("JP")

By enshrining trade-offs in the mode of thinking of policymakers, and business people, and problem solvers, what you’ve actually done is create an incredibly infertile ground for creative ideas . Because you basically treat the trade-off as if it’s kind of just part of the system. I have to ask the question of this kind of obsession with... See more

Negative capability may be considered not only an individual trait. Groups of people, cultures, and societies may also cultivate and possess this quality. Usually, we need a problem, an acute danger such as a pandemic, to force us to outside of the box.

If the world could slow down and reflect, exercising greater ensemble negative capability,... See more

Compared with the fragmented, D.I.Y. Web I knew, social media felt strangely predictable. User profiles on new sites like LinkedIn or Flickr were templated and surrounded by ads. They offered preset options from categories and drop-down menus—age, location, institutional affiliation—and quantified influence through friend and follower counts. The... See more

Janice Min embraces more with less

"It's not about how big you can get, but the discipline of how small you can stay."

Our tastes and definitions of beauty change in response to other cultural influences, but they also change over time in response to shifts in our own society. According to de Botton, German art historian Wilhelm Worringer suggested that over the span of human history societies have oscillated between a preference for abstract and realistic art, and... See more

The reason you aren’t living in the present, when all is said and done, is because you don’t feel the present living in you.

I studied Classics in college. When I read Caro, I cannot help but think that his work is -- in terms of quality, significance, and longevity -- comparable to that of Thucydides, Tacitus, Suetonius. Truly one of a kind.