Category Archives: Philosophy

The Antidote (Oliver Burkeman)

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I really enjoyed this little book by Oliver Burkeman. It’s a more thoughtful book than the title might lead you to believe. I don’t review books but will share a few excerpts:

“At best, it would appear, happiness can only be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, not stared at directly. … The effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable.”

“Learn how to stop trying to fix things, to stop being so preoccupied with trying to control one’s experience of the world, to give up trying to replace unpleasant thoughts and emotions with more pleasant ones, and to see that, through dropping the ‘pursuit of happiness’, a more profound peace might result.”

“What motivates our investment in goals and planning for the future, much of the time, isn’t any sober recognition of the virtues of preparation and looking ahead. Rather, it s something much more emotional: how deeply uncomfortable we are made by feelings of uncertainty. Faced with the anxiety of not knowing what the future holds, we invest ever more fiercely in our preferred vision of that future – not because it will help us achieve it, but because it helps rid us of feelings of uncertainty in the present.”

And how gratifying to find my philosophy of life within the pages of this book:

“You should sun yourself on a lily-pad until you get bored; then, when the time is right, you should jump to a new lily-pad and hang out there for a while. Continue this over and over, moving in whatever direction feels right.”

A couple of times, in fact:

‘A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving.’ — Lao Tzu

And this for you Dale Carnegie devotees:

“The ‘cult of optimism’ is all about looking forward to a happy or successful future, thereby reinforcing the message that happiness belongs to some other time than now.”

I’ve been reading self-help and motivation books for half a century, with limited success. This was a refreshing new perspective.

Rebirth

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“You are lounging on a magnificent balcony open to the starry sky, divine music is playing with such exquisite perfection you can hardly stand it, when all of a sudden something terrible occurs: the magical sounds break up into an obscene cacophony. What is happening? Are you dying? You could put it that way. That awful noise is the first scream of an infant: you. You have been born into a human body hardwired with each and every transgression from the last time around, and now you must spend the next seventy years clawing your way back to the music. No wonder we cry.”

— Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett

Who wants to die for a supermarket

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“The greatest weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that. What is the West but a gigantic supermarket? And who really wants to die for a supermarket?”

— Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett

The sun is always setting

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“The state of the world is a relative truth. It’s mostly relative to how much news you watch. If you’re a CNN junkie, you live in a more worrisome, dangerous world than I do. You can argue all day that it’s the same world, but all that matters is what world you experience, not what the world is supposed to be likeoutside your experience. So zoom in, live from here. Don’t let others tell you what the world is like, because they live in a different world.”

David Cain on sunsets and how the world works.

One less decision

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For the past two weeks, breakfast has been cereal with fruit, OJ and (sometimes) toast. This didn’t seem like an important decision until I read David Cain’s post: Why the minimalists do what they do.

“After years of being confronted with a decision shortly after waking, I decided to be done with deciding what was for breakfast. My usual is now the only thing on the menu, and since I stopped deciding what’s for breakfast, mornings have had a significantly different feel. They are clearer and more spacious.”

And it’s about more than what we have for breakfast.

“When we’re faced with a number of options, we’re always going to assume that one of them is better than all the rest. This means the more options there are, the more likely we are to choose one that isn’t the best one. […] Our satisfaction with what we have shrinks as the number of things we don’t have — or could have — grows.”

This notion resonates with me. Even to having fewer shirts or pants to select from each morning.

Your head would explode

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I’ve never met David Cain but when I think of “enlightenment,” he comes to mind. If I could pick one person to give me tips on how to live, I think it might be him. From a recent post:

“I now see all instances of minor physical discomfort as a chance to get better at being relaxed. I relax into the discomfort, I let it hang out with me. When you first try it it’s an exhilarating experiment — to voluntarily open up to minor pain when that’s what the moment brings you, to refrain from listening to the impulse to cringe or harden. It feels like you’re walking freely in an area you thought you weren’t allowed to go.”

“The present moment is the only concrete reality you will ever have to deal with. Sometimes it contains pain. We prefer that our realities don’t contain pain. But that can only ever be a preference, because ultimately we don’t have control over the present once it becomes the present. If you truly needed reality to be something other than reality, your head would explode that instant. But it doesn’t. You prefer it to be one way, but don’t need it to be.”

Who are your heros?

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“If you tell me who your heroes are, I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out.” 
I’m not as smart as Warren Buffett but I might be as lucky.

“When you work with people who are already rich, they’ll work because they choose to do so, ‘rather than being on a yacht somewhere.’ But you don’t have to be rich. Buffett says that while it make take a job or two to get there, you should do the work you love.”

“Just imagine you could be given 10 percent of the future earnings of one person you know,” Buffett says. Would you pick the smartest person? The fastest runner? No, Buffett says: “You’re going to pick the person that has the right habits.”

In the can

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filmcansWhile watching the new Tom Cruise movie last week, I found myself feeling anxious about some situation his character was in. A little worried about how it was going to come out. It was clearly a moment of suspended disbelief. And then, sitting in that dark, nearly empty theater, I had a moment of insight. The movie I was watching was already “in the can.” The story I was watching had ended, long ago.

Things might work out for Tom’s character (they usually do), or they might not. But that had already been decided. Nothing happening in my head, in that theater, would change how the movie ended. As that dawned on me, I had a very strong feeling the same is true for my story as well. I’m saying the lines and doing the stunts but the story was written long ago and the movie is in the can. I can’t change the story or how it ends. Like Mr. Cruise, I can say my lines a little differently in each take, but the plot is done.

I know this is a very disturbing notion for many people. A ridiculous idea for some. But the more I think about it, the more convinced I become. No, “convinced” is not right. It’s more of a feeling. A recognition. ‘Ah, yes. This is how it is.’

I choose not to try to ‘understand’ this.

The God Argument

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the-god-argumentThe God Argument (The Case Against Religion and for Humanism) by A. C. Grayling was a bit of a slow read for me, compared to a few other books I’ve read on this topic. This was, I believe, my first brush with secular humanism and it’s nice to have a basic definition of the concepts.

“Secularism is the principle of maintaining a separation between religious interests and bodies, on the one hand, and the state, on the other hand, on the premise that religion has no greater claim than any other self-interest outlook in debates about matters of government and public policy.”

“The basis of humanism is that we are to answer the most fundamental of all questions, the question of how to live, by reflection on the facts of human experience in the real world, and not on the basis of religion. […] As a broad ethical outlook, humanism involves no sectarian divisions or strife, no supernaturalism, no taboos, no food and dress codes, no restrictive sexual morality other than what is implicit in the demand to treat others with respect, consideration and kindness.”

Humanism’s two fundamental premises: 1) “there are no supernatural agencies in the universe,” 2) “our ethics must be drawn from, and responsive to, the nature and circumstances of human experience.”

“A key requirement (of humanism) is that individuals should think for themselves about what they are and how they should live. […] It imposes no obligations on people other than to think for themselves.”

Same for stoicism which, at first glances, seems to share some ideas with Buddhism.

“Stoicism’s main doctrine was that one should cultivate two capacities: ‘indifference’, and self-control. They used the term ‘indifference’ in the strict sense of this term to men neutrality, detachment, as in not taking sides on a question, or being disengaged from a quarrel.”

A few more ideas that got some highlighter »
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