“Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups… So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
Scene from one of my favorite movies in 2012. Anna Kendrick & Jake Gyllenhaal. End of Watch. Watch it !
Sometimes you step back from routines of daily life and think about your life as a whole. You may be forced to do this by a crisis, or it might be that passing a stage in your life, such as becoming an adult rather than an adolescent - as in the Heracles story - makes you think about what you are doing in your life overall, what your values are and what matters most to you. For the ancients this is the beginning of ethical thinking, the entry-point for ethical reflection. Once you become self-aware, you have to face choices, and deal with the fact that certain values, and courses of action, exclude others. You have to ask how all your concerns fit together, or fail to fit. What you are looking for, all ancient thinkers assume, is how to make sense of your life as a whole, by bringing your concerns under the heading of your final aim or goal, your telos. For someone who fails to unify her concerns in any overall way is radically in denial about the way all her projects are hers, fit together in her life.
- Julia Annas
Link with 1 note
If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills,
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time,
If you can overlook when people take things out on you when,
through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can do all these things,
Then you are probably the family dog.
When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him. He has a million reasons for being anywhere, just ask him. If you listen, he’ll tell you how he got there. How he forgot where he was going, and that he woke up. If you listen, he’ll tell you about the time he thought he was an angel or dreamt of being perfect. And then he’ll smile with wisdom, content that he realized the world isn’t perfect. We’re flawed, because we want so much more. We’re ruined, because we get these things, and wish for what we had. - MM screenwriter.
Photo reblogged from We didn't start the fire with 109,124 notes
Don’t leave. Please. Stay
Source: zombiegotham
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.
-
Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the
surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. —Nicholas Carr
What the Internet Does to Your Brain
“Inherent in any media technology — from the telephone to TV to Twitter
— is an emphasis of some ways of thinking and a de-emphasis on other
ways of thinking. If you look at the Internet, what it emphasizes is the
ability to supply lots of information, in many forms, very quickly. As a
result, it encourages us to browse through information in a similar way —
by grabbing lots of bits of data simultaneously. What it doesn’t
encourage us to engage in is more attentive ways of thinking — the mode
of thinking that underpins deep reading, contemplation, reflection and
introspection. All of these ways of using our minds — which to me, are
very important.” In this interview, Pulitzer-Prize nominee Nicholas Carr
discusses the inherent ‘shallowness’ of Web 2.0 technologies, and the
troubling consequences for our brains.
Be The Change:
Engage in some deep reading, contemplation, reflection or introspection
today.
Video reblogged from Explore with 111 notes
I, Pencil – lovely little film about how everything is connected. Because, as Charles Eames famously noted, “Eventually everything connects — people, ideas, objects… the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.”
Page 1 of 11
