The ability to make decisions quickly and confidently is widely lauded in our culture. But whether decisiveness is a virtue or not seems to depend, as usual, on the context. Situation A. You know a lot about the relevant variables of your decision and you have reliable intuitions about how they interact and how tweaking them will affect the outcome of each potential action. This might be your situation at work: you are skilled and experienced enough to know what to do, so it's easy for you to … [Read more...]
Are You Experiencing or Experience-Chasing?
Let us read chapter forty-seven of the Tao Te Ching: Without opening your door, you may know the whole worldWithout looking out your window, you may see the way of the heavensThe farther you go, the less you knowThus the sage knows without travelingHe sees without lookingHe accomplishes without doing This is not what society tells us. Rather, what we are taught to believe is the exact opposite: that we must pursue events, culture, travel, adventure. There is always a way to expand our … [Read more...]
Who Needs Courage?
I dislike the idea of being courageous. Sure, it's a virtue and all, but what are we really saying when we speak of courage? Obviously, it means to act in spite of emotional resistance. However, although courage opposes fear, it is still defined in relation to it. Why accept the emotional conceptualization in the first place? Why not rather think in terms of tasks and volitions? "I act not because I have courage, but because I do what I want." These are not the same. What I like is the idea of … [Read more...]
Against Living Recursively
He who speaks of the Way is not walking it; but he who walks moves ahead. The True Will is no different: the more I speak of it, the less I do it. Unspoken it is done. — Yet may it be my Will itself to speak of it? Oh, it would consume itself, waste itself, in vain recursion! Hence I say no more. … [Read more...]
Great Minds Discuss Ideas, Great Men Also Discuss People
On great minds and great men Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people. I used to like that quote because it was often effective in stroking my ego. My natural inclination has always been to debate ideas, to devalue stories, and to detest gossip. Oh, what a great mind I must be! Yet what disposition of curiosity is actually revealed here? Apparently, I'm highly interested in abstract thinking, less interested in concrete events, and least interested … [Read more...]
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