I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. For this is what makes life evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.
~ Seneca
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Reading time: About 5 minutes, 1000 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/71
The Whole Earth Catalog. Now there’s someone who poured their time, energy, money and personal brand of sanity into a project, and it succeeded. Then the Internet came along and supplanted the entire project.
Yet for years, access to the Whole Earth Catalog itself has been difficult. 55 years on from the first publication of the Catalog, it mostly lives on in the interstices — as a symbol of a vibrant countercultural history and an inspiration for writers, designers, and technologists, but less so as an actual set of catalogs that you can read. The Catalog is not lost media per se — copies can be found in libraries, archives, and personal collections across the world — but accessing its trove of information is no longer as easy as it was in its heyday.
That is, until now.
~ Jacob Kuppermann from, The Lasting Whole Earth Catalog
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…and then, that original project rose from the ashes to be something even better.
Sometimes, I find something that warms my dark, frozen, disenchanted, bitter, burnt-out heart. I don’t subscribe to notions like “information wants to be free” but when I see things like this… well, I get a little warm–fuzzy inside.
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The world is this continually unfolding set of possibilities and opportunities, and the tricky thing about life is, on the one hand having the courage to enter into things that are unfamiliar, but also having the wisdom to stop exploring when you’ve found something worth sticking around for. That is true of a place, of a person, of a vocation. Balancing those two things—the courage of exploration and the commitment to staying—and getting the ratio right is very hard.
~ Sebastian Junger
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In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time—literally—substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.
~ Peter Drucker
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SELF-COMPASSION — Beware the stern, vociferous, insistent, internal critic. In my head, it sounds like me, but it is not me. If I said to another, even a fraction of the things I say incessently to myself, I would be arrested, or more likely, assaulted.
My martial arts teacher, Sensei Wirth, turned the phrase: No this. No that. No delay.
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Arrived in the middle? Visit the first post, Where to begin?
(The entire series is available to download as a PDF ebook.)
… excellence is not a law of physics. Excellence is a moral act.
~ Huch MacLeod
You create excellence by deciding to do so, nothing more. It doesn’t matter if you went to the wrong school, or were born on the wrong side of the tracks, or working the wrong job.
You go into the situation and you go the extra mile. Your decision. You own it. You own the potential downsides as well.
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I have a hard time distinguishing when I’m in the pursuit of excellence from when I’m in the paralysis of perfection. In my mind I can see so many options, permutations and problems, and my thinking wants to race down every path. Which path leads to excellence? Which path leads only to perfection? I spent a lot of time—let’s say the ’90s and ’00s—checking every available path to see where they led.
But I don’t want to do that any more. Here are things I’m doing, and of course I’ll do them with excellence. And over there? Over there are the rest of the paths throughout the entire universe which I’m perfectly fine leaving to others. The universe did just fine before I was here, and it will continue to be fine after.
You know that great Robert Frost poem about two paths diverging in a wood? Turns out that it does not matter which path you choose… until you’ve gone so far down that path that you cannot return and go the other way. Only then have you actually chosen.
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…now I want to write a science fiction novel about a planet full of aliens who are perfect game theorists, but who always behave kindly and respectfully to one another. Then some idiot performs a census, and the whole place collapses into apocalyptic total war.
~ Scott Alexander from, Cooperation Un-veiled
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That pull quote is simply fun. The article is actually a serious attempt to pick apart an interesting philosophical question.
I’m not sure I agree with his conclusions… actually, I’m not even sure I understand the question he’s thinking about. But I find that the more I peek in the dark corners of the basement of my philosophical ideas, the more comfortable I sleep at night.
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For remembering makes everything “just now,” doesn’t it? Just now I was a boy, sitting in the house of Sotion the philosopher; Just now I began to argue cases; Just now I stopped wanting to argue them; Just now I ceased to be able. The rapidity of time is boundless—and is more evident when one looks back. For though it goes at breakneck speed, it glides by so smoothly that those who are intent on the present moment fail to notice it passing.
~ Seneca
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Giving up and moving on are two very different things. There comes a point when you get tired of chasing everyone and trying to fix everything, but it’s not giving up, and it’s not the end. It’s a new beginning. It’s realizing, finally, that you don’t need certain people and things and the drama they bring.
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Barnes and Noble is the last man standing, right?
They tried the hardware/tablet/reader game. (Kudos for putting their money and effort where their hearts are.) But they flopped:
Barnes & Noble laid off its Nook hardware engineers, according to a source that tipped Business Insider. The engineers were let go last Thursday, according to our source. This follows Barnes & Noble dismissing the VP of Hardware, Bill Saperstein in January.
~ From Barnes & Noble Fired Its Nook Hardware Engineering Staff
Go over and search the IOS app store for “Barnes and Noble”. Nadda.
Free consulting for B&N:
Nice. You just made it the best digital bookstore in the world, and made it easy for me to shift sideways to a physical book because people DO still read dead-tree books.
Extra credit:
Come up with a book recycling program so I can bring the dead-tree book back to the store — maybe I can only do this with books I bought from you. That book can then be donated to a library, resold in the marketplace second hand, or you write it off, whatever.
In exchange for me giving you the physical book, I get a wee bit of in-app credit that I can use buying those getting-started reading excerpts. Now you’ve created a cycle where I buy the book, give it back and use the “credit” to get my next hit of initial reading, to make me buy the next book . . .
You’re welcome.
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