Language and Thought
Looking at the connections between the language we use and the thoughts we have
Language and Thought
Discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital.
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
If you have an apple and I have an apple, and we exchange apples, then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
George Bernard Shaw
Ideas are most valuable when shared (AND ACCEPTED) - Twitter bad example, because of the second part
Perhaps I could lean into my weirdness and curiosity, and earn a living from a small group of similarly curious weirdos. It felt like the permission slip I needed to give it a shot.
All That Remains
Sometimes we still need permission in the permissionless economy
Free time is mostly devoted to getting ready for work, going to work, returning from work, and recovering from work. Free time is a euphemism for the peculiar way labor, as a factor of production, not only transports itself at its own expense to and from the workplace, but assumes primary responsibility for its own maintenance and repair.
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
A new idea can be spread quickly if someone can explain it and communicate it to others before they have to discover it themselves. But the chief advantage of language is not communication but autogeneration. Language is a trick that allows the mind to question itself; a magic mirror that reveals to the mind what the mind thinks; a handle that turn... See more
Kevin Kelly • What Technology Wants
how can we use language to spread things faster? use language as tool for mind to question itself
Socrates said that manual laborers make bad friends and bad citizens because they have no time to fulfill the responsibilities of friendship and citizenship.
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
Mentors and friends have always warned me that employers will never care about you.
But what if that’s a story we decided was true, one that doesn’t have to be?
But what if that’s a story we decided was true, one that doesn’t have to be?
Alicia Bonner • Why do you work?
the only occasion on which man realizes his complete humanity by giving full “play” to both sides of his twofold nature, thinking and feeling.
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
We often think of language as a means to an end, but rarely take the time to consider whether language in itself is influencing our thoughts, not just enabling the sharing of them.
Steph Smith • Gaining Perspective Through Untranslatable Words
Does language influence our thoughts? How can we minimize (or maximize) that influence?
A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about.
visakan veerasamy • a matryoshka of possibilities
Most rules aren’t actually rules, they are illusions we create for ourselves.