I’m currently in the Introduction from Will Stone’s translation of, Montaigne by Stefan Zweig. Two things:
First, a nit about getting the right ideas into our minds when we read. Not a criticism of authors’ (such as Stone) word choices, but rather of our thinking correctly as readers.
Stone quotes Zweig as, “How to keep humanity intact in the throes of bestiality?” Stone’s translation is from 2015, and our current English usage carries sexual connotations. But I had a hunch that Zweig had something like “in the way of beasts” in mind since he was writing in German, in Brazil, in 1941, amidst the global throes of WWII.
It took me just a few moments to get an LLM to show me that Zweig almost certainly wrote «Bestialität»—which in Zweig’s German would have meant brute savagery or barbaric cruelty with no modern (circa 2025) sexual connotation. And in the larger context of the brutality of the war, that connotation makes perfect sense.
Second, further along Stone quotes a vivid metaphor from Zweig relating to suicidal ideation:
[…] always in moments of impotence it emerged, surging powerfully upwards like a dark rock whenever the tide of passions and hopes in his soul ebbed.
Relax; I’m not suicidal. I’m only remarking on the sublime perfection of that metaphor.
If you’ve not heard of Burkeman’s book (Four Thousand Weeks, I’ve not yet read it) the seed is simple: Your life will be about 4,000 weeks in duration.
In this podcast episode, Burkeman talks about the common advice to prioritize your work and to do the important things first—an echo of Stephen Covey’s metaphor of rocks, pebbles and sand to be put into a jar representing your limited time. Burkeman zooms in on the implication—missed by most people—within Covey’s advice.
You only have finite time. If you have a prioritized list of what’s important to you, it’s the stuff in the middle that will do you in.
Your top 5 items are clearly those big things you should work on. But, your number 6 item—that one feels almost as important as number 5. You need to actively avoid the danger of getting sucked into that number 6 (and the other almost as important items right behind it.)
Let’s bend relationship advice to apply to podcasting: Feeling stuck in a rut with your podcasting? Go have a conversation with a guest where your entire intention is to be of service to them.
The asymmetry between wanting to know others and being known by them presents an inherent problem, because relationships require reciprocity: If I don’t do the work to know you deeply, a relationship doesn’t form in which you will know me. This vicious cycle—Poe syndrome again—is made much worse when you are lonely to begin with […] In other words, if no one knows you well and you are thus lonely, that may make you more self-focused and less interested in others, making it much less likely for others to want to get to know you well.
Question: What would happen, if your intention with a podcast episode, was to help some else’s well-being— if your intention was only to demonstrate to them that you care? What if you go into it hoping for nothing for yourself?
So not an intention of, “I want to know X, so I’ll ask good questions.”
But rather, “I think they’d enjoy talking about X, so I’ll ask good questions.”
Answer: It’s totally amazing. It alters your own life. You should go do it 500 times.
(Wether or not you turn those conversation into podcasts is irrelevant of course.)
In person, I try to not talk about technology. This is simply because I’ve spent such a significant portion of my awake-time already doing so, that I’d like to talk about something else now… for the rest of my life, in fact. But technology comes up a lot. These Days® artificial intelligence comes up a lot too. Mostly (in both those cases and others) I try to sit back and simply enjoy learning more about the people I’m with at that moment.
We dramatically overestimate the threat of an accidental AI takeover, because we tend to conflate intelligence with the drive to achieve dominance. This confusion is understandable: During our evolutionary history as (often violent) primates, intelligence was key to social dominance and enabled our reproductive success. And indeed, intelligence is a powerful adaptation, like horns, sharp claws or the ability to fly, which can facilitate survival in many ways. But intelligence per se does not generate the drive for domination, any more than horns do.
This is an insight—I’m going to call it a “wedge”—that I’d not thought of. There is a conceptual leap between “is intelligent” and “will strive for dominance.” For everyone I’ve heard speak about AI, the leap seems tiny, as if the one necessarily implies the other. But this wedge fits perfectly into that narrow space. In fact, it makes it really clear that there is a space between those two things. Interesting times.
If you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong, and that’s what you express and project to people you know, you don’t become a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people. That draws more destructiveness.
In its original Latin use, the word genius was more readily applied to places — genius loci: “the spirit of a place” — than to persons, encoded with the reminder that we are profoundly shaped by the patch of spacetime into which the chance-accident of our birth has deposited us, our minds porous to the ideological atmosphere of our epoch. It is a humbling notion — an antidote to the vanity of seeing our ideas as the autonomous and unalloyed products of our own minds.
Neither our economy nor the demands of a life well-lived dictate that everyone should aspire to be sitting alone at a desk in rural Narashino, crafting literature to the light of the rising sun. My growing concern, however, is that such real commitment to thought has become too rare.
I’ve read every post on Newport’s blog. I have both Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You, and Digital Minimalism is in my “priority” subset of my wishlist of books. (Yes, I am aware that I have problems.) But I’ll out myself: I’ve not read either of the two Newport books that I already have, and see no point brining the third into the mix until I do. But whining about my privileged-problem of having too many books, isn’t my theme here. Rather, I want to think about why is it “that such real commitment to thought has become too rare.” Because I totally agree that such is so.
(That’s all. I’m thinking about it, and now so are you.)
Against the passions we must fight by main force, not by logic-chopping; the line must be turned by frontal attack, not by pinpricks. Casuistry will not do, for the adversary must be smashed, not scratched
What can we learn about personal growth, resilience, and community through extreme physical challenges?
Chris Keighley helps me muscle up the strength to understand challenge. We discuss its rewards, hazards, and how it can be a powerful tool for personal growth from day one. He shares stories from behind the scenes of the 1,000 Muscle-Up Challenge, and talks about finding challenge in more mundane activities, like building a tire tower at the Gerlev International Gathering.
Modern life doesn’t give you many chances of seeing what you’re capable of.
~ Chris Keighley (6:30)
The conversation centers on the 1000 Muscle-Up Challenge, an intense physical and mental test. The origins of the challenge, its evolution from a hypothetical debate to an actual event, and the experiences of participants highlight themes of resilience, camaraderie, and self-discovery. Chris navigates physical exhaustion and mental roadblocks, supported by a tight-knit community, ultimately revealing their limits and potential.
Other topics include the broader philosophy of challenges in parkour and training. The discussion explores how setting appropriately difficult challenges helps individuals grow, with parallels drawn between physical challenges and life experiences. The importance of community support in such endeavors, as well as the transformative effects of overcoming personal boundaries, are recurring themes.
Takeaways
Challenges and growth — Difficult challenges reveal untapped potential and build resilience.
Camaraderie in struggle — Support from others transforms individual challenges into shared victories.
The mental aspect of training — Mental endurance is just as crucial as physical strength in overcoming obstacles.
Personal limits and discovery — Pushing beyond known limits fosters personal growth and self-awareness.
The role of uncertainty — Effective challenges must be within reach but not guaranteed, encouraging full effort.
Value of small challenges — Even minor challenges, like balancing exercises, can be deeply rewarding.
Physical risk and wisdom — Extreme challenges require careful judgment about safety and personal limits.
Adapting training — Different challenges suit different stages of experience and capability.
The joy of overcoming — Achieving difficult goals provides a profound sense of accomplishment and pride.
Resources
Parkour Generations — A global organization offering parkour training and education.
David Belle — A foundational figure in parkour, influencing the ethos of physical and mental challenges.
As I mentioned earlier, the first flight left before dawn provided an extended (because flying westward) pre-dawn and sunrise show. When I fly, I always try to look for optical phenomenon and this flight was the most spectacular I have ever seen.
