What Happened With cheery eyes I look back at the past, embracing with love that which cannot be undone—in a great amor fati. With lucid eyes I look back at the past, striving for accuracy in my memories, treating them as historical facts that ought to be true, not emotionally valanced. With gloomy eyes I look back at the past, understanding that what I remember is bound to be distorted, bound to diverge from truth. What Will Happen With cheery eyes I look forth into the future, … [Read more...]
When It’s Bad to Be Decisive
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...]
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