I’m now my thoughts

"I am, in large measure, the selfsame prose I write… I’ve made myself into the character of a book, a life one reads. Whatever I feel is felt (against my will) so that I can write that I felt it. Whatever I think is promptly put into words, mixed with images that undo it, cast into rhythms that are something else altogether. From so much self-revising, I’ve destroyed myself. From so much self-thinking, I’m now my thoughts and not I. I plumbed myself and dropped the plumb; I spend my life wondering if I’m deep or not, with no remaining plumb except my gaze that shows me – blackly vivid in the mirror at the bottom of the well – my own face that observes me observing it."

What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside me

‘What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside me! But who sees me do anything that disagrees with life – me, so calm and peaceful?’

The only way to survive in this world

"The only way to survive in this world is by keeping alive our dream, without ever fulfilling it, since the fulfilment never measures up to what we imagine.

How is it done? By not doing. By dreaming insistently. By performing our daily duties but living, simultaneously, in the imagination. Travelling far and wide, in the geography of our minds. Conquering like Caesar, amid the blaring trumpets of our reverie. Experiencing intense sexual pleasure, in the privacy of our fantasy. Feeling everything in every way, not in the flesh, which always tires, but in the imagination."

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life

‘Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life’

I’m the empty stage

'I’ve created various personalities within… I’ve so externalized myself on the inside that I don’t exist there except externally. I’m the empty stage where various actors act out various plays’

They think, therefore they are

Pessoa looks within and whispers, with horror:
 ‘They think, therefore they are.’

Be what I think?

‘Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!’

Each of us is a profusion of selves

"Each of us is several, is many, is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways."

I begin because I don’t have the strength to think

"I’m astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will’s surrender. I begin because I don’t have the strength to think; I finish because I don’t have the courage to quit."

Why do we love cinema?

"Why do we love cinema? The final answer is not because it is entertaining but because, to echo Saint Augustine, our hearts are restless. We long for life to make sense. We love it when we find mean- ing. Cinema offers such a catharsis. As the titles roll, we can find an almost transcendent calm."

The ecstasy of mental pleasure

No man yet, on having intercourse with the woman he loves, has been so happy that he went out and sacrificed an ox; nor has anyone ever prayed to die on the spot if he could only have his fill of royal meat or cakes. But Eudoxus prayed to be consumed in flames like Phaethon if he could only stand next to the sun and ascertain the shape, size and composition of the planets; and when Pythagoras discovered his theorem he sacrificed an ox, as Apollodorus records.

~ Plutarch describing the ecstasy of what was then called natural philosophy

The demon causes him to detest the place where he finds himself – and even life itself.

"Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–399) conceives acedia* as being demonic. The midday demon (daemon meridianus) is the most cunning of all demons, attacking the monk in the middle of the day, in broad day- light, causing the sun to seem to be standing utterly still in the sky. Things intrude on this state but appear to be completely de- animated. The demon causes him to detest the place where he finds himself – and even life itself.

* Acediacan be roughly translated as ‘boredom’."

The problem of alienation at work

"There might be one way in which social cooperation increases happiness: ‘A great part, perhaps the greatest part, of human happiness and misery arises from the view of our past conduct and from the degree of approbation or disapprobation which we feel from the consideration of it,’ Smith thought. Social cooperation encourages people to conduct themselves admirably and therefore in praiseworthy ways – ‘a job well done’, ‘I was glad to help’ – from which they will gain a sense of satisfaction and, from that, happiness. This might well be so, in an ideal world. However, praiseworthiness does not always receive the praise it deserves. Moreover, at work, say, that which is praised may have little to do with praiseworthiness. For in a world defined by commerce and competition, delivery merits the attention; at work, people are remunerated for what they do, not who they are; qualities that might make someone praiseworthy are likely simply to be ignored or take second place. Hence the problem of alienation at work: it can make you very unhappy."

Consumer Melancholy Syndrome

"The first might be referred to as consumer melancholy syndrome – CMS for short. Though not under that name, it was well articulated by Rousseau, as a result of the identification of happiness with plea- sure. Three unintended consequences of this equivalence cause CMS. First, pleasures only satisfy desires; they do not fulfil them – leaving people sated but sad. Second, people become slaves to these desires and so suffer the unhappiness of that enslavement. Third, this slavish unhappiness is exacerbated, because people find they are not happy even though they think happiness should be their right. ‘Happiness leaves us or we leave it,’ Rousseau despaired."

To crayon or not

"One day, Homer Simpson discovers that he has a crayon in his brain. It nestles between the soft grey folds as snug as a bug in a rug. Any effects the crayon might have are, apparently, negligible. It has been there for many years, ever since, as a child, he attempted to ram an entire box of crayons up his nose; an experiment aborted by a sneeze. Out flew all the crayons, bar this reluctant one. He had not noticed it at all.

Though now he knows about it, he is disconcerted and decides to have the crayon removed. The result is simultaneously amazing and alarming. It is amazing because, after the extraction, he finds himself equipped with new powers of intelligence. His raised appreciation of the world transforms his take on life and, in particular, brings him closer to Lisa, his clever and formerly rather intimidating, daughter. It is alarming because he cannot keep his new perspicuity to himself. What had been hidden from him – poor security at work, the bland- ness of a movie plot-line – now scream out at him as unbearably bad. In the story Homer blows the whistle on both and is ostracised by everyone around him; they don’t want to know about the threat to or the dreariness of life. Everyone, that is, except Lisa, who explains that intelligence has an inverse relationship to happiness: ignorance is bliss. Homer is faced with a choice: live without the crayon or have it put back. Moe, the bartender-cum-surgeon, reinserts it into his brain."

What choice would you have made, if you were in Homer's place? .....................Why?

The pleasure of asking questions

‘One of the greatest joys known to man is to take such a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge. The great pleasure of ignorance is, after all, the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to stiffen.’
~ Robert Lynd

Exploit the weaknesses of the human minds

"Just as genes for the eye implicitly ‘know’ the laws of optics, so the long-lived memes of a static society implicitly possess knowledge of the human condition, and use it mercilessly to evade the defences and exploit the weaknesses of the human minds that they enslave."

Memes in static societies

"How is this done? The details are variable and not relevant here, but the sort of thing that happens is that people growing up in such a society acquire a set of values for judging themselves and everyone else which amounts to ridding themselves of distinctive attributes and seeking only conformity with the society’s constitutive memes. They not only enact those memes: they see themselves as existing only in order to enact them. So, not only do such societies enforce qualities such as obedience, piety and devotion to duty, their members’ sense of their own selves is invested in the same standards. People know no others. So they feel pride and shame, and form all their aspirations and opinions, by the criterion of how thoroughly they subordinate themselves to the society’s memes."

Disable their creativity and critical faculties

"That is why the enforcement of the status quo is only ever a secondary method of preventing change – a mopping-up operation. The primary method is always – and can only be – to disable the source of new ideas, namely human creativity. So static societies always have traditions of bringing up children in ways that disable their creativity and critical faculties. That ensures that most of the new ideas that would have been capable of changing the society are never thought of in the first place."

The evolution of memes

"Since a person can enact and transmit a meme soon after receiving it, a meme generation can be much shorter than a human generation. And many cycles of variation and selection can take place inside the minds concerned even during one meme generation. Also, memes can be passed to people other than the holders’ biological descendants. Those factors make meme evolution enormously faster than gene evolution, which partly explains how memes can contain so much knowledge. Hence the frequently cited metaphor of the history of life on Earth, in which human civilization occupies only the final ‘second’ of the ‘day’ during which life has so far existed, is misleading. In reality, a substantial proportion of all evolution on our planet to date has occurred in human brains. And it has barely begun. The whole of biological evolution was but a preface to the main story of evolution, the evolution of memes."

The selfish meme

"Memes are subject to all sorts of random and intentional variation in addition to all that selection, and so they evolve. So to this extent the same logic holds as for genes: memes are ‘selfish’. They do not necessarily evolve to benefit their holders, or their society – or, again, even themselves, except in the sense of replicating better than other memes. (Though now  most other memes are their rivals, not just variants of themselves.) The successful meme variant is the one that changes the behaviour of its holders in such a way as to make itself best at displacing other memes from the population. This variant may well benefit its holders, or their culture, or the species as a whole. But if it harms them, or destroys them, it will spread anyway. Memes that harm society are a familiar phenomenon. You need only consider the harm done by adherents of political views, or religions, that you especially abhor. Societies have been destroyed because some of the memes that were best at spreading through the population were bad for a society. And countless individuals have been harmed or killed by adopting memes that were bad for them – such as irrational political ideologies or dangerous fads."

Meme replication

"The situation faced by memes is utterly different. Each meme has to be expressed as behaviour every time it is replicated. For it is that behaviour, and only that behaviour (given the environment created by all the other memes), that effects the replication. That is because a recipient cannot see the representation of the meme in the holder’s mind. A meme cannot be downloaded like a computer program. If it is not enacted, it will not be copied.

The upshot of this is that memes necessarily become embodied in two different physical forms alternately: as memories in a brain, and as behaviour."

Some jokes were not created by anyone – that they evolved

"In the classic 1956 science-fiction story ‘Jokester’, by Isaac Asimov, the main character is a scientist studying jokes. He finds that, although most people do sometimes make witty remarks that are original, they never invent what he considers to be a fully fledged joke: a story with a plot and a punchline that causes listeners to laugh. Whenever they tell such a joke, they are merely repeating one that they have heard from someone else. So, where do jokes come from originally? Who creates them? The fictional answer given in ‘Jokester’ is far-fetched and need not concern us here. But the premise of the story is not so absurd: it really is plausible that some jokes were not created by anyone – that they evolved."

Happiness is discovered by chance

"Happiness is discovered by chance. But the chance is made by living."

Progress might not promote happiness

"Progress might not promote happiness but can actually undermine it, in three ways. First, progress rests on factors, such as competitiveness, which cause anxiety. Second, it feeds desires, such as acquisitiveness, which cause dissatisfaction. Third, it creates expectations, such as the desire for happiness, which cause disquiet."

We have merely a deceitful and frivolous exterior

‘In the midst of so much philosophy, humanity, politeness and sublime maxims we have merely a deceitful and frivolous exterior: honour without virtue, reason without wisdom and pleasure without happiness,’
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Coalition governments and compromise policies

"Proportional representation is often defended on the grounds that it leads to coalition governments and compromise policies. But compromises – amalgams of the policies of the contributors – have an undeservedly high reputation. Though they are certainly better than immediate violence, they are generally bad policies. If a policy is no one’s idea of what will work, then why should it work? But that is not the worst of it. The key defect of compromise policies is that when one of them is implemented and fails, no one learns anything because no one ever agreed with it. Thus compromise policies shield the underlying explanations which  do at least seem good to some faction from being criticized and abandoned."

The voters are not a fount of wisdom

"In this view, any interpretation of the democratic process as merely a way of consulting the people to find out who should rule or what policies to implement misses the point of what is happening. An election does not play the same role in a rational society as consulting an oracle or a priest, or obeying orders from the king, did in earlier societies. The essence of democratic decision-making is not the choice made by the system at elections, but the ideas created between elections. And elections are merely one of the many institutions whose function is to allow such ideas to be created, tested, modified and rejected. The voters are not a fount of wisdom from which the right policies can be empirically ‘derived’. They are attempting, fallibly, to explain the world and thereby to improve it. They are, both individually and collectively, seeking the truth – or should be, if they are rational. And there  is an objective truth of the matter. Problems are soluble. Society is not a zero-sum game: the civilization of the Enlightenment did not get where it is today by cleverly sharing out the wealth, votes or anything else that was in dispute when it began. It got here by creating  ex nihilo . In particular, what voters are doing in elections is not synthesizing a decision of a superhuman being, ‘Society’. They are choosing which experiments are to be attempted next, and (principally) which are to be abandoned because there is no longer a good explanation for why they are best. The politicians, and their policies, are those experiments."

Rational decision-making

"Rational decision-making consists not of weighing evidence but of explaining it, in the course of explaining the world. One judges arguments as explanations, not justifications, and one does this creatively, using conjecture, tempered by every kind of criticism. It is in the nature of good explanations – being hard to vary – that there is only one of them. Having created it, one is no longer tempted by the alternatives. They have been not outweighed, but out- argued, refuted and abandoned. During the course of a creative process, one is not struggling to distinguish between countless different explanations of nearly equal merit; typically, one is struggling to create even one good explanation, and, having succeeded, one is glad to be rid of the rest."

Because I say so

"Bad philosophy has always existed too. For instance, children have always been told, ‘Because I say so.’ Although that is not always intended as a philosophical position, it is worth analysing it as one, for in four simple words it contains remarkably many themes of false and bad philosophy. First, it is a perfect example of bad explanation: it could be used to ‘explain’ anything. Second, one way it achieves that status is by addressing only the form of the question and not the substance: it is about who said something, not what they said. That is the opposite of truth-seeking. Third, it reinterprets a request for true explanation (why should something-or-other be as it is?) as a request for justification (what entitles you to assert that it is so?), which is the justified-true-belief chimera. Fourth, it confuses the nonexistent authority for ideas with human authority (power) – a much-travelled path in bad political philosophy. And, fifth, it claims by this means to stand outside the jurisdiction of normal criticism."

In the end there’s only death

"Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, or how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end there’s only death."

To inhibit you from seeing yourself as a buffoon

"Cognitive biases are predicable patterns of thought and behavior that lead you to draw incorrect conclusions. You and everyone else come into the world preloaded with these pesky and completely wrong ways of seeing things, and you rarely notice them. Many of them serve to keep you confident in your own perceptions or to inhibit you from seeing yourself as a buffoon. The maintenance of a positive self-image seems to be so important to the human mind you have evolved mental mechanisms designed to make you feel awesome about yourself."

But every man I ever met was terrified of getting old

"People think that when you’re young you go out and have fun, and only later do you start to think about death. But every man I ever met was terrified of getting old. They worried all the time about how old they were. They get obsessed about it when they’re quite young—I’ve seen twenty-five-year-olds worried about getting old—and it just gets worse."

In a café called Zarathustra

It’s always the same old shit of course,
The eternal return, et cetera,
And here I am eating raspberry mousse
In a café called Zarathustra.

Motivated solely by the pursuit of pleasure

"Most of the people Bruno had encountered in his life had been motivated solely by the pursuit of pleasure—if one includes in the definition those narcissistic pleasures so central to the esteem or admiration of others. And thus different strategies are adopted, and these are called human lives."

I’m useless

“I’m useless,” he said resignedly. “I couldn’t breed pigs, I don’t have the faintest idea how to make sausages or forks or mobile phones. I’m surrounded by all this stuff that I eat or use and I couldn’t actually make a single thing—couldn’t even begin to understand how they’re made. If industrial production ceased tomorrow, if all the engineers and the specialist technicians disappeared off the face of the earth, I couldn’t do anything to start things over again. In fact, outside the industrialized world, I couldn’t even survive; I wouldn’t know how to feed or clothe myself, or protect myself from the weather. My technical competence falls far short of Neanderthal man. I’m completely dependent on my society, but I play no useful role in it. The only thing I know how to do is write dubious commentaries on outdated cultural issues. I get paid for it, too, well paid—much more than the average wage. Most of the people I know are exactly the same.”

Be calm, my pain

"Be calm, my pain, and venture to be still.
You clamored for the Night; it falls; is here:
The city shrouds itself in blackest chill,
Brings peace to some, to others fear.
’Neath Pleasure’s lash, the grim high executioner,
Mortal souls, that vile and worthless throng,
Reap grim remorse amidst the abject ceremony,
Pain, take my hand; let us now along . . ."

When you work in something like teaching

"When you work in something like teaching, every year seems the same. The only things that mark out your life are visits to the doctor and watching the kids grow up."

Desire is a source of suffering, pain and hatred

"Any philosopher, not just Buddhist or Christian, but any philosopher worthy of the name, knows that, in itself, desire—unlike pleasure—is a source of suffering, pain and hatred. The utopian solution—from Plato to Huxley by way of Fourier—is to do away with desire and the suffering it causes by satisfying it immediately. The opposite is true of the sex-and-advertising society we live in, where desire is marshaled and blown up out of all proportion, while satisfaction is maintained in the private sphere. For society to function, for competition to continue, people have to want more and more, until desire fills their lives and finally devours them."

See the value of seizing the day

"We can see the value of happiness while accepting that it is not everything, which will make it easier for us at those times when it eludes us. We can learn to appreciate the pleasures of life without becoming slaves to appetites which can never be satisfied. We can see the value of success, while not interpreting that too narrowly, so that we can appreciate the project of striving to become what we want to be as well as the more visible, public signs of success. We can see the value of seizing the day, without that leading us into a desperate scramble to grasp the ungraspable moment. We can appreciate the value in helping others lead meaningful lives, too, without thinking that altruism demands everything we have. And finally, we can recognize the value of love, as perhaps the most powerful motivator to do anything at all."

Be a philosopher but

‘Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.’
~ David Hume

Not a simple recipe for contentment and satisfaction

"The simplicity of the conclusion is also deceptive because what is simple is not always easy or obvious. It is straightforward enough to say that life can be worthwhile in itself, particularly if it is a life with a balance of authenticity, happiness and concern for others; one where time is not wasted; one which engages in the ongoing work of becoming who we want to be and being successful in those terms. But putting this all into practice is difficult. Indeed, it carries with it a risk we saw when looking at success, namely that we will set ourselves an unrealistically high standard and end up being dissatisfied with life as a result. The sobering truth is that life involves ongoing struggle. One can understand what the elements of a meaningful life are, but they do not provide a simple recipe for contentment and satisfaction."

To challenge the power others seek to exert over us

"But the simplicity of the conclusion should not detract from its significance. The mere fact that life’s meaning is available and potentially evident to all is a major challenge to those who see themselves as the guardians of life’s significance: the priests, gurus and teachers who would have us think life’s meaning is beyond ordinary mortals. To challenge this view is to challenge the power others seek to exert over us by their claims to special knowledge."

To confront and accept the limits of human understanding

"The humanist, who sees this life as providing the only available source of meaning, accepts all this, just as she accepts the claims of morality without transcendental support and the existence of mystery without seeing it as a place-holder for the divine. The transcendentalist, in contrast, wants what is of value in life to be underwritten by a high order. Love isn’t good enough unless it is all conquering and can triumph even over death. Morality is not morality if it is rooted only in human life. Mystery is intolerable if it merely reflects the limits of human understanding. The transcendentalist’s desire for something more is understandable, but the humanist’s refusal to succumb is, I believe, a sign of her ability to confront and accept the limits of human understanding and, ultimately, human existence."

Source of great elation and joy

"It is not, then, true that love shows the rationalist-humanist approach to be misguided. Rather, it exemplifies the limits of human powers to understand and master life, which any adequate humanist account of the meaning of existence must accept. But it also shows something profound to which humanism can make claim. Love is not immortal or invincible. Sadly, it is not true that all you need is love. Love, like life, is valuable, but fragile and subject to no guarantees. It is fraught with risk and disappointment, as well as being the source of great elation and joy."

Love can pass us by

"Love also requires us sometimes to seize the day. Because love is valuable and opportunities to find it relatively rare, we are fools to let chances for real love pass us by or delay reconciliation with estranged friends or family we still have strong feelings for. Of course, this line of reasoning has been used as a mere seduction technique, from the eloquent lines of Andrew Marvell’s metaphysical poems to the clumsy chat-up lines uttered in bars and clubs. But the line is only effective because it reflects a truth that haunts us: too much caution, and love can pass us by."

How can or does life mean something to us?

"However, the attempt to argue that the whole idea of ‘a meaning of life’ is incoherent stumbles when it comes to the meaning of ‘meaning’ which concerns the importance something has, as in ‘it means a lot to me’. It is precisely here that life can and does have meaning. It doesn’t have meaning in itself, from a neutral perspective. But it means something to us. The question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ may well not fit comfortably with this interpretation, but the question ‘How can or does life mean something to us?’ certainly does. The question is thus one about why life is of value to us, why we think it to be important and worth living. This is a perfectly coherent question."

‘The meaning of life’ is incoherent

"There is, however, another way of trying to challenge the idea that life must have meaning. That is to claim that life is not the kind of thing that can have meaning, and so the whole idea of ‘the meaning of life’ is incoherent."

Those who have suffered less must have missed out on something

"But perhaps because suffering costs us so much, we feel the need to place a kind of premium on it. We don’t like to think that our past suffering was in any way unnecessary or could have been avoided, for that would be to accept that life has been worse than it might otherwise have been for no further benefit. We think those who have suffered less must have missed out on something. It would pain us too much to simply accept that they have been more fortunate than us."

Learning through suffering

"In the same way, it is often through suffering that we learn. But it is far better if we can learn without suffering, or learn from the suffering of others (without making others suffer, of course). However, some people take the fact that suffering is often the route to learning to mean that suffering is somehow essential to all learning, or that the person who learns by suffering has necessarily learned more than the person who has learned without suffering. While in general this may be true, it is by no means always true. Many people suffer and never learn. Others learn quickly and avoid the need to suffer altogether."

Losing your self

"Freeing your mind by losing your self does not seem a fruitful path to finding meaning in life. Even if it is true that in one sense the self is an illusion, this gives us no reason to try and dismantle the apparatus that makes the existence of the self possible. Temporarily losing a sense of self also seems to be, ultimately, a way of satisfying the self, and so any technique that delivers this loss of ego has to be judged on whether its effects are a desirable part of a meaningful life. Permanently losing a sense of self is otherwise known as death."

I would spit at Kuhn’s prayer

“Silence slowly prevails and then, from my bunk on the top row, I see and hear old Kuhn praying aloud, with his beret on his head, swaying backwards and forwards violently. Kuhn is thanking God because he has not been chosen.
Kuhn is out of his senses. Does he not see Beppo the Greek in the bunk next to him, Beppo who is twenty years old and is going to the gas-chamber the day after tomorrow and knows it and lies there looking fixedly at the light without saying anything and without even thinking anymore? Can Kuhn fail to realize that next time it will be his turn? Does Kuhn not understand that what has happened today is an abomination, which no propitiatory prayer, no pardon, no expiation by the guilty, which nothing at all in the power of man can ever clean again? If I was God, I would spit at Kuhn’s prayer.”
—FROM PRIMO LEVI : IF THIS IS A MAN (1959)

To narrow our minds

"The idea that an open mind is important above all else is so prevalent that any suggestion that some narrowing is essential might be seen as heresy. But it is the only way. Do you treat the claims of Branch Davidians and other fringe Christian cults as seriously as you do the claims of the world’s major faiths? When you hear someone has claimed the end of the world is nigh, do you always thoroughly check them out to see if they are right? I hope not. We narrow our minds not just to avoid wasting mental energy but because we have to."

Because life just isn’t long enough

"All this is true. But what follows from it? What cannot follow is that we have to assume all alternative viewpoints are equally valid until we have thoroughly examined them for ourselves and proved otherwise. This is a policy we cannot follow. They are just too many belief systems in the world, too many explanations offered as to why we are here and how we ought to live. How would one set about trying to examine the truth of all of them from within, refusing to be satisfied with what to insiders would seem a superficial understanding? It can’t be done because life just isn’t long enough. Some of these alternatives actually demand a lifetime of practice, which means you could ‘try out’ no more than one anyway."

What we cannot talk about

"There are those who say that meditation can give us a form of knowledge which cannot be expressed in words. In which case, as Wittgenstein said, ‘What we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.’ I confess myself to be a sceptic, and this scepticism is bolstered by the fact that since words cannot express what this enlightenment is supposed to be like or of, I have no grounds on which to judge whether I should give it a go myself. After all, similar promises are made of many and varying forms of spirituality. They usually also stress that it takes many years to achieve this illumination. But then what reasons could I be given to make me choose one way over another and dedicate years of my life to the pursuit of something I know not what it is? It can only be that I am impressed by the effect it seems to have on others and have good reason to want to be like them and to think that I can be like them. Personally, however, I tend to find that the kind of detachment many such people have seems smug, self-righteous and alienating."

The person who endures hardship to help others

"The person who endures hardship to help others shows considerably more disregard for their own welfare than a person who lives smiling and at peace in a monastery or commune. Whichever way you look at it, this is about satisfying the self, not lessening concern for it. It may be a worthwhile form of life, but it must be seen for what it is."

These historicists are afraid of change

"Such considerations suggest the possibility that these historicists are afraid of change, and that they cannot accept the idea of change without serious inward struggle. It often seems as if they were trying to comfort themselves for the loss of a stable world by clinging to the view that change is ruled by an unchanging law. (In Parmenides and in Plato, we shall even find the theory that the changing world in which we live is an illusion and that there exists a more real world which does not change.)"

Although only a few may originate a policy

Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.
—PERICLES OF ATHENS

Know how to rank beliefs

"Know how to rank beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause."

Your new car and eternal happiness

"This prediction error works as follows. You are about to buy a new car. It is going to change your life, elevate your status, and make your commute a vacation. It is so quiet that you can hardly tell if the engine is on, so you can listen to Rachmaninoff’s nocturnes on the highway. This new car will bring you to a permanently elevated plateau of contentment . People will think , Hey, he has a great car, every time they see you. Yet you forget that the last time you bought a car, you also had the same expectations. You do not anticipate that the effect of the new car will eventually wane and that you will revert to the initial condition, as you did last time. A few weeks after you drive your new car out of the showroom, it will become dull . If you had expected this, you probably would not have bought it .
You are about to commit a prediction error that you have already made. Yet it would cost so little to introspect!"

Psychopaths rally followers

"Alas, one cannot assert authority by accepting one’s own fallibility. Simply, people need to be blinded by knowledge—we are made to follow leaders who can gather people together because the advantages of being in groups trump the disadvantages of being alone. It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers."

It is not that he was ahead of his time

"Montaigne is quite refreshing to read after the strains of a modern education since he fully accepted human weaknesses and understood that no philosophy could be effective unless it took into account our deeply ingrained imperfections, the limitations of our rationality, the flaws that make us human. It is not that he was ahead of his time; it would be better said that later scholars (advocating rationality) were backward."

He introspects, introspects, and introspects

"Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgment . Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot , yet has the rare guts to say “I don’t know.” He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit , and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion."

One single institution cannot aggregate knowledge

"For Hayek , a true forecast is done organically by a system, not by fiat . One single institution, say, the central planner, cannot aggregate knowledge; many important pieces of information will be missing. But society as a whole will be able to integrate into its functioning these multiple pieces of information. Society as a whole thinks outside the box. Hayek attacked socialism and managed economies as a product of what I have called nerd knowledge, or Platonicity—owing to the growth of scientific knowledge, we overestimate our ability to understand the subtle changes that constitute the world, and what weight needs to be imparted to each such change. He aptly called this “scientism.”"

They no longer make geniuses like that

"Poincaré became a prolific essayist in his thirties. He seemed in a hurry and died prematurely, at fifty-eight ; he was in such a rush that he did not bother correcting typos and grammatical errors in his text , even after spotting them, since he found doing so a gross misuse of his time. They no longer make geniuses like that—or they no longer let them write in their own way."

Winner-take-all

"Every time I see a T-shirt bearing the picture of the modern icon Albert Einstein, I cannot help thinking of Poincaré—Einstein is worthy of our reverence, but he has displaced many others. There is so little room in our consciousness; it is winner-take-all up there."

The solution exists

"The information that the solution exists is itself a big piece of the solution."

The wise one

"It is often said that “is wise he who can see things coming.” Perhaps the wise one is the one who knows that he cannot see things far away."

Forecasting by bureaucrats

"Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making."

Wise man lives as long as he should

"Living is not the good, but living well. The wise man therefore lives as long as he should, not as long as he can. He will observe where he is to live, with whom, how, and what he is to do. He will always think of life in terms of quality, not quantity. If he encounters many vexations which disturb his tranquillity, he will release himself. He will do this not only in an extreme exigency, but as soon as he begins to suspect Fortune he will look about him carefully to determine whether he ought to have done. He will consider it of no importance whether he causes his end or merely accepts it, whether late or early. He does not shrink as before some great deprivation, for not much can be lost from a trickle. Dying early or late is of no relevance, dying well or ill is. To die well is to escape the danger of living ill...

Just as I choose a ship to sail in or a house to live in, so I choose a death for my passage from life. Moreover, whereas a prolonged life is not necessarily better, a prolonged death is necessarily worse....A man’s life should satisfy other people as well, his death only himself, and whatever sort he likes is best."

~ Seneca