Jay Matthews

It’s hard to write notes that are worth developing over time . These principles help: ( the below are all linked notes and concepts)

Perhaps if one is pessimistic about the future, it is that much more important to embrace Future Self-Continuity, however paradoxically, because acting with the interests of the future in mind may the best way to make a future worth living in.

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

But to me, what the Greeks knew and what these other ancient authors, I think, tapped into is something we’re only now finding words to articulate again, which is that betrayal is the wound that cuts the deepest. You can call it whatever you want, moral distress, moral injury, but really, it’s betrayal — feeling abandoned or betrayed, or betraying... See more

Organizational structures are created and made more elaborate with the rise of institutionalized myths, and, in highly institutionalized contexts, organizational action must support these myths. But an organization must also attend to practical activity. The two requirements are at odds. A stable solution is to maintain the organization in a... See more

The desire for fulfilling work — a job that provides a deep sense of purpose, and reflects our values, passions and personality — is a modern invention. … For centuries, most inhabitants of the Western world were too busy struggling to meet their subsistence needs to worry about whether they had an exciting career that used their talents and... See more

We must also include in our clinical theories the psychological misery occasioned by actual and often ongoing experiences of social oppression. In part, such socialized misery may be internalized and perpetuated by an individual’s use of mechanisms such as identification with the aggressor, dissociation, denial, and projective identification, which... See more

From the description: Contrary to the assumptions of mainstream medicine, he asserts that most human ailments are not individual problems, but reflections of a person's relationship with the physical, emotional and social environment, from conception to death. Mind and body are not separate in real life, and thus health and illness in a person... See more