Read lots of non-fiction. Whatever interests you.
Try to find overlap over the different interests. Try to find new thoughts there. You might be the first to find them.
Assume everything you know is wrong. It's generally true of >50%.
Hard is best, too hard is bad, too easy is bad.
in fact, by adding that intellectualism is what makes these stand out.
But i do specify non-fiction because I wouldnt say most fiction is intellectual; or if you try to approach some fiction you'll quickly dig deeper than what's actually there and then it's just you superimposing.
The example i like is colour metaphors. Shakespeare will say that a character put a green shirt on. You're supposed to say 'thats just a new shirt, not the colour green' but no. It actually really is just the colour green. You cant dig too deep on most fiction.
Disregard detected retardations in yourself, invest your lifes work in little turtles crawling towards abilities up the scenario tree. Do not attach, to fortresses, kings and nations built on those branches.
philosophy helps to "compress" more knowledge about the world into "less" knowledge by shifting quantity of data into difficulty from advanced conceptual abstractions
Thank you.
Pick a random thing and see if it is reachable from anywhere. A lot of them are. I suspect most are, but I don't know how to run this study (other than a brute force algorithm that will use more compute than I would want to dedicate)
Basically that the reason why philosophy is cold and meaningless is because it tries to separate itself from the source of meaning, which is intrinsically subjective and physical and spiritual.
Philosophy’s logical conclusions are relativism and nihilism (or at least they were in Tolstoy’s time? I’m not a philosopher), because they try to understand the world with a pretext that denies its vitality.
Common folk / common sense frown on these forms of philosophy, because they miss the point in a sense; they don’t actually tell you how to live in a moral way. Tolstoy thought intellectuals grossly underrated the perspective of folk wisdom in that way. We’ve made some progress in that department, since his time, but it’s still largely true today.
- Cooking a novel dish, then eating it
- Setting up a music server, then listening to music with it
- (With friends) Making a pen-and-paper game, then playing it
And agree sports are an interesting example. It kind of fits my mental model of consumption in many ways: something you do that's primary effect transforms you. Watching TV, playing a game, etc. The effect being something chemical that is satisfying. I guess with sports or exercise the internal change is more physical (muscle, endurance, etc) vs chemical. Although I suppose you are acting on the world as well - you are scoring a point or advancing a position. It's just more ephemeral (ends when game ends) and arbitrary.
Im sure even just in terms of chemical reactions there is going to be a clean split between stuff like playing video games or watching TV vs. sports, building something, etc. Dopamine vs... ?
Productive activities put us often into uncomfortable mental places which spurs growth of some kind - the discomfort is difficult to embrace however, which is why we resist it. In contrast, the consumptive activity comes out of a comfortable mental place and is embraced easily.
So, a question I ask myself is: what problems am i passionate about, and what am i doing (productively) about them. If I dont feel any passion, then perhaps, something is amiss (I am not communicating with my soul so-to-speak), and if I am not doing anything about them, then I need to get my ass moving and embrace the discomfort.
See someone else make something, try to do it yourself. Sometimes you get something nice, sometimes you have fun and then throw away the worthless object.
There are a few danger signs to watch out for. Don't get caught up in learning how - you can spend the rest of your life watching "how to make a guitar" videos and never build anything. You can spend a lot of money on tools, or think you cannot do something for lack of tools - for the first one figure out how to use minimal tools (not zero!) so you don't get invested in a hobby you turn out not to enjoy - the big bucks should be only after you are sure the hobby and the tool is for you. You can start with a project too complex - start with small projects you can get done - take on the complex ones only after you are sure this hobby is for you.
Question for you: does creating mean building something? Do you count playing music as creating? What about art? What about dancing? There is no right answer to these questions except whatever you decide.
Based on an area of interest I:
1. Find interesting people or projects that are interesting (discovery)
2. Identify the things I don't know how to do yet, or where I don't have enough information (information consumption with plan as output)
3. Execute on the plan (creation and delivery)
4. Evaluate on the outcomes -- modified ikigai is the framework I use: (1) does the world need it? (2) what is the world willing to pay for it? (3) did I enjoy it? (4) could I be good at it
What you like to consume.
A second step is understanding the taste vs skill gap: unless what you produce is related to your job or training, when you start creating things your skill is poor (and your equipment probably not adapted) and it's hard to be satisfied with the quality of what you are creating. You can create something related to your job skills, or you can recognize that skill gap is a normal thing and persevere. Some classes though are excellent at carrying someone a long way in a short time.
So is production! Even more so, I guess.
I credit a few YouTube channels for creating the spark: The Engineer Guy, This Old Tony, AvE, Pask Makes, Xyla Foxlin to name a few.
I am confused though how this was a difficult problem to begin with, particularly with the internet. It is not exactly hard to find intellectually stimulating concepts if that's what gets you off.
I also find "philosophy" to be a pretty miserable and unrewarding topic to think about, and I tend to run quickly away from those who want to talk about it. I find it very curious that the author finds it to be a natural place for your focus to land. I think this is a red herring: the secret to long-term contentment is not thinking at all if it's not strictly necessary. Aristotle got "contemplation is the greatest good" dead wrong.
There are some compelling and imaginative calls in the article, but can we drop with the metaphors? I rather have the author develop deeper examples, instead of vague focus and practicality.
Maybe because I am not searching for inspiration, but detailed roadmaps.
Read about the discovery of LSD if you haven't, it's one of the perfect example of this.
So you have to find your nature, the garden of iteas that resonates with you. For that, just read. From any topic that interests you and sometimes, dare to read something you would never do. Comics, mangas, niche recipes, biographies, romance, everything is fair game and you never know, sometimes you might just click on something you never might otherwise.
In the age of Wikipedia, kindles and libraries, you really have no excuse to not indulge in your curiosity.
For all we know, we could ever be "hard-coded" to love certain topics more than others(https://www.europeanscientist.com/en/research/the-way-we-app...). Maybe in the future, a drop of saliva would be enough to know if you should study architecture or dancing ?
Conciseness is really undervalued. Long and meandering is okay for a personal journal or diary, but if you're sharing it with the world, be concise.
I got to this part and realized: I've read this article before in some form.
It's a really common trope to head out to some remote area of Asia and admire how happy people are. There's often a spiritual component to it. I will write the guy a bit of a pass, because he himself is (I think) Indian.
But westerners have been doing stuff like this for ages and prattling on about it - it's kind of a cornerstone of Orientalism. This was actually a plot point in the recent White Lotus season. People rarely go to Appalachia to have these experiences, but you certainly can find people living simple happy lives there. (At least, if they do, nobody publishes those articles - it doesn't fit our preconceived notions of who gets to be enlightened, which is to say it has to be some place far away and people very different than your average Americans)
Not to say there's no value in this article (there is), and it was a fun read at that.
I grew up in rural India and I always recommend people to read Dr. Ambedkar’s rights on this subject.
I’ve grown up around Navayana and have many friends from Kagyu, Theravada and other traditions.
(All this to say I know Bauddha Dharma intimately)
Seattle, the city I live in, recently became the first to ban caste discrimination. I didn't think much of it at the time, but nowadays maybe there's something to be learned from jātivada, the many forms it comes in, and the response to it. Reading Leslie Feinberg right now, interesting working class perspective.
My family is from rural HP/JK/Ladakh, and a homestay like Hamta is not representative of rural HP/JK/LA/UK.
> They’re enamoured by the simple and rustic living of the villages and think of them as noble savages
I think it goes both ways. They either over-idealize it, or overly berate it.
I feel it's also state dependent to a certain extent, with some states better at rural administrative capacity (eg. Kerala, HP, PB, JK) than others (eg. KA, TG, GJ).
Something I've noticed is states that don't have a primary city tend to have slightly better rural administrative capacity, as it at least incentivizes small town or T3/4 economies to develop instead of being invested in a single mega city.
Your last para rings true. Goa, Kerala, CG and Odisha have better rural administration than MH, TL or KA because of the absence of heavyweight cities.
Rural UK is much poorer than rural HP and JK.
The administrative structure of UK is very top heavy (everything is decided in Dehradun), and Dehradun+Haridwar have caused tourism and real estate induced Dutch Disease to arise. JK and HP also have a tourism economy, but also have a strong industrial base (pharma in HP, heavy industry in JK) plus more investment in higher value rural industries like food processing and fruit cultivation.
HP and JK also have a bottom up political culture with panchayats in a district coalescing into District Planning Committee that includes state civil service cadre and the MLA, so local governance is much more responsive, and has the resources and capacity to invest in infra like cold storage or make the case for an MNC to invest in manufacturing.
Basically, if local government and administration is actually given priority beyond haphazard panchayats, it makes it easier to attract build industries and a semi-industrial rural economy.
> Kerala, CG and Odisha have better rural administration than MH, TL or KA because of the absence of heavyweight cities.
Political culture is also more top-down in states like MH/TG/KA, where the CM office tends to have inordinate control over local planning and panchayat+local government funding is minimal
Even if their administrations had some interest in rural economic development (which in those states they don't), they wouldn't even have the bandwidth because there are too many districts. This is why local government needs to be invested in by states, but locals are the ones who know best about their needs and capabilities.
A modern version of Gram Swaraj combined with Switzerland type canton system might work well but there are no incentives for the administration for that.
A lopsided population to MLA ratio makes it easier for MLAs to be disconnected from local government, and incentivizes governance through internal party machinery (beg the CM or the local party leadership to get your MLA or DM to do something) instead of via the local administration, which further deprofessionalizes local government.
> We keep forgetting that states in India are akin to states in Europe.
Pretty much. Even within states the diversity is insane (eg. MP, KA, or UP would be better served split into 3-4 states).
For what it's worth, I had something of a similar experience, but it was in a plywood shack on a desert island off the coast of California.
I think you're moralizing over a pretty bland bit of psychology: people need to be shaken from their frame of reference to see different parts of the world. Even if they exist next door. For many Americans, Appalachia will be too close to home to force off the blinders.
I've flown all over the US for work, and in every location found the same exact city. It's hard to take away someone's footing when they feel at home. OTOH, the preconditions that gave me many life broadening experiences within 100 miles of a single US city are not available to everyone.
Assigning someone internal character traits so that their external practice of respectful travel can still be judged is cruel.
But yes I could see how work travel only could make them feel like carbon copies - both from the mindset you'd be in and from the types of places you might only go for work.
On the odd times I visited DC or SF or Toronto - really amazing and different experiences.
DC:
You can get just about any kind of food - because just about every culture in the world is represented. You can find some of the more home-y type menu options too for the same reason. For example, Greek restaurants where I am at don't generally have Taramosalata (carp roe dip). Due to the shorter flights to Africa, the is a much larger African population in the DC area. One trip, I bought some Nigerian movies at a gas station. Then there's all the historical stuff - tomb of the unknown soldier, Vietnam wall, Air & Space Museum, etc. As I wandered around town on one of my early trips there, I keep seeing things I thought were very familiar - and it turns out at least some were because Bethesda (HQ'd nearby) had done an awesome job recreating apocalypse versions of them in Fallout 3 (which I played a lot of).
SF:
I went cycling a few times with a friend of mine. We went over the Golden Gate bridge, which was amazing. Also to the top of some mountain (big hill?) overlooking the city. What a view! I like to fish, and dropped a line near my hotel and caught a leopard shark. I saw an old Japanese homeless man wheel a little red wagon on a pier near the Mozilla HQ (near the many-billion dollar company I was visiting), and catch a pile of Jacksmelt using a spark plug as a sinker. There is a lot of excellent Asian-influenced dining options - my personal favorite is Lilo Lilo Yacht Club. I got to see a tent city of what appeared to be techies - all really nice huge family-sized tents, well dressed and apparently happy and well fed. One time, I was having a drink in a bar in SFO, and chatted up a guy who had just come from an executive meeting with a bunch of VP's and CTO's of Sony, where chewed them out about their usage of Kubernetes. I saw a shirtless man walking around with what appeared to be pony boots? I assume part of the gay scene.
Now - you may not like all that, but you are not generally having those experiences near suburban corporate parks. Yes, they have Outback Steakhouses, but they have rather a lot more going on.
I know I can get Greek and Asian food in both St. Louis and Denver. I just confirmed that both cities have Greek places with Taramosalata; I know from dating a Chinese girl for a year that both of those cities have extremely authentic Asian places. I've seen gay men walking around in at least Denver and Calgary (not even US).
Now, being able to buy a Nigerian movie at a gas station instead of needing to get it online is something that might qualify if it's truly exclusive to DC. The techie "tent city" in California is probably unique to California, you've got me on that one.
Having visited plenty of U.S. history/military/science/etc museums across several midwestern/western states, those could probably be argued either way. On one hand, of course every museum will have different artifacts/exhibits/etc that mean it's not quite the same at every one, and there are individual facts that you could learn at one but not another. On the other hand, I think the likelihood of coming across something in a US museum that noticeably expands my human experience is lower than the likelihood of that happening in another country's museums.
I think you can find the exact same city if you like but I also have found much more. Simply LA and NY are very different places, as are different communities in those cities.
If you go to another place and someone lets you stay with them, they are probably in a good place in life. You are selecting yourself to meet with happier people.
You won’t be making as many friends with unhappy people.
Also completing your logic loop, this guy is apparently stealing intellectual ideas from (mediocre) westerners.
Of course the reality is just that the US has become the axis of evil, and perhaps always was, it just had the best PR.
I think you're doing yourself a disservice by belitting Asian cultures and what insights they may have, that are apparently incomprehensible as more than a trope to Americans.
But if you want to buy a rural cabin on a beautiful mountain, it’s available, and cheap. You don’t need to go to Asia to live like a hermit.
Obviously America refers to the continent, so I'll use the shorthand country name "the US" instead.
> is the best
That may be true, but I do wonder if it was a lucky accident. What if the Irish famine hadn't happened? What if WW2 had been averted (but maybe the EU wouldn't exist...).
> rural cabin
That's nice, but what value is it if the forest burns down, the lake is polluted, the wild life is dead, and there's nothing left but neighboring land full of fracking wells? Glory to god.
Similarly, I would argue that you should not underestimate the harmful and wide-reaching effects of industry.
Sigh.
Yes, the Soviet Union really was the worker's paradise with free, prosperous, happy people!
Can we get away from the sophomoric idea the USA was ALWAYS the ONLY source of badness in the world, just because right now it's the most powerful nation in the world and also a complete mess?
The US has waged war in virtually every country around the world, for example Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Korea, which were significant threats to both Soviet and China. China has virtually been besieged since the 1950s, with Americans present in Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
How would you feel if the Soviet installed weapons systems in Canada, Hawaii, Mexico, Greenland, and Cuba? And then started a tariff war to hopefully bankrupt your economy?
I'm not defending either sides here. I'm not a Reaganot. But to think most communist regimes were not hellbent on the destruction of western capitalism would seem a bit misleading to me.
That said, there are times when a certain type of appreciation of 'sophistication' is warranted - you just shouldn't use it to believe you are therefore above other people, or beyond the simple pleasures of life.
Another thing is meeting and absorbing knowledge from other people. It's incredible to learn or even just watch skillful people do their thing.
Philosophy can be valuable, but applying the ideas meaningfully requires discernment. I’m thinking particularly about the popularity of “Meditations”, for example.
Take Plato, for example: He and his also-famous mentor believed knowledge was a form of recollection from past lives, an idea illustrated with an unconvincing geometry lesson in Phaedo (EDIT: It’s Meno).
Sure, it’s worth stepping back to reassess what’s going to increase your “PC” to borrow from seven habits. That could involve leaving behind surface-level achievement in favor of deeper reflection, as the referenced article suggests.
But let’s not overly-romanticize ancient thinkers: Plato and Aristotle held fundamentally different views on knowledge. Even they couldn’t agree; there’s no need to treat any one of them as infallible.
From one translation of Meditations (I forget which), and from memory, so I may have it slightly wrong:
"You can live your life in a calm flow of happiness, if you learn to think the right way, and to act the right way".
The act the right way is the hard part. The frame-of-mind stuff that lots of people focus on is necessary, but not sufficient. On its own it can be of some help, but it can also lead to traps like going too easy on one's own deficiencies of action. The thinking bits that get most of the attention, at least in stoicism, are largely reactive—the acting is proactive, as is the thinking to support it (which gets less attention in popular takes on Stoicism, and is harder).
He spends a fair amount of it repeating mantras to himself over and over again, or even arguing with himself in stream-of-consciousness.
It’s Marcus Aurelius giving himself a written pep talk. He struggles to uphold those stoicism ideals his whole life, failing constantly ant it, and Meditations is an artifact of it.
You don't have to major in a liberal art or even go to college to get one, you can just read books. You also don't have to learn it all in your early 20s. You can just incorporate the great works into what you read throughout your adult life. It's very easy to find lists and recommendations online for what you should read if you want a broad-based liberal education. The general idea is simply to be informed about and understand the foundational concepts in philosophy, economics, political science, psychology, history, sociology, law, and so on. There is no need to go deep in any one them, unless you find it interesting and wish to do so. Someone who reads one or two foundational works in each of these subjects will have a wildly better understanding of the world than someone who doesn't. To me this is what living an intellectually rich life is and it's very rewarding. If nothing else, due to my liberal arts education I will never be bored in retirement, there are thousands of books that I would find it interesting to read.
I do have a problem with blindly assuming Plato/other ancient philosophers were some sort of omniscient super-intelligence we should blindly follow, which I do see happen with some regularity in my own life.
Plato et al might’ve been the start of our modern understanding of ethics, but the concept of a moral life or epistemology certainly didn’t stop with him!
Look no further than all the AI debates on HN: from the perspective of someone with a couple of college classes on philosophy (not even a minor), it’s looks like a bunch of five years olds debating particle physics. Complete ignorance of what the academic precedent is, retreading ideas that philosophers have moved on from hundreds of years ago.
But… what’s the point? It’s like going into a thread about modern chemistry and debating about the four basic elements of ancient Greece. Sure you can have fun shooting the shit about what is essentially a historical novelty, but if you really want to debate about chemistry you need to open a high school textbook and get up to speed on at least the first few chapters.
The only difference is that nerds look down at philosophy and not chemistry; and the former is rarely taught in high school after which the arrested development seems to set in. No one blinks an eye telling flat earthers that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
The problem is, is it _unique_ to liberal arts? That is what must be true to give it some purpose. If you can just read a bunch of books or study something else with additional positive benefits why do liberal arts?
I am a liberal arts and computer science degree holder. I don't think liberal arts is _worthless_. I do think its a terrible value proposition and that the positive side effects can be achieved while studying something far more marketable. Computer science has made me a much stronger general problem solver and a better critical thinker than liberal arts did. These are the primary skills touted by the liberal arts.
1) everyone agrees “overly” Romanticizing is wrong. By definition of “overly”.
2) why should having a fundamentally different view on knowledge disqualify something from being romanticized? Isnt romanticizing precisely for things that are different?
3) i think its a mischaracterization to say Plato thought “ knowledge was a form of recollection from past lives.” He was not talking about “past lives” but the “soul” (which I think wed both agree is a loaded term). He said the soul knew it before the person was born. This goes to his theory on the forma which I think is a better way to characterize his thoughts on knowledge. In general terms id say he believes truth exists in a timeless, non-empirical realm (the Forms). With the physical reality being an imperfect imitation. Which people have some mediated access to.
I mean, apparently not - this author alone takes Plato’s cave allegory at face value without spending even a moment to criticize it.
> I think it’s a mischaracterization…
It is not. Read Meno. Socrates thought this, and has a very painful example of trying to prove it. Plato thought the exact same.
If learning is essentially based on “configuring” innate structures, you can IMO state it is eternal or uncovered or whatever poetic vehicle you desire. I’d say give these pre-modern guys a break.
These are issues being discussed way into the modern era starting (again) with the likes of Hume and Kant and no easy solutions are available. This is not a solved problem.
I think most people’s intuition is that the methodology and conventions are invented but are constrained by some transcendental reality. It seems difficult to argue its instead purely natural or purely convention.
This is very much inline with Platos theory of the forms. I dont really understand the idea that Plato’s ideas are dated.
Does HE say hes over romanticizing it? No.
He would probably argue hes not over-romanticizing it. So the question isnt if over-romanticizing is improper (which is true by definition of “over”). The question is if he actually is over romanticizing.
>It is not. Read Meno. Socrates thought this, and has a very painful example of trying to prove it. Plato thought the exact same.
Im not contesting that Plato believed in reincarnation. But its not true that he thought knowledge comes from "past lives" (as in when you were previously some other person). He believed the _soul_ had direct access to knowledge. In a past life you would have only had an impression as well. This is all downstream of his actual theory of the forms though. Why not attack that if you want to attack his theory of knowledge.
I find the line of thought in "Meno" extremly impressiv. Let me try to reformulate it in modern terms.
The literary form of a dialogue emphasizes that the thoughts of the participants should not be considered as doctrines, but the whole as an investigation of a problem domain.
The dialogue starts with a distinction between empirical knowledge ("The way to Larisa") and mathematical knowledge. Empirical knowledge is something that I cannot know from introspection. In contrast, the nature of mathematical knowledge comes from inside the mind. This is demonstrated by an uneducated, but smart child (a slave boy). The child is guided to discover a mathematical insight by questions alone. At first the boy does not know the right answer to an initial question. Then Socartes starts again with a simple question the boy is able to answer. Then a sequence of other questions follows each building on the previous answers. Socrates only questions, the boy only answers. Finally the boy arrives at the correct answer of the initial question whose answer he did not know at the start.
This scene should demonstrate the essence of mathematical proof. First we do not know the answer of a mathematical problem. Step-by-step we clarify our understanding, until we arrive at an answer. At this stage we know whether the particular mathematical statement is true or false. We expanded our understanding by only just thinking. In one way it is new knowledge (we now know something we did not, when we looked for a proof), in another way the knowledge was always there, just hidden in our mind.
At this point Socrates hits a limit where he runs out of questions to invistigate this further. This is when he starts to tell a story (the greek word for story is "myth"). Such stories are just tools to further investigate a problem when purely theoretical thoughts come to an end. In the dialogue it is also accompanied by a lot of joking, and "let me speculate" and "don't take it too serious" sort of remarks. So he reminds his fellows about some old stories (that he adapts and decorates a little to match the problem) about reincarnation where one looses the memory of one's past life but has occasionally some sort of flashbacks. This is more or less the whole point of the story: Perhaps we should think of mathematical knowledge as analogous to memory, but in a in a transcendent way.
Our modern doctrins are not very much off: Our ability of mathematical thinking is something that is inherent to us, more specifically to our brains. The blueprint (a sort of memory?) for our brains are in our genes. This way we are a sort of reincarnation of our parents, but in a state were we have to undergo all the mathematical training again.
What Plato lacks is a theory of evolutionary epistemology. But this is a really new development.
Philosophy isn't a set of ideas or texts. It's a practice.
A naïve younger me tried to brute force this by reading one non-fiction book from each major section of the Dewey Decimal system catalog, but was stymied by the paucity of a high school library in a county in the second smallest tax base in the state....
Since then, I've actually been trying to put that list together (and lightly updating it for availability from Project Gutenberg/Librivox).
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-adams...
Suggestions and comments and recommendations welcome.
What would be more interesting, IMHO, books that Cyrus Smith from The Mysterious Island had memorized.
Just from what I saw on HN, I remember Gingery books on metal workshop from scratch, and some homesteading manual from late 19th century.
I love the Gingery books and they are great foundations for a hobby. However even in a end of civilization scenario we only need a small minority who knows that content who can teach the rest - that is at best, but quite likely there won't be enough industrial base to produce the aluminum needed and so you are stuck with useless knowledge. Even your 19th century homesteading tends to assume far more industrial base to make some annoyingly hard things.
Most so called practical skills are either not practical in modern civilization (there is far too much population for us all the be hunter/gathers even if we want to); or they are only practical in context of current times. I've seen how to wire your house for electric lights books from the 1920s - most of the things shown wouldn't pass code today. My house was built in 1970, and there are a lot of things that still work but there is good reason we don't allow that anymore.
I actually had a copy of _The Metal Lathe (Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap, Volume 2)_ ages ago, and slotting in the full leatherbound edition of all 7 volumes is likewise a good fit.
https://www.lumberjocks.com/showcase/archery-case-ascham-of-...
Edit: did add a first aid book, as well as the 7 volume edition of "The Gingery Books".
How to build stone houses, compost and farm organically, etc. A good primer on homesteading. Contains references to things like 19th century homestead manuals
A lot of European literature was poetry for the same reason. Its only because literacy rates have risen that prose has become more popular.
The big challenge is that a lot of plays are rarely performed. I had the good fortune of hearing an interview with Kenneth Brannagh where he talked about how Shakespeare is better experienced by watching a performance than reading a text and he made an aside about how it’s unlikely you’re going to get to see Henry IV part II performed and then spotting that there was a free performance of that exact play being given at the Chicago Cultural Center. This turned out to be part of a series of staged readings of all the plays. I missed the beginning of the sequence, but stuck around to the end. One of the coolest moments of this came when I was attending a play at the Goodman Theatre which had the actors interacting with audience members during intermission and one of the actors in the play recognized me from the audience of the staged readings.
Some of the plays have also snuck onto YouTube.
I'd suggest replacing the Bible with just the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke[0], and John). Removing it entirely seems like a mistake since you'd lose a lot of the literary and moral underpinnings of Western culture, but having to read the bible in its entirely sounds exhausting. I did it (reading all four gospels) recently and can attest even outside of the religious aspects the retelling of the same tragic story in four different was is a fascinating literary experience.
[0] Technically we should through Acts in there too since Luke-Acts are essentially one book, but it's not a gospel so I left it out. Plus quite frankly while I did read it I found it way more boring than the others; turns out that Jesus fellow is a way more interesting main character than Paul :)
I think those individual chapters would be super compelling to modern readers with or without a religious background, but their legibility is held back by the rest of the Bible’s contents. How is someone non-religious supposed to figure out that it’s ok to start reading a book at section 2, chapter 1? :)
You can distill if you are looking for moral teachings, but you can't if you want to know this guys (that guy up in the sky) full plan, in which case you have to entertain that it was a sequence of events. It's very weird, but almost makes going through the whole Bible fascinating as a serial drama. One thing led to another.
However, I do think the abrahamic origin stories (genesis), the tribulations of the Jewish people in Egypt and reception of the Ten Commandments (exodus), and the moral teachings of Christ that replace those commandments (gospels) are more or less self-contained and free-standing, if you’re trying to understand them at face value.
The gospels in particular contain a good moral teachings that are arguably more valuable than anything else in the book. Like really clear directives on how to live and carry yourself.
In my Weird Bible, I’d cold open with the sermon on the mount, followed by the Pharisees and the passion, and recursively hyper-link to every New Testament or Old Testament thing that supports those “primary” stories. I feel like if you arranged the Bible into a neat “tree” structure that way, the main load-bearing trunks would be the books mentioned.
It's a thoroughly Christian view, that being humans lack the capacity to follow God's laws because we're inherently sinners - but that's a whole nother' can of worms. It's kind of like a Kindergarten teacher (God) letting the kids run the show for a day (Old Testament), just to make it clear, they can't manage it. It's quite a thing to believe such a supreme being would run a sequence like that on us (in fact, that's how I make sense of a lot of the craziness in the world, that God would in fact let things run its course, however messed up (even in modern times, e.g - social media, wars, factory slavery in China, migrant slavery in Mideast construction projects, abject poverty in the third world, pure greed and gluttonous abundance in the west, etc, where all of these things are just as Biblically fucked up as parts of the Bible)). It's my only case for why the Old Testament is quite relevant to understanding the fullness of God.
Fun topic!
It's always held a soft spot in my heart as my own experience was mostly reading derivative descriptions and the rare times when I was able to read a primary text during my coursework were always my happiest memories.
1. https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo...
I certainly noticed that it was ineffective in discussing implications with the students. I found Boyle's observations far more effective in teaching science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Pri...
It'd be like wanting to improve your cardio health so you try to climb K2. The edition I have has 150+ pages of just introduction. You have to wade through all of that just to be able to figure out how to read the rest of the tome. It is cool, though!
The goal was not to learn how to do physics calculations, but to understand each writer's concept of reality and humanity's relationship to it. I remember that Blake really focused on the worth of actually instantiated reality, what he called "minute particulars", in contrast to Newton's abstractions:
He who would do good to another, must do it in Minute Particulars
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel hypocrite & flatterer:
For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars
And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355?shelf=chronol...
Recently I've been following long with the Distance Ladder challenge I saw on 3 blue 1 brown with Terence Tao. Going through those question is motivating because those questions are based in solving navigational problems. I fear that with the ever increasing the low friction in life we are stealing the challenge and things for people to consider to build up there problem solving ability before the curtain is pulled.
I think its also more motivating to learn considering more interesting questions especially in math. All this to say going back to the source material while not the most modern accurate physics it usually does include large amounts of motivation to explain why things are logical and what they are doing it for. To be fair I haven't read the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia but I have read other old book and wager it has similarities
Even for modern theories like general relativity people study by textbooks written many decades after the fact, with a clear picture after things were settled, and not by Einstein's first papers :)
e.g., _Kim_ by Rudyard Kipling should be paired w/ Robert Heinlein's _Citizen of the Galaxy_, or _The Grapes of Wrath_, which was cribbed from Sanora Babb's notes w/o permission should be paired w/ her _Whose Names Are Unknown_:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1197158.Whose_Names_Are_...
[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/68150654-bebc-8010-ad4b-050f5b39d4...
I'd maybe throw in some of the little house on the prairie books as well, especially the one where they all almost froze to death.
I think being able to appreciate books as an adult is pretty contingent on being exposed to good books as a youth.
Many of the best things in life are hard. And you wouldn't necessarily recommend them to a friend.
When you consider specific domains, often the best instances of X tend to be harder versions of X. Or, when people become familiar with many instances of X they seek out the "best" instances of X. Its natural that those best instances would be difficult for people unfamiliar with the domain.
Yup.
I think you're saying the same thing as the GP? Ulysses is a book for lit nerds, which I suppose the Modern Library board were.
Looking at the list, there's hardly any books from after mid 20th century. That makes me think that the board comprised primarily old lit nerds, who stopped reading long before voting. The list is also super ethno centric, which makes me more dubious still about the claims for "best" anything.
Seems this book is not intended for you then!
These are a few of my favorite things!
I've gotten the same feeling watching old movies a second time.
I would watch a movie when I was young, and it just came out. It would be "modern", maybe state of the art, and it would have an impact on me. But I was young, and easily impressed by the cliche or trite.
And then I would watch the same movie decades later. Times changed, the art has changed, casting, pacing, effects have all advanced to support the storytelling. And I am older, a different person, and maybe more aware of what is "timeless" with a little more experience under my belt.
It might be a historical deep dive, but compared to the available material our present has, some older media should drop off the list.
And I say that as a Modern Literature major who has read a lot on that list. FAULKNER IS A TERRIBLE WRITER! And while James Joyce and some of the others are good writers, they don't deserve multiple entries in the top 100.
It's clear this list is really "5 librarians personal favorites."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Lit...
Filtering by those available in readily available English translations should yield a workable list.
Out of the list, I read 8 books so far, but all of them in Czech.
Still, a lot of interesting stuff, Orwell, unfortunately, never gets old, pity Ray Bradbury was omitted, as Fahrenheit 451 is getting more and more up-to-date.
If you tell someone there position on some topic is wrong, they will argue with you. If you tell someone a story where the character takes the same position they have and then through experience and personal growth comes to understand how it is wrong. They can come away realizing that they might have it wrong. Great trick when it works.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/books/best-books-21...
https://www.nypl.org/voices/print-publications/books-of-the-...
Added:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/803453.The_Sword_and_the...
(which I have a copy of and re-read when I was considering taking up fencing, but my wife demurred)
Zen in the Art of Archery - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_in_the_Art_of_Archery
As regards archery, it's long been an interest of mine:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-adams...
This actually sounds really fun. Not so much in an optimized way, but more like just going to the library and picking a decimal heading and then just selecting a cool-looking book in that heading and reading it, then repeat.
Tried to do it again in college, but using the LoC headings, but ran out of time and graduated before running out of college/headings.
To this day, when going to the library, I try to keep this in mind when looking over the new books, and if there is one on a major/notable subject I can't recall having read a book on, grab it.
Doesn't always play out but it adds to the spice of life when you can draw insight from places you never expected to.
- Seneca, Letters
I was surprised to learn that the temptation to read too many things was also a problem 2,000 years ago. This inspired me to work on a short list of books that I know deeply.
Also, if you haven't read _The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo_ by Tom Reiss I'd strongly recommend that:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13330922-the-black-count
Walter Scott's historical novels, particularly "Ivanhoe" and "Waverley," which inspired Dumas' approach to historical fiction
James Fenimore Cooper's frontier adventures, which influenced his action narratives
Lord Byron's romantic poetry and persona, which shaped Dumas' conception of the romantic hero
Schiller's play "The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa," which Dumas translated and adapted early in his career
Shakespeare's dramatic works
Memoirs of historical figures, particularly those from the 17th and 18th centuries, including Courtilz de Sandras' "Mémoires de M. d'Artagnan," which became the foundation for "The Three Musketeers"
Plutarch's "Lives," which informed his understanding of classical historical figures
Works by Abbé Prévost and other French novelists of the 18th century
The Bible and classical mythology
By the way, thank you for providing your list of books - I picked up a few future reads from it.
1. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44125/44125-h/44125-h.htm
"Reappraisals" and "When the Facts Change" should be on top of everyone's reading list. Few indeed are those who can write prose as crisp, succinct and erudite as he did.
I find the latter far more intellectually rich and rewarding.
if true, this is fascinating.
...
i just tried it a few times, and it worked! although the reason seems to be a bit less interesting. biography page: "so and so was a botanist" --> and we're headed to philosophy. "political party" --> decision making. "vehicle ramming attack" --> --> power.
encyclopedias start each page by saying what category something is in, and you inevitably category your way back to, metaphorically speaking, earth, air, fire, or water
it is the muscle working, the tide going back and forth.
i liked reading it, lots of things to unpack, new descriptions of the elephant in the room to absorb.
The conclusion itches me, (sorry for the spoil, readers)
> After all, aren’t we all trying to understand our place in the universe?
are you sure about that ? that "you" are trying to do that, or that, something else works hard on you, much like in those "Goals that are physically, emotionally and economically crushing us"
I read Jim Stanford's Economics for Everyone, and he recommends to go out and talk to people and see what problems they are having in life.
That's not to say that long time dead philosophers cannot give good insights, but I feel that looking at other people's problems (especially in different cultures) is a lot more relevant for understanding the world.
Just to pick one, the ego hit when jumping into a new field is real (I'm currently immersed in math & ML from a CS background). It's one of the things that I feel is least talked about. It's very easy to peak in a field and then rest on your laurels. Despite being particularly willing to start at the bottom, I also identify as "being smart," and getting schooled by 22 year olds stings.
But the rewards for "owning" two peaks are so huge, and much of the process is so satisfying.
Intellectualism for the sake of intellectualism is a road that leads to isolation. And then, what's the point of it all?
Connection and collaboration is where it's at - which is more or less what the author concludes, although still under the banner of intellectuality. Perhaps my definition of intellect is/was too narrow?
That sounds like you have already got a framework that works for you, which is great for you. Too bad it's a framework that drives you to upbraid innocent strangers on the internet.
Not everyone can take action on the words "just chill." We're all in different places in life—think of it as a state space model. The same vector of force results in different coordinates when applied to different coordinates.
And lengthy, good grief. I’ll be reading this over the weekend.
And I truly honestly mean this comment to be more of a thoughtful contribution than my high level of snark makes it sound.
"Read. Not too much fiction. Mostly books."
We should be constantly exposing ourselves to new ideas and exploring new avenues; but diving down a rabbit hole for a years-long journey is not the way.
Sitting in a mountain shack trying to digest the best 100 (or 1000) books ever written, might yield some real benefits; but at what cost?
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/549384.The_Intellectual_...
From the title I expected something serious. I gave up halfway, having pigeonholed the pompous verbiage as a first cousin to Women Who Run With The Wolves. But really, the game was up when I read the phrase "late stage capitalism", which is the verbal equivalent of a plague bell, used by halfwits to warn us of their presence.
Friends, here's how to have an intellectually rich life: read serious authors. There's Montaigne out there. There's Orwell. After a while, you'll recognize good writing and thinking, and you won't waste your time on pap.
It analyzes the dialogs of Socrates with practicality in mind, showing how to question the world around you, question your own beliefs, and question the beliefs of others, all without coming off like a dick (as Socrates often does). Moreover, as related to the OP's article, it tells you precisely how Socrates would have defined an intellectually rich life, and I think Farnsworth is correct.
Farnsworth's Socratic method is about much more than just asking questions. The trite "Know thyself" injunction is seen to be a specific outgrowth of the Socratic method, echoing in some way the OP's claim that everything tracks to philosophy.
Incidentally, the book includes a stunning revelation from Ben Franklin saying that he found the Socratic method to be the best way of getting people to change their mind and do what he wanted. He gave it up, however, because it was too powerful a tool and he decided to adopt instead a more diffident personality, which he found also successful.
I would have thought a book like this would sell about 10 copies, but it has 800 comments on Amazon! [I have no connection with the author or with Amazon.]
karol•10h ago