Things that make you go Hmmmm

Here in italics is “Letter to a Young Activist” as published in The Catholic Worker interspersed with my own commentary:

Do not depend on the hope of results.

What a challenge that is . Any action one embarks on is undertaken with the hope of positive, tangible results. One must have hope that what you do will have an impact. But to the extent you de... See more

More generally your goal should be not to let anything into your head unexamined, and things don't always enter your head in the form of statements. Some of the most powerful influences are implicit. How do you even notice these? By standing back and watching how other people get their ideas.

Building relationships between things is a form of authorship too.

Anxiety about the “meaning” of citizenship and anxiety about who belongs in America, in other words, more than share a border (pun intended?) with anxieties about low birth rates. Because the vision for raising the American birth rate is also not about creating a nation with stronger ties. Rather, it’s about forcing women back into roles that they ... See more

Since goals compose your identity, a bodybuilder with feel pain when they are thrown out of their routine. They aren’t under any real threat, but it feels like they are because their identity is threatened by the lack of progress toward its goals.

Dopamine signals when something is important to our survival. We remember that information because it w... See more