Sparks 👁️

“Our economy isn’t one that produces things to be used, but things that increase usage,”

You could say paradigms are harder to change than anything else about a system, and therefore this item should be lowest on the list, not second-to-highest. But there’s nothing physical or expensive or even slow in the process of paradigm change. In a single individual it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a falling... See more

Measuring wealth from zero is a different way to think about it than normal. What makes you wealthy, in the way the word is typically used, isn’t what you have, but what you have compared to the people near you in time, space, and culture.

The book goes on to suggest a better path to future prosperity, consisting of:

* Eudaimonia: a good life, which is meaningfully rich - with relationships, ideas, emotion, health, fulfilment, great accomplishment and enduring achievement.

* Poeisis: generating new wealth, and multiplying the Common Wealth, as opposed to net-destructive forms of... See more

Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth — our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves o ff from these other voices, to continue by... See more

Theoretically, a social media feed should heighten awareness and memory, and dilate time, because it selects for content that’s exciting, outrageous, and scary. And yet we seldom remember such content. The reason for this discrepancy is simple: when every post is alarming, your brain quickly becomes desensitised, and starts to interpret alarming... See more

But we don’t always have access to a retreat center, a monastery, or a library, what we do have is this place, a base camp, a landmark for thinking beyond thought.

The metaphor of the base camp is particularly apt for this kind of contemplative scholarship. Like the mountaineer’s base camp—a place of preparation and return, of gathering resources... See more