Jay Matthews

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important.

The way that education can lock us into careers, or at least substantially direct the route we travel, would not be so problematic if we were excellent judges of our future interests and characters.

I’m indifferent to whether you do something great or not. All I know is that tapping into your creative potential is deeply powerful and with all the resources in the world at our disposal, we might as well see what we can become.

I heard this quote that Elie Wiesel, actually, liked, of Hegel — that genuine tragedies are not conflicts between right and wrong, but conflicts between two rights. But I actually feel like the tragedy of our time is so many wounds, so many sufferings that can’t be equated, and yet they’re all so real. And we try to not address the suffering; we... See more

This, indeed, is the silent refrain of the novel: the haunting reminder that however the past and the future might unfold and refold in the origami of even the most elaborate time-model, unless we live in the present, we are not living at all.

Historically, however, psychoanalysis emerged in a specifically Western tradition of intellectual and social values. It is based on a philosophy of liberal individualism and thus has proved to be a therapeutic technique exhibiting constraints that have limited its applicability across cultures and classes.

Argues that everyone models, some just do so explicitly and others fool themselves into thinking that they do not model. The author provides compelling reasons for why modelling is important and why people should engage in people. (good companion for Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, very relevant for corporate environments). Core arguments... See more

This essay is a combination of personal reflection on the self and identity labels, the restrictions that label-based belonging imposes and the discomfort that freedom can bring. Included are good mental models, praise for values-based life navigation, and interpretations of popular culture.