Rethinking Fear
Fear is a state no one wants to embrace, yet for many of us it’s the background music to our lives. But by making friends with fear and understanding why it exists, we can become less vulnerable …
Philosophy
Finite and Infinite Games: Two Ways to Play the Game of Life
If life is a game, how do you play it? The answer will have a huge impact on your choices, your satisfaction, and how you achieve success. *** James Carse, the Director of Religious Studies at New …
Influence, Gender, and Defying Social Conventions with Friedrich Nietzsche and Jane Austen
In the third installment of our FS Bar series, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and writer Jane Austen sit down for a drink and discuss each other’s work, gender, philosophy, and try to find …
Tradeoffs: The Currency of Decision Making
Every decision we make carries an opportunity cost. If we don’t budget wisely, we end up wasting time and energy on things that don’t matter. Here’s how to do it right. *** The disregard of tradeoffs …
Ayn Rand on Why Philosophy Matters
Nearly four decades after her death, many of Ayn Rand’s works remain controversial and divide people into two camps: love them or hate them. Her lesser known book on philosophy provides broad, …
The Best of Goethe’s Aphorisms
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749–1832) Maxims and Reflections is a terrific source of philosophical wisdom. The German writer, statesman, lawyer, playwright, and polymath was brilliant at distilling …
The Power of Questions
The quality of the answers we get are directly correlated with the quality of the questions we ask. Here’s how to improve your questions. *** When we run our once-a-year Re:Think Europe event, 10 …
The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness
Along the same vein as Yvon Chouinard’s Let My People Go Surfing, The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness is the business philosophy handbook from the marketing, advertising, and PR firm Ogilvy & …
So Two Stoics Walk Into a Bar…
The first thing he ordered was OJ with a splash of vodka. When people come to the FS bar the first thing they did was order a drink so this didn’t seem out of the ordinary. But looking closely …
Making Compassionate Decisions: The Role of Empathy in Decision Making
You don’t have to look hard to find quotes expounding the need for more empathy in society. As with Barack Obama’s quote above, we are encouraged to actively build empathy with others — …
The Code of Hammurabi: The Best Rule To Manage Risk
Almost 4,000 years ago, King Hammurabi of Babylon, Mesopotamia, laid out one of the first sets of laws. Hammurabi’s Code is among the oldest translatable writings. It consists of 282 laws, most …
The Fairness Principle: How the Veil of Ignorance Helps Test Fairness
The Basics If you could redesign society from scratch, what would it look like? How would you distribute wealth and power? Would you make everyone equal or not? How would you define fairness and …
Finding Truth in History
If we are to learn from the past, does the account of it have to be true? One would like to think so. Otherwise you might be preparing for the wrong battle. There you are, geared up for mountains, and …
Zero — Invented or Discovered?
It seems almost a bizarre question. Who thinks about whether zero was invented or discovered? And why is it important? Answering this question, however, can tell you a lot about yourself and how you …
Active Listening: The Master Key to Effective Communication
“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.” ― M. Scott Peck *** The Basics The sense that we are not being listened to is one of the most frustrating feelings …
Philosopher Kahlil Gibran on The Tension Between Reason and the Silence Required for Thinking
Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) published his masterpiece, The Prophet, in 1923. The work endures as a timeless meditation on the art of living. Gibran’s thoughts on love and giving offer a glimpse …