Importance of Being Earnest

The ancient Greeks had a concept called eudaimonia, often translated as happiness but really meaning something more like flourishing or living well. It wasn't about the absence of difficulty but about the cultivation of character through engagement with life's challenges. They understood that the good life wasn't the easy life, but the life that... See more

The contest isn't between humans and machines but between two models of human-machine interaction. One treats cognition as a commodity to be optimized for frictionless consumption. The other preserves what made that blank box special: the good struggle of human curiosity meeting its limits and pushing through.

I've always wondered why I leave some exchanges drained and others energized. why I can instantly sense whether someone is a soul friend or not. the best way i've been able to comprehend this is that conversations are the medium by which energy is exchanged. they are composed of:

• 1. questions asked for the own persons benefit


• 2. questions asked for

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privacy is the womb.

it’s where we gestate who we are before the world gets to shape us.

take it away, & you don’t get more honesty. you get collapse. conformity. psychic suffocation.

if you love freedom, you have to love privacy.

if you care about the human spirit, you have to defend its room to breathe.

& if you still want to become something... See more

Earnestness is radioactive. People sense it through the screen. If you’re saying something because you believe it, people may not agree, but they will listen longer. If you’re saying something because you think it will work, they may like it, but they won’t love it. There is a difference between engagement and emotional investment. One gets clicks.... See more

He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.”

This is an idea that Nietzsche would have found sympathetic - he said that we are artists of our own lives, and that art requires illusion. The illusion here is preemptive belief: the ability to act from a place of imagined inevitability, to say, “I will meet this standard,” and to let that belief shape your behavior as if it were already true.... See more

Many people go around demeaning their emotions, overreacting to perceived slights, declaring themselves weak or moody or selfish, encountering their passions as liabilities instead of gifts, and stigmatizing their unique sensibilities and fixations. And people with these obstacles can transform their daily experiences simply by learning to honor... See more