diego

That’s how rituals work. They steady us. They open us up to possibility without demanding performance. They keep us from the all-or-nothing thinking

Rituals are gentler than resolutions. Where resolutions chase outcomes, rituals attend to process. Georgia O’Keeffe took a 30-minute walk each morning in the desert, often alone, believing the walking itself was where the work of painting began. Toni Morrison rose at 5, made her coffee, and waited for the sun to appear—or, as she put it, “watched... See more

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.

It was an age of monumental works of thought and knowledge: the Encyclopédie , Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language , Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason . Radical new ideas about God, about history, about society, about politics, and even the whole purpose and meaning of... See more

Tim Blanning writes, “conservatives were appalled and progressives were delighted, that it was a habit that knew no social boundaries.”