Jay Matthews

“Most people, if they do something that they feel is important, they want to keep at it, to maintain ownership. When I have an idea that’s successful and popular, that to me is a signal that my work is done. My style is to try to do something important and then abandon it and do something else.”

Knutson goes on to explain the potential implications of embracing Future Self-Continuity, especially when the world seems bad, because of the way our ability to relate to our future selves shapes our decision making. Knutson suggests what this could look like at a group level.

It is time to grieve and mourn the dead and believe in the power of renewal. If we do not embrace our grief, our sadness will come out sideways in unexpected forms of depression and violence.

“Horror is something perfectly natural: the mind’s emptiness. A thought is taking shape, then suddenly it notices that there is nothing more to think. Whereupon it crashes to the ground like a figure in a comic strip who suddenly realizes that he has been walking on air.”

Resisting new technology is, itself, a power move: a way to make other people do more work to compensate for the work you’re not doing. The point is: resisting someone else’s understanding and organization of time is a power move.

On the workshop: The low teacher-student ratio (4:16), the deliberate cultivation of community, the concentration on fun, the valuing of personal experience, the adaptability of staff and the open acceptance of differences among and between students contributed to an inclusive and diverse learning environment — an ideal teaching environment, one... See more

Eroticism resides in the ambiguous space between anxiety and fascination.

Yes — I think you have to, at some level, in some form, have the feeling for how things might be different and better in order to make a great discovery. I think you can be lucky, but even if you’re lucky and stumble into something, you’ve got to realize that it’s something and that you should pursue it. And that is usually driven by some feeling... See more