juliana ong
@julianaong
juliana ong
But without any legitimate external authority to shape the self, whether cultural or familial, there can’t be any real stability for the individual. There can be no real constraints on the desires of the self, since that would have to come from an authority beyond it; nor can there even be any awareness—let alone shame—that what the self desires... See more
Freya India • A World In Upheaval
in order to will any meaningful new project into existence, I actually must be untethered from reality. I need to view the world as bendable and controllable, not as this unchangeable force for me to analyze and carefully dodge around. So for me, “becoming more agentic” has really been a project in carefully maintaining a state of delusion.
I believe what Steve Jobs said about how you “only connect the dots in retrospect,” but every once in a while, you know with unshakeable certainty that this moment you’re in right now is a massive new dot getting drawn. You don’t know exactly where you’ll go from here, or even what exactly to make of the experience, but you know it will have been a... See more
In short: The first half of the twentieth century was about mastering the physical world, the first half of the twenty-first has been about escaping it.
This shift has moral as well as economic consequences. When a society pushes its citizens to take only financial risks, it hollows out the virtues that once made collective life possible: trust,... See more
This shift has moral as well as economic consequences. When a society pushes its citizens to take only financial risks, it hollows out the virtues that once made collective life possible: trust,... See more
Derek Thompson • The Monks in the Casino
- the concept of inverse charisma:
E. M. Forster wrote, “To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.”
What's in the cards?
My guess is that what we need most in this chaotic world is moral direction. What we need most in a rapidly changing world is rootedness.
Freya India • A World In Upheaval
I used to believe in the adage, “If they wanted to, they would.” But now I think it’s more like, “If they’re open-hearted, and open-minded, and curious, and not too cautious, then, maybe, they might. Or they still might not.”
So sometimes, it’s not about hoarding every moment as much as being able to value the experiences you’ve had. Because if you have one experience that is valuable that you could draw upon later on from the past week, that’s a whole lot better than mindlessly documenting everything you’ve ever done for the last week, right? And that’s going to be... See more