Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
The Roman philosopher Seneca weaved beautiful and timeless insights into his letters. Luckily a lot of those letters survived. While old, there is a reason we still read them today. While the language and phrasing might be dated, the …
“All you can do is sit back and bask in your relevance to the cosmos.” In this short video, theoretical physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson puts our ego into the perspective of the enormous universe. There’s something about the cosmic …
In Seneca’s Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger, and Clemency, the famous stoic philosopher Seneca, who brought us combinatorial creativity, illuminates real wisdom. Wisdom is a right understanding, a faculty of discerning good from …
To Be Read At The Opening of D.P.S. Meetings: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, …
Marcus Aurelius has been read for 1800 or so years now and he’s arguably just as relevant today as he was when he was ruler of the Roman Empire. “States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become …
Shortly after his 80th birthday, Henry Miller wrote an essay on aging. More of a treatise on living life, it was published in 1972 in a chapbook titled On Turning Eighty. Only 200 copies of the book were ever made, with each signed and …
In his study of the origins of the prison, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault explored the invention of the Panopticon, a way for a guard to see others without being seen himself. Bentham’s Panopticon is the …
Commonplace books are personal knowledge libraries; notebooks full of collected ideas and bits of wisdom all mixed up together. Here, we take a look at their history and benefits. *** There is an old saying that the truest form of poverty …
“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” If you were to make a list of the best commencement addresses ever, you’d find this one from Steve Jobs up there with the likes of David Foster Wallace, Neil Gaiman, and Naval Adm. William H. …
“Combinatory play,” said Einstein, “seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” Ruminating on the necessity of both reading and writing, so as not to confine ourselves to either, Seneca in one of his Epistles, …
In a great interview with NPR, Philosopher Stephen Cave delves into the simple question: Why are human beings afraid to die? In answering Cave, the author of Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization, illuminates …
A memorable passage from Epictetus in The Discourses. Be not deceived, every animal is attached to nothing so much as to its own interest. Whatever then seems to hinder his way to this, be it a brother or a father or a child, the object of …
“I’ve always had the feeling that life loves the liver of it.” The legendary poet and writer Maya Angelou passed recently at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was 86. I first came across Angelou because of an odd …
After reading the passage below in The Meaning of Stoicism, I needed to learn more. “It goes without saying that such a professional ethics is not restricted to craftsmen and artisans and members of a profession. In the Stoic’s …
The Stoic way of life is the expression that encompasses the Stoic’s attitude toward practical affairs. It really is “an anachronism,” writes Ludwig Edelstein in his book The Meaning of Stoicism. It was Pythagoras who …
Solitude is an important aspect of creative thought. You could make an argument that in our information-overloaded world where our senses are stimulated nearly 18 hours a day, solitude and calming our minds is more important than ever. …
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” *** Perception, action, and will are the three disciplines central to the stoic philosophy. They also form the structure for Ryan …
“To oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life.” *** Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) was believed by many to be one of the world’s greatest writers. Two of his books, Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred …
“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.” — Ernest Hemingway *** Solitude is an important aspect toward accomplishing great things, creative or otherwise. In fact, it’s one of the commonalities found amongst the routines of great …
“Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” *** There is a view, to which we subscribe that a lot of innovation and creativity comes from the combination of worldly wisdom, perspective, accumulating existing …
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. — Marcus Aurelius Do you know the section of the book after the last chapter? The one that everyone ignores? That’s one of the first things I read as …
While a lot of people casually use the word, not many people have read: Antifragile, where Nassim Taleb defines it for us. Just as being clear on what constitutes a black swan allows us to better discuss the subject, so too will defining …
The arrogance of limited knowledge results in foolishness. This is an excerpt from Plato’s Apology, from Plato: Complete Works (an excellent edition that is part of the Great Books program). To set the context, while this is known as …
A fantastic interview with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield on life, the universe and what’s really out there. Here’s an excerpt that really struck me and hits home on one of our key themes: living a meaningful life. If you …