A cost benefit analysis

I can’t afford to hate people. 

        I don’t have that kind of time.

                 Kanji Watanabe, in the Akira Kurosawa movie Ikiru

 

Existential risks

This is how our species is going to die.
Not necessarily from nuclear war specifically,
but from ignoring existential risks that don’t appear imminent‌ at this moment.
If we keep doing that, eventually, something is going to kill us –
something that looked improbable in advance,
but that, by the time it looks imminent, is too late to stop.

            Michael Huemer, The Case for Tyranny, Fake Nous

 

 

 

 

Pay attention

Attention, taken to its highest degree,
    is the same thing as prayer.
        It presupposes faith and love.
            Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

                            Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

 

 

 

 

Poem: Compassion

Have compassion for everyone you meet
even if they don't want it. What seems conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down where the spirit meets the bone.

                    Miller Williams

 

 

 

 

 

Crushing judgments

I hate judgments that only crush and don’t transform.

            Elias Canetti, The Secret Heart of the Clock 

 

 

 

 

A hard lesson

Time is a great teacher,
    but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

            Hector Berlioz, Letter, November 1856

 

 

 

 

A simple maxim

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned
        I try to follow a simple maxim:
                if you can’t say it clearly
                        you don’t understand it yourself.

                                John Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind