Rishita Chaudhary
@rish_yossarian
multi-hyphenate
tech policy, media & society
Rishita Chaudhary
Dialogues of the dead differ from symposia of the living not only because people of different eras and cultures converse, but also because, as shades living posthumously, they no longer consider the life circumstances in which they speak. What they say can no longer benefit or harm them.
There are two modes of experience: appreciative, and evaluative.
Concrete example: let's say you're listening to a piece of music. Are you sinking into it, awash in emotions? You're in the appreciative mode.
Are you the mixing engineer, listening to the snare hits to make sure they're consistent? You're in the evaluative mode.
Much of sanity, and ha
... See more
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you wi
... See moreMy soul is a hidden orchestra,” the first entry reads. “I do not know what instruments, what violins and harps, drums and tambours sound and clash inside me. I know myself only as a symphony.”
“This is the entire essence of life: Who are you? What are you?” the young Leo Tolstoy distilled the eternal quest in his diary as he wrestled with moral development and the search for selfhood — a search that begins as soon as we become conscious, reaches a crescendo in the formative years of adolescence and young adulthood, and continues until ou... See more
Maria Popova • 15-Year-Old Susan Sontag on the Explosive Elasticity of the Self
Having a victim mindset—that we’re powerless and at the mercy of external forces—is the antithesis of agency because it reinforces passivity.
where you begin is not where you end
“At the same time, art cannot be understood in terms of purpose. As the sculptor Charles Ray has said, art is “for absolutely nothing.” To make, or experience, art is to enter a kind of free zone; it slows us down, places us in some epistemological estuary, takes us into the wild. We make art from our flaws, fragilities, perversities, from our need
... See more