On problem solving..................

Walking, on its own, is already great for your brain. It gets the blood flowing, lowers stress hormones, and makes you look like one of those mysterious, deep thinkers who stride purposefully through parks. But when you pair walking with my powerful “What If” hack, your perambulations transform into something far more powerful.

Here’s how it works:

1.   Start walking. This is the easy part.

2.   Instead of spiraling into despair about your unsolvable problem, introduce a single, magical question: “What if?”

That’s it. Those two words are the key.

-Hugh Gallagher, from here

Never gave this much thought before...........

 

.........................but the difference between tradition and convention is worth pondering.

Worth pondering..............

 News and social media are a drag on happiness. If I had to describe the economy using one word, I would use “strong.” If I had to describe the consumer in one word I would use “anxious.”

-Michael Batnick, from this post

possession......................

 You may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power.

-Arthur Schopenhauer, as quoted here

hard lessons...............................

 More than any of the other early presidents, George Washington learned in early life the pain of loss, humiliation, and hardship.  It is axiomatic among military historians that commanders learn more from defeat than from victory, but this is especially true of Washington.  He had been taught many hard lessons and would have two decades in which to mull them over before he fought again. Reviewing is experiences, he could have distilled them into some general maxims along these lines:

      -Know yourself, and know those who you are fighting.  This is a more complex proposition than it may seem, as it requires introspection, strategic thinking, and reliable intelligence.

     -Study terrain, and make it your friend.

     -As circumstances change, be ready to change views and abandon assumptions.  Listen to dissenters and know how to weigh alternatives.

-Thomas E. Ricks:  First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

A question not asked very often............

 Everyone remembers the children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You know, this porridge is too hot, this one is too cold, this one is just right.

Well, pain kinda works in the same way. Too much pain will lead to trauma and helplessness. Too little pain will lead to entitlement and selfishness.

But just the right amount of pain and struggle: that’s what allows us to feel a sense of accomplishment and meaning in our lives, which then builds up our sense of autonomy and self-worth—the bedrock of a mentally healthy and happy person.

So, how do you define the Goldilocks Zone of Pain? How do you know how much pain is “just right?”

-Mark Manson, from here

Thinking about..........................

...........the interplay of style and substance. 

Reflect, relive, ponder, and refine...........

      We must labor to make certain that our memories of past experiences, whether good or bad, are accurate if they are to serve us and to make the future better than the past.  We must reflect on our past, reliving the moments, pondering the lessons, and refining out current conduct based on the lessons of our personal history.  If we have manipulated the truth of the past, if we have tended to blame others rather than ourselves, then we are seeking an escape from reality, and we will be destined to repeat past errors and relive present difficulties.

-Jim Rohn, as culled from The Five Major Pieces To The Life Puzzle

preparation for freedom.........................

     Let us begin by asking the question of principle, namely, what should a lover of liberty wish to see done in the schools?  I think the ideal but somewhat Utopian answer would be that the pupils should be qualified as far as possible to form a reasonable judgment on controversial questions in regard to which they are likely to have to act.  This would require, on one hand, a training in judicial habits of thought; and, on the other hand, access to impartial supplies of knowledge.  In that way the pupil would be prepared for genuine freedom of choice on becoming adult.  We cannot give freedom to the child. but we can give him a preparation for freedom; and this is what education ought to do. 

     This, however, is not the theory of education which has prevailed in most parts of the world.

-Bertrand Russell, from his essay on John Stuart Mill

consider...........................

 Whenever you are invited to a meeting, consider whether it is an opportunity or a trap.

-Michael Wade, #348 from here

Continuing education.........................

 Spend the day profitably?   Spend it pondering these quotes.

for ourselves.............................

 What the patterns of an artist's progress show is the human capacity to find meaning and to make lasting work not by planning it but by remaining open to the possibilities they see inside and around themselves.  This argues against forcing predetermined expectations and goals onto our experience of life and for an alert way of being, open to noticing and responding to the future as it emerges.   We think ourselves efficient when we squeeze our lives into schedules, itineraries, and plans, asking of apps that they tell us what to do, where to go next.  But what we lose is the freedom to notice for ourselves, to filter and reflect for ourselves, to craft our unique sense of who we are and what we wish to make of our lives.

-Margaret Heffernan, Uncharted:  How To Navigate The Future

On lurching..........................

 In Gettysburg I still feel close to my grandparents, and I still go to these rolling hills for reflection.  Yet so much has changed since that time—not just the disappearance of the Stuckey's souvenir shops or the Rexall drugstore on Gettysburg's main square—the fabric of our society today has a different texture than it did in the 1950s:  some of it stronger but much of it badly frayed.

      Engaging one's deepest self was easier in those days—with long waits between letters and long-distance phone calls deferred until Sunday when the rates were cheaper.  Today, tethered to smartphones and transfixed by Twitter and Instagram, we lurch from one demand to another with scarcely a moment to think.  Our impulses are reactive, not considered.  They are short-term rather than strategic.  We have lost our capacity to act in the present while thinking into the future.  We are struggling.

-Susan Eisenhower, from her Introduction to How Ike Led:  The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions

Resolved...........................

 “Let scholastic sophisters entangle themselves in their own cobwebs; I am resolved to take my own existence, and the existence of other things, upon trust; and to believe that snow is cold, and honey sweet, whatever they may say to the contrary. He must either be a fool, or want to make a fool of me, that would reason me out of my reason and senses.”

-Thomas Reid

Waxing philosophical.........................

 Virgil spent some time with God that night, thinking about the way things were—about how somebody like Jud Windrom might now be lying dead somewhere, for no discernible reason—and why they were like that, and why a believer like himself would be going around cursing as he did: goddamnit.

     Virgil held intricate unconventional beliefs, not necessarily Christian, bun not necessarily un-Christian, either, derived from his years of studying nature, and his earlier years, his childhood years, with the Bible.  God, he suspected, might not be a steady-state consciousness, omnipotent, omnipresent, timeless.  God might be like a wave front, moving into an unknowable future; human souls might be like neurons, cells of God's own intelligence. . . . 

      Far out, dude; pass the joint.

     Whatever God was, Virgil seriously doubted that he was worried too much about profanity, sex, or even death.  He left the world alone, people alone, each to work out a separate destiny.  And he stranded people like Virgil, who wondered about the unseen world, but were trapped in their own animal passions, and operated out of moralities that almost certainly weren't God's own, if, indeed, he had one.

     Virgil further worried that he was a guy who simply wanted to eat his cake, and have it, too—his philosophy, as a born-again once pointed out to him, pretty much allowed him to carry on as he wished, like your average godless commie.

     He got to "godless commie" and went to sleep.

     And worried in his sleep.

-John Sandford, Rough Country:  A Virgil Flowers Novel

Morgan Housel..............................

 ..............writes some smart stuff.   A few highlights from his post on "Common Causes of Very Bad Decisions":

Incentives can tempt good people to push the boundaries farther than they’d ever imagine.

Tribal instincts reduce the ability to challenge bad ideas because no one wants to get kicked out of the tribe.

Lots of little errors compound into something huge.

Underestimating adaptation, both present and future, leaving you convinced that history will repeat itself and bitter when it doesn’t.

Being influenced by the actions of people who are playing a different game than you are.

Wrongly assuming that the information you have at your disposal tells a complete picture of what you’re dealing with. 

Somewhere near the top of my list...................

...............of amazing things is that science tells us there are a billion trillion stars in the observable Universe.  That is a really big number.  What is just ahead of that fact on my list of amazing things is the Universe is mostly empty space.  Obviously this is apropos of nothing, just felt like sharing.

Of course this discussion may remind you of this remarkable scene from Animal House.  If you are in a hurry, skip to the 1:50 mark:

Not sure this argument holds up.............

Whatever the technological advances of modern society—and they're nearly miraculous—the individualized lifestyles that those technologies spawn seem to be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit.
     "You'll have to be prepared to say that we are not a good society—that we are an antihuman society," anthropologist Sharon Abramowitz warned when I tried this idea out on her.  Abramowitz was in Ivory Coast as a Peace Corps volunteer during the start of the civil war in 2002 and experienced firsthand the close bonds created by hardship and danger.  "We are not good to each other.  Our tribalism is to an extremely narrow group of people:  our children, our spouse, maybe our parents.  Our society is alienating, technical, cold, and mystifying.  Our fundamental desire, as human beings, is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that."

-Sebastian Junger, Tribe:  On Homecoming and Belonging

Sort of like Socrates.................

.........................................................just asking questions.

Groucho says....................