Reclaim The Brain

The point Klinenberg wanted to make was this: If there was no such thing as a library, and someone proposed it today, there's a 99.9% chance they and their “radical and crazy idea” would be laughed out of the room.

But, as we know, it’s not a crazy idea.

“Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession,” wrote Frederick Buechner. ”It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. Faith is not being sure where you're going, but going anyway. A journey without maps.”

Mary Oliver said, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

If the reading revolution represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history.

The scientific virtues are:

• Stupidity


• Arrogance


• Laziness


• Carefreeness


• Beauty


• Rebellion


• Humor

If you do not deep read, you do not cultivate a capacity to think, imagine, and create; you therefore may not realize that anything more satisfying than a video game even exists.

When you reduce yourself to a product, you sacrifice the very essence of what makes you unique. Your quirks, your weirdness, your vulnerabilities, your authentic self-these are the things that resonate with others, not a polished, palatable persona. The impactful creators understand this.

Everybody wants to play in the Stream, but no one wants to build the Garden.

Attention is first philosophy—

Philosophy is not only a system of thought but a mode of attentiveness, an exercised openness to what exceeds us yet calls us to deeper participation. Its systematic aspects are downstream of this attentiveness, and can certainly become a scaffolding by which others can train their own attention, but it is at its root... See more