If I stop to listen, I will contribute.
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