Thursday, December 31, 2020

OLBERMANN VS. TRUMP #44: 140 GOP REPS TO VOTE AGAINST BIDEN. THIS IS WAR...

Dick Thornburgh, ex-governor and U.S. attorney general, dies | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Pagan" vs. "Wicca": What Is The Difference? | Dictionary.com

"Pagan" vs. "Wicca": What Is The Difference? | Dictionary.com


https://www.dictionary.com/e/pagan-vs-wicca-pagan-vs-heathen/

The Rude Pundit: Haiku Review of 2020: Fetch the Bolt Cutters

The Rude Pundit: Haiku Review of 2020: Fetch the Bolt Cutters


https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2020/12/haiku-review-of-2020-fetch-bolt-cutters.html

The Rude Pundit: Haiku Review of 2020 (Part 2): The New Abnormal

The Rude Pundit: Haiku Review of 2020 (Part 2): The New Abnormal


https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2020/12/haiku-review-of-2020-part-2-new-abnormal.html

This Is an Embarrassment to the Idea of a Civil Society - Esquire

This Is an Embarrassment to the Idea of a Civil Society - Esquire


https://apple.news/AgqILQCsJSC-PgVlLSkFczw

The 20 best documentaries on Netflix - Mashable

The 20 best documentaries on Netflix - Mashable


https://apple.news/ATrLcRZUVTCGxKTiwqkjXlQ

Fauci calls for extra resources as U.S. misses COVID vaccination target - The Guardian

Fauci calls for extra resources as U.S. misses COVID vaccination target - The Guardian
Fauci calls for extra resources as U.S. misses COVID vaccination target - The Guardian


https://apple.news/AbG1bl-_aR9S44bIf2FGcAw

Mix - Dragon Ritual Drummers

Fwd: Midweek pick-me-up: New Year's resolutions from some of humanity's greatest minds



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Date: Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 7:32 PM
Subject: Midweek pick-me-up: New Year's resolutions from some of humanity's greatest minds
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Brain Pickings

Welcome Hello, sherry pasquarello! This is the Brain Pickings midweek pick-me-up: Once a week, I plunge into my fourteen-year archive and resurface something worth resavoring as timeless nourishment for heart, mind, and spirit. (If you don't yet subscribe to the standard Sunday newsletter of new pieces published each week, you can sign up here — it's free.) If you missed the annual special of the best of Brain Pickings in one place, you can catch up right here. And if my labor of love enriches your life in any way, please consider supporting it with a donation – all these years, I have spent tens of thousands of hours, made many personal sacrifices, and invested tremendous resources in Brain Pickings, which remains free and ad-free and alive thanks to reader patronage. If you already donate: THANK YOU.

FROM THE ARCHIVE (2015) | Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: New Year's Resolutions from Some of Humanity's Greatest Minds

treebrain.jpg?zoom=2&w=150At the outset of each new year, humanity sets out to better itself as we resolve to eradicate our unhealthy habits and cultivate healthy ones. But while the most typical New Year's resolutions tend to be about bodily health, the most meaningful ones aim at a deeper kind of health through the refinement of our mental, spiritual, and emotional habits — which often dictate our physical ones. In a testament to young Susan Sontag's belief that rereading is an act of rebirth, I have revisited the timelessly rewarding ideas of great thinkers from the past two millennia to cull fifteen such higher-order resolutions for personal refinement.

1. THOREAU: WALK AND BE MORE PRESENT

thoreau_walking.jpg?zoom=2&w=185No one has made a more compelling case for the bodily and spiritual value of walking — that basic, infinitely rewarding, yet presently endangered human activity — than Henry David Thoreau. In his 1861 treatise Walking (free ebook | public library), penned seven years after Walden, Thoreau reminds us of how that primal act of mobility connects us with our essential wildness, that spring of spiritual vitality methodically dried up by our sedentary civilization. He makes a special point of differentiating the art of sauntering from the mere act of walking:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngI have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.

Proclaiming that "every walk is a sort of crusade," Thoreau laments — note, a century and a half before our present sedentary society — our growing civilizational tameness, which has possessed us to cease undertaking "persevering, never-ending enterprises" so that even "our expeditions are but tours." With a dramatic flair, he lays out the spiritual conditions required of the true walker:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngIf you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again — if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man — then you are ready for a walk.

[…]

No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession… It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker.

But the passage that I keep coming back to as I face the modern strain for presence in the age of productivity, 150 years later, is this:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngI am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is — I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

Read more here.

2. VIRGINIA WOOLF: KEEP A DIARY

awritersdiary_woolf.jpeg?zoom=2&w=180Many celebrated writers have extolled the creative benefits of keeping a diary, but none more convincingly than Virginia Woolf, who was not only a masterful letter-writer and little-known children's book author, but also a dedicated diarist. Although she kept some sporadic early journals, Woolf didn't begin serious journaling until 1915, when she was 33. Once she did, she continued doggedly until her last entry in 1941, four days before her death, leaving behind 26 volumes written in her own hand. More than a mere tool of self-exploration, however, Woolf approached the diary as a kind of R&D lab for her craft. As her husband observes in the introduction to her collected journals, A Writer's Diary (public library), Woolf's journaling was "a method of practicing or trying out the art of writing."

In an entry from April 20th, 1919, Woolf makes a case for the vast benefits of keeping a diary as a tool of refining one's writing style — something Joan Didion echoed nearly a century and a half later in her timeless essay on keeping a notebook — and considers the optimal approach to journaling:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngThe habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments… What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think on re-reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time.

Woolf considers the diary an equally potent autobiographical tool as well — one essential in the face of how woefully our present selves shortchange our future happiness. In an entry from January 20th, 1919, a 37-year-old Woolf considers the utility of the diaries to her future self, noting with equal parts sharp self-awareness and near-comic self-consciousness her own young-person's perception of 50 as an "elderly" age:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngI have just re-read my year's diary and am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along, sometimes indeed jerking almost intolerably over the cobbles. Still if it were not written rather faster than the fastest type-writing, if I stopped and took thought, it would never be written at all; and the advantage of the method is that it sweeps up accidentally several stray matters which I should exclude if I hesitated, but which are the diamonds of the dustheap. If Virginia Woolf at the age of 50, when she sits down to build her memoirs out of these books, is unable to make a phrase as it should be made, I can only condole with her and remind her of the existence of the fireplace, where she has my leave to burn these pages to so many black films with red eyes in them. But how I envy her the task I am preparing for her! There is none I should like better. Already my 37th birthday next Saturday is robbed of some of its terrors by the thought. Partly for the benefit of this elderly lady (no subterfuges will then be possible: 50 is elderly, though I anticipate her protest and agree that it is not old) partly to give the year a solid foundation I intend to spend the evenings of this week of captivity in making out an account of my friendships and their present condition, with some account of my friends' characters; and to add an estimate of their work and a forecast of their future works. The lady of 50 will be able to say how near to the truth I come.

Read more here, then see other writers make the same case.

3. SENECA: MAKE YOUR LIFE WIDE RATHER THAN LONG

seneca_shortnessoflife.jpg?zoom=2&w=180Around the time Thoreau was bemoaning his mind's tendency to roam out of the woods while his body saunters in the woods, in another part of the world Kierkegaard was making a similar lament about our greatest source of unhappiness — the refusal to recognize that "busy is a decision" and that presence is infinitely more rewarding than productivity. I frequently worry that being productive is the surest way to lull ourselves into a trance of passivity and busyness the greatest distraction from living, as we coast through our lives day after day, showing up for our obligations but being absent from our selves, mistaking the doing for the being.

Despite a steadily swelling human life expectancy, these concerns seem more urgent than ever — and yet they are hardly unique to our age. In fact, they go as far back as the record of human experience and endeavor. It is unsurprising, then, that the best treatment of the subject is also among the oldest: Roman philosopher Seneca's spectacular 2,000-year-old treatise On the Shortness of Life (public library) — a poignant reminder of what we so deeply intuit yet so easily forget and so chronically fail to put into practice.

Seneca writes:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngIt is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

To those who so squander their time, he offers an unambiguous admonition:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngYou are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don't notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply — though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire… How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!

The cure he prescribes is rather simple, yet far from easy to enact:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngPutting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

Read more about how to fill the length of your life with vibrant width here.

4. ANNA DEAVERE SMITH: DEFINE YOURSELF

annadeaveresmith_letterstoayoungartist.jpg?zoom=2&w=180A great many creators have spoken to the power of discipline, or what psychologists now call "grit," in setting apart those who succeed from those who fail at their endeavor of choice — including Tchaikovsky ("A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood."), Chuck Close ("Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work."), Anthony Trollope ("My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best."), and E.B. White ("A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper."). How to master the elusive art of discipline is what beloved artist, actor, playwright, and educator Anna Deavere Smith outlines in one of the missives in her immeasurably insightful and useful compendium Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts for Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind (public library).

Smith writes:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngDiscipline — both mental and physical — is crucial.

She recounts an encounter with the son of Melvin van Peebles, a black filmmaker who made a smash-hit independent film in the seventies that earned him a lot of money and cultural status. The son, Mario van Peebles, had made a film about his father's film, a screening of which Smith hosted. She writes:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngHe must be in his mid-sixties, and he is in perfect physical shape. He was standing by the bar, and I asked him not about the film but about his physique.

"You look like you work out," I said.

"Every day," he said.

People who actually work out every single day have no problem talking about it. He and I agreed that we have to get up and go immediately to the gym, the pool, wherever our workout is, without doing anything before.

"If I get up and think, 'Let me have a cup of coffee first,' it ain't happ'nin'," he said.

Not even a cup of coffee. I'm the same way. If I go to the computer or take a newspaper before heading to the gym, there's a chance I won't get there.

As someone who has been working out every single morning for the past fifteen years, I wholeheartedly, wholebodily agree. I do a great deal of my reading at the gym, too, including this particular book itself — there's something powerful about the alignment of two disciplines, of body and mind, in the same routine. The two rhythms reinforce one another.

More than that, however, Smith argues that discipline is also the single most important anchor of identity for creative people — the essential material out of which they craft the building blocks of how they define themselves:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngThe life of an artist is not a state of "being." It even sounds pretentious, sometimes, to call oneself blanketly "an artist." It's not up to you or me to give ourselves that title. A doctor becomes a doctor because he or she is formally given an MD. A scholar in the university is formally given a PhD, a counselor an LLD, a hairstylist a license, and so forth.

We are on the fringe, and we don't get such licenses. There are prizes and rewards, popularity and good or bad press. But you have to be your own judge. That, in and of itself, takes discipline, and clarity, and objectivity. Given the fact that we are not "credentialed" by any institution that even pretends to be objective, it is harder to make our guild. True, some schools and universities give a degree for a course of study. But that's a business transaction and ultimately not enough to make you an "artist."

Because an artist is never hit with the magic wand of legitimacy from the outside and "you have to hit your own head with your own handmade wand," creative people are singularly vulnerable every time they put their art — whatever its nature — into the world. Without the shield of, say, a Ph.D. to point to and say, "But look, I'm real," it's all too easy to hang our merit and worth and realness on the opinions of others — opinions often mired in their own insecurities and vulnerabilities, which at the most malignant extreme manifest as people's tendency to make themselves feel big by making others feel small, make themselves feel real by making others feel unreal. Smith captures the paradox of this condition elegantly:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngWe who work in the arts are at the risk of being in a popularity contest rather than a profession. If that fact causes you despair, you should probably pick another profession. Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship to these chaotic and unfair realities. Ideally, we must be even more "professional" than lawyers, doctors, accountants, hairdressers. We have to create our own standards of discipline.

All of the successful artists I know are very disciplined and very organized. Even if they don't look organized, they have their own order.

[…]

What we become — what we are — ultimately consists of what we have been doing.

Read more on how to cultivate that discipline here.

5. ALAN WATTS: BREAK FREE FROM YOUR EGO

watts_taboo.jpg?zoom=2&w=180During the 1950s and 1960s, British philosopher and writer Alan Watts began popularizing Eastern philosophy in the West, offering a wholly different perspective on inner wholeness in the age of anxiety and what it really means to live a life of purpose. We owe much of today's mainstream adoption of practices like yoga and meditation to Watts's influence. His 1966 masterwork The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (public library) builds upon his indispensable earlier work as Watts argues with equal parts conviction and compassion that "the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East." He explores the cause and cure of that illusion in a way that flows from profound unease as we confront our cultural conditioning into a deep sense of lightness as we surrender to the comforting mystery and interconnectedness of the universe.

Envisioned as a packet of essential advice a parent might hand down to his child on the brink of adulthood as initiation into the central mystery of life, this existential manual is rooted in what Watts calls "a cross-fertilization of Western science with an Eastern intuition."

Watts considers the singular anxiety of the age, perhaps even more resonant today, half a century and a manic increase of pace later:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngThere is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out.

At the heart of the human condition, Watts argues, is a core illusion that fuels our deep-seated sense of loneliness the more we subscribe to the myth of the sole ego, one reflected in the most basic language we use to make sense of the world:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngWe suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body — a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. "I came into this world." "You must face reality." "The conquest of nature."

This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.

Read more here, then revisit Watts's related antidote to the age of anxiety.

6. CAROL DWECK: CULTIVATE A GROWTH MINDSET

dweck_mindset.jpg?zoom=2&w=180"If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve," Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: "Do what you love, and don't stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities…" Far from Pollyannaish platitude, this advice actually reflects modern psychology's insight into how belief systems about our own abilities and potential fuel our behavior and predict our success. Much of that understanding stems from the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, synthesized in her remarkably insightful Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (public library) — an inquiry into the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives.

One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality. A "fixed mindset" assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can't change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled. A "growth mindset," on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities. Out of these two mindsets, which we manifest from a very early age, springs a great deal of our behavior, our relationship with success and failure in both professional and personal contexts, and ultimately our capacity for happiness.

Dweck writes:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngBelieving that your qualities are carved in stone — the fixed mindset — creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character — well, then you'd better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn't do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.

[…]

There's another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you're dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you're secretly worried it's a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand you're dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way — in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments — everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person's true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it's impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

At the heart of what makes the "growth mindset" so winsome, Dweck found, is that it creates a passion for learning rather than a hunger for approval. Its hallmark is the conviction that human qualities like intelligence and creativity, and even relational capacities like love and friendship, can be cultivated through effort and deliberate practice. Not only are people with this mindset not discouraged by failure, but they don't actually see themselves as failing in those situations — they see themselves as learning.

Read more on how to cultivate this fruitful mindset here.

7. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: TURN HATERS INTO FANS

youarenowlessdumb.jpg?zoom=2&w=180In one chapter of the altogether illuminating You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself (public library) — a "book about self-delusion, but also a celebration of it," a fascinating and pleasantly uncomfortable-making look at why "self-delusion is as much a part of the human condition as fingers and toes" — David McRaney examines one particularly fascinating manifestation of our self-delusion: The Benjamin Franklin Effect.

This particular form of self-delusion has to do with our tendency to do nice things to people we like and bad things to those we dislike. But what the psychology behind the effect reveals is an inverse relationship — a reverse-engineering of attitudes that takes place as we grow to like people for whom we do nice things and dislike those to whom we are unkind. This curious effect is named after a specific incident early in the Founding Father's political career.

Franklin, born one of seventeen children to poor parents, entered this world — despite his parents' and society's priorities in his favor relative to his siblings — with very low odds of becoming an educated scientist, gentleman, scholar, entrepreneur, and, perhaps most of all, a man of significant political power. To compensate for his unfavorable givens, he quickly learned formidable people skills and became "a master of the game of personal politics." When he ran for his second term as a clerk, a peer whose name Franklin never mentions in his autobiography delivered a long election speech censuring the future Founding Father and tarnishing his reputation.

Although Franklin won, he was furious with his opponent and, observing that this was "a gentleman of fortune and education" who might one day come to hold great power in government, rather concerned about future frictions with him. The troll had to be tamed, and tamed shrewdly. McRaney writes:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngFranklin set out to turn his hater into a fan, but he wanted to do it without "paying any servile respect to him." Franklin's reputation as a book collector and library founder gave him a standing as a man of discerning literary tastes, so Franklin sent a letter to the hater asking if he could borrow a specific selection from his library, one that was a "very scarce and curious book." The rival, flattered, sent it right away. Franklin sent it back a week later with a thank-you note. Mission accomplished. The next time the legislature met, the man approached Franklin and spoke to him in person for the first time. Franklin said the man "ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death."

Read more about what modern psychology has revealed about this curious phenomenon here, then complement it with Kierkegaard on why haters hate.

8. HANNAH ARENDT: THINK RATHER THAN KNOW

hannaharendt_lifeofthemind.jpg?zoom=2&w=180In 1973, Hannah Arendt became the first woman to speak at the prestigious Gifford Lectures — an annual series established in 1888 aiming "to promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term," bridging science, philosophy, and spirituality, an ancient quest of enduring urgency to this day. Over the years, the Gifford Lectures have drawn such celebrated minds as William James, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Iris Murdoch, and Carl Sagan, whose 1985 lecture was later published as the spectacular posthumous volume Varieties of Scientific Experience. Arendt's own lecture was later expanded and published as The Life of the Mind (public library), an immeasurably stimulating exploration of thinking — a process we take for so obvious and granted as to be of no interest, yet one bridled with complexities and paradoxes that often keep us from seeing the true nature of reality. With extraordinary intellectual elegance, Arendt draws "a distinguishing line between truth and meaning, between knowing and thinking," and makes a powerful case for the importance of that line in the human experience.

Arendt asks:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngWhat are we "doing" when we do nothing but think? Where are we when we, normally always surrounded by our fellow-men, are together with no one but ourselves?

Arendt considers the crucial necessity of never ceasing to pursue questions, those often unanswerable questions, of meaning over so-called truth — something doubly needed in our era of ready-made "opinions" based on neatly packaged "facts":

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.pngBy posing the unanswerable questions of meaning, men establish themselves as question-asking beings. Behind all the cognitive questions for which men find answers, there lurk the unanswerable ones that seem entirely idle and have always been denounced as such. It is more than likely that men, if they were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking and cease to ask unanswerable questions, would lose not only the ability to produce those thought-things that we call works of art but also the capacity to ask all the answerable questions upon which every civilization is founded… While our thirst for knowledge may be unquenchable because of the immensity of the unknown, the activity itself leaves behind a growing treasure of knowledge that is retained and kept in store by every civilization as part and parcel of its world. The loss of this accumulation and of the technical expertise required to conserve and increase it inevitably spells the end of this particular world.

Read more here.

9. ANNE LAMOTT: LET GO OF PERFECTIONISM

birdbybird.jpg?zoom=2&w=180In her indispensable Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (public library) — one of the finest books on writing ever written, a treasure trove of insight both practical and profound — Anne Lamott explores how perfectionism paralyzes us creatively.

She recounts this wonderful anecdote, after which the book is titled:

2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png

Agnes gets herself into a sticky situation | Mrs Brown's Boys - BBC

Mrs. Brown Questions Two Mormons About the Bible | Mrs Brown's Boys

A Chronological Trip Through 2020’s Most Unforgettable Food Trends - HuffPost

A Chronological Trip Through 2020's Most Unforgettable Food Trends - HuffPost
A Chronological Trip Through 2020's Most Unforgettable Food Trends - HuffPost


https://apple.news/AXLEARaLwQ9GnMVcOKYmazg

Kelly Loeffler’s Conflict of Interest Is Even Worse Than Reported - Mother Jones

Kelly Loeffler's Conflict of Interest Is Even Worse Than Reported - Mother Jones


https://apple.news/Amo9Fi7HtRSy3PLSoH7Pcvw

Monsters of 2020: Sonny Perdue - Mother Jones

Monsters of 2020: Sonny Perdue - Mother Jones
Monsters of 2020: Sonny Perdue - Mother Jones


https://apple.news/A-wtouAWvRA-gOcLmDF5dEQ

McConnell Made $3,300 This Week While Blocking $2,000 Stimulus Check - Newsweek

McConnell Made $3,300 This Week While Blocking $2,000 Stimulus Check - Newsweek


https://apple.news/AbNu2erOHTVyPwfUZ2UlTuw

Whose Idea Was It to Pipe the World's Dirtiest Fossil Fuels Through North America's Water Hub? - Esquire

Whose Idea Was It to Pipe the World's Dirtiest Fossil Fuels Through North America's Water Hub? - Esquire
Whose Idea Was It to Pipe the World's Dirtiest Fossil Fuels Through North America's Water Hub? - Esquire


https://apple.news/AbtWResLQQH6aSO-NGi5Jhw

'Playing with fire': GOP Sen. Ben Sasse tears into Republicans planning to object to Electoral College results - NBC News

'Playing with fire': GOP Sen. Ben Sasse tears into Republicans planning to object to Electoral College results - NBC News
'Playing with fire': GOP Sen. Ben Sasse tears into Republicans planning to object to Electoral College results - NBC News


https://apple.news/AffReO5arRD64OarIwBWwuw

A Nashville nurse did not develop Bell’s Palsy after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine - PolitiFact

A Nashville nurse did not develop Bell's Palsy after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine - PolitiFact
A Nashville nurse did not develop Bell's Palsy after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine - PolitiFact


https://apple.news/AXeH2De0cSvOlSRnUVDRqEg

2020 Shatters the Myth of American Exceptionalism - POLITICO

2020 Shatters the Myth of American Exceptionalism - POLITICO


https://apple.news/Aanl1hTNsSfmPgn2p9V4CjQ

The most fascinating stories of 2020 - Apple News Spotlight

The most fascinating stories of 2020 - Apple News Spotlight
The most fascinating stories of 2020 - Apple News Spotlight


https://apple.news/AkMEPc3dETLqcJagpgQCEiw

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

2021 Will Fix Everything

Mrs. Brown's Swingers Surprise | Mrs Brown's Boys

The Best of 2020, as Told by Spitting Image

Let's talk about Trump losing influence and the relief bill....

Things Republicans Are Going to Pretend to Care About Again

Luke Letlow, Congressman-elect From Louisiana, Dies From COVID-19 : NPR

Luke Letlow, Congressman-elect From Louisiana, Dies From COVID-19 : NPR


https://www.npr.org/2020/12/30/951332740/louisiana-congressman-elect-dies-after-battling-covid-19

Nashville bombing: Girlfriend told police in 2019 bomber was building explosives in an RV, records show - CNN

Nashville bombing: Girlfriend told police in 2019 bomber was building explosives in an RV, records show - CNN


https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/30/us/nashville-christmas-bombing-wednesday/index.html

December 29, 2020 - Letters from an American

December 29, 2020 - Letters from an American


https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2020

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Brain Pickings – An inventory of the meaningful life.

Brain Pickings – An inventory of the meaningful life.


https://www.brainpickings.org/?mc_cid=3bb884127c&mc_eid=b4a81ffccf

The Rude Pundit: This Year's Madness Might Just Fade Soon

The Rude Pundit: This Year's Madness Might Just Fade Soon


https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2020/12/this-years-madness-might-just-fade-soon.html

Monsters - Esquire

Monsters - Esquire
Monsters - Esquire


https://apple.news/AcjvWc0HlT3yoZmyBSnlW1w

2020 in Post-Gazette visuals – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Interactive

2020 in Post-Gazette visuals – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Interactive


https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/the-best-post-gazette-photography-of-2020/

Perfectly Pillowy Cinnamon Rolls | King Arthur Baking

December 28, 2020 - Letters from an American

December 28, 2020 - Letters from an American


https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-28-2020

Sunday, December 27, 2020

2020 In Review: The Year In Horniness | The Daily Show

Mrs Brown's Boys Christmas Special: CSI Mammy

Why These Respected Historical Figures Were Horrible People

The Tudors 4x09 May be disturbing for some audience/ execution of Anne A...

Christmas In Pittsburgh, PA 2020

Long COVID symptoms may include parosmia as people report 'disgusting' smells of fish, burning and sulphur | UK News | Sky News

Long COVID symptoms may include parosmia as people report 'disgusting' smells of fish, burning and sulphur | UK News | Sky News


https://news.sky.com/story/long-covid-symptoms-may-include-parosmia-as-people-report-disgusting-smells-of-fish-burning-and-sulphur-12173389

Inside Trump and Barr’s Last-Minute Killing Spree

https://www.instagram.com/p/CJQZJZKnIr-/?igshid=c8i0eq0fygqd


Sent from my iPad

Unemployment benefits lapse for jobless Americans as Trump holds out on signing relief bill - CNN Politics

Unemployment benefits lapse for jobless Americans as Trump holds out on signing relief bill - CNN Politics
Unemployment benefits lapse for jobless Americans as Trump holds out on signing relief bill - CNN Politics


https://apple.news/ALQfU02uGQIGk3gpz8H_zKw

Pearls Before Swine for 12/27/2020 | Pearls Before Swine | Comics | ArcaMax Publishing

Saturday, December 26, 2020

What a Miserable 2020 Revealed About America

17 Totally Horrendous — And Seriously Funny — Baking Fails That Could Have Only Been Committed In 2020 - BuzzFeed

17 Totally Horrendous — And Seriously Funny — Baking Fails That Could Have Only Been Committed In 2020 - BuzzFeed
17 Totally Horrendous — And Seriously Funny — Baking Fails That Could Have Only Been Committed In 2020 - BuzzFeed


https://apple.news/AmH-mcmvgQE2nNu0lAzksRA

'An idiocracy based on a digital prophet': QAnon longs for a fascist military dictatorship — and they want it now - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism

'An idiocracy based on a digital prophet': QAnon longs for a fascist military dictatorship — and they want it now - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism


https://www.rawstory.com/qanon-2649646896/

You Bet Your Life Groucho Marx risqué outtakes

Mrs Browns Boys Christmas Special 2020 (December 25 2020)

Christmas Day Greetings

A timeline of the Nashville RV explosion on Christmas morning

A timeline of the Nashville RV explosion on Christmas morning
A timeline of the Nashville RV explosion on Christmas morning


https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/26/us/nashville-explosion-timeline/index.html