philosophy
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Quick hits pervert happiness
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1 min read
You can’t solve your problems by simply buying things. Materialism offers a temporary sop of happiness. Alcoholism is also a crude method for escaping life’s woes. Pursuing short-term satisfaction only paints the surface. The quick hit — whether a shot of dopamine or a numbing of anxiety — bends to the rhythm of a rollercoaster…
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Searching for the ‘right’ fix
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1 min read
Assumptions provide fence-sitting answers. They are just half-truths that validate how things usually go, band-aids that make us feel safer. The inquisitive mind chases uncertainty and complexity. “We must be ignorant of what we are looking for, or we would not go looking for it.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty Rather, like a dog with a bone, we…
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Thinking is hard
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1 min read
People don’t like thinking. It’s painful. Just as numbering denotes page numbers, we have to get our brain cells to assemble in an attempt to establish some order. There’s a reason why there are so few philosophers and so many people attending entertainments. Consumption is our default setting. It is easier to sit back and…
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The flaws of forecasting
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1 min read
Predictability is a loose formula that describes how things usually go. What works today won’t necessarily work tomorrow. But what may increase our chances of success is a little confidence. “Be confident, not certain.” Eleanor Roosevelt Confidence breeds success. Overconfidence begets failure. When we work hard, we instill a practicable faith in ourselves. But we…
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Still ignorant, not stupid
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1 min read
A lot of people get dumber after college. It’s not entirely their fault. A job takes up all their time. Besides spending time with family and friends and doing chores — getting on with the business of living — a lot of free time is spent on staring at lite brites for entertainment. “We think…
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Thinking less to do more
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1 min read
Rhythm builds thoughtlessness. Work can become more natural out of mechanical motion, a kind of doing without thinking. Employees can’t make one hundred sandwiches in a couple hours without silencing the monkey mind. The process of unthinking begets a chorus of action. Similarly, we can’t dribble a basketball nor soccer ball effectively while focusing on…
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Anomalies wanted
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1 min read
Curiosity expands the truth. There’s always an insightful gem around the corner. So we chase the unfamiliar, gathering knowledge about interesting subjects unrelated to our core interests. Seeking knowledge should invite more ambiguity than it solves. The tyranny of certainty tries to stem philosophical reflection. The conflict between knowing and leaving the door open for…
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Everything is sampled, including our DNA
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1 min read
It’s in our DNA to sample, to take existing slices from each other to build something new. The internet is the largest cut and paste machine. A producer of novelty, it begs for recombinations, a collection of stuff we can remix and make our own. Like a Tumblr page, we decorate our personalities with originality.…
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Life is a pendulum of experiences
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1 min read
It was miserable. It was wonderful. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. You can’t experience one high without experiencing another low. Life doesn’t work on a scale of 1 to 10 Life ebbs and flows. A step forward reverts in a step back, and vice versa. Life is a…
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Imagine you are eighty years old – assuming you’re not eighty already, that is; if you are, you’ll have to pick an older age – and then complete the sentences ‘I wish I’d spent more time on…’ and ‘I wish I’d spent less time on…’. This turns out to be a surprisingly effective way to…
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Relishing the doubt
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1 min read
Enthusiastic in the front, skeptic in the back. The dialectic of mind enframes the rational man. When we peel off the plastic of certainty, we uncover the beauty of chasing ambiguity. When we see that the true bearers of consciousness are patterns of continuous variation rather than preprogrammed automata, we relish our idiosyncrasies. Naïveté is…