A Lesson in Friendship
Around 10:00 pm one night when I was 16 my cell phone rang with a panicked voice on the other side. My best friend was barely able to remain calm enough to get words out of his mouth. After a bit of …
Philosophy
Lincoln on Leadership
Fight the Good Fight The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. Try Honey Before Vinegar If you would win a man to your …
Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Journalists, and Others
A lot of our day is spent trying to convince people of something. To do this we often make arguments as to why our product or service is better, or, more commonly why our own opinion is right and …
Marcus Aurelius: Debts and Lessons
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 …
Henry Miller on Turning 80, Fighting Evil, And Why Life is the Best Teacher
Only 200 copies of Henry Miller’s 1972 chapbook, On Turning Eighty, were ever printed; each hand-numbered and signed. How I ended up with copy 48 is a story for another day. The book contains 3 …
Henry Miller on The Relationship Between Friendship and Aging
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 …
Alan Watts: Why Modern Civilization is a Vicious Circle
“When we compare human with animal desire,” writes philosopher Alan Watts in The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety, “we find many extraordinary …
John Locke’s Method of Organizing Common Place Books
“You know that I voluntarily communicated this method to you, as I have done to many others, to whom I believed it would not be unacceptable.” In 1685 English physician and philosopher …
Michel Foucault on the Panopticon Effect
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 …
Commonplace Books: Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity
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 …
Seneca on Gathering Ideas And Combinatorial Creativity
“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 …
Sir William Osler: A Way of Life
“No mind, however dull, can escape the brightness that comes from steady application.” *** In several of his speeches, Charlie Munger has referred to Sir William Osler, the Canadian …
Ruth Chang: How to Make Hard Choices
Ruth Chang is a philosopher at Rutgers University with an interesting background. After graduating with a J.D. from Harvard Law School and dipping her toe into the legal world, she went off to Oxford …
Stephen Cave: The Four Stories we tell Ourselves About Death
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 …
Epictetus on our Attachment to our Own Interest
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 …
Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil
Morality is hard to define, but all non-psychopaths experience strong gut reactions to certain moral violations. One way to understand it is from an evolutionary perspective. Our sense of morality is …