Oliver Burkeman | Journalist and Author | How to be interesting – and why the best bits of life are more than 'interesting'
Do you long to become a "thought leader", thinkfluencing your way from TED talk to tech conference, lauded for your insights? I hope not. But if so, you could do worse than consult a paper published in 1971 by the maverick sociologist Murray Davis, entitled "That's Interesting!" (I found it via Adam Grant.) What is it, Davis asks, that makes certain thinkers – Marx, Freud, Nietzsche – legendary? "It has long been thought that a theorist is considered great because his theories are true," he writes, "but this is false. Forty-three years on, this feels truer than ever. Clearly, this could be helpful information if you're looking to intrigue friends, fascinate a potential lover, or keep your students engaged. Perhaps it should. My first reaction to that was, "How interesting!
How to Find Fulfilling Work | Brain Pickings
By Maria Popova “If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment,” wrote Dostoevsky, “all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.” Indeed, the quest to avoid work and make a living of doing what you love is a constant conundrum of modern life. The desire for fulfilling work — a job that provides a deep sense of purpose, and reflects our values, passions and personality — is a modern invention. … For centuries, most inhabitants of the Western world were too busy struggling to meet their subsistence needs to worry about whether they had an exciting career that used their talents and nurtured their wellbeing. Krznaric goes on to outline two key afflictions of the modern workplace — “a plague of job dissatisfaction” and “uncertainty about how to choose the right career” — and frames the problem: There are two broad ways of thinking about these questions.
The Untold Genius of Einstein
“What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? So begins Albert Einstein’s The World As I See It, a collection of essays, articles and letters written between 1922 and 1934 focusing on the humane aspect of this scientific genius and revealing him as a man of compassion and wisdom all too aware of the pressing need for science to serve the well-being of humanity. There are countless documentaries and books discussing Einstein’s enduring legacy to modern science – few are unaware of his contributions to the field of theoretical physics: the general theory of relativity and the E = mc2 formula for mass-energy equivalence are perhaps universally known (if not necessarily understood). On the meaning of life – a loaded subject on which “everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavours and judgements” – Einstein writes:
Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities | Brain Pickings
In her heyday, Georgia O’Keeffe (November 15, 1887–March 6, 1986) was written about as America’s first great female artist. The great social critic Lewis Mumford once remarked of a painting of hers: “Not only is it a piece of consummate craftsmanship, but it likewise possesses that mysterious force, that hold upon the hidden soul which distinguishes important communications from the casual reports of the eye.” In 1946, O’Keeffe became the first woman honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. The lifetime of letters between the two women, full of O’Keeffe’s spirited expressiveness and peppered with her delightfully defiant disregard for punctuation, is collected in Lovingly, Georgia: The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O’Keeffe and Anita Pollitzer (public library) — a revealing look at the inner life of one of the past century’s greatest artists, brimming with her unfiltered views on art, work ethic, love, and life. One can’t work with nothing to express.
Time
Time is what clocks measure, Albert Einstein once said. Information about time tells the durations of events, and when they occur, and which events happen before which others, so time plays a very significant role in the universe’s structure, including the structure of our personal lives. But there are many unresolved issues, both philosophical and scientific. Consider this issue upon which philosophers are deeply divided: What sort of ontological differences are there among the present, the past and the future? In no particular order, here is a list of other issues about time that are discussed in this article: •Whether there was a moment without an earlier one. This article does not explore how time is treated within different cultures and languages, nor how persons can more efficiently manage their time, nor what entities are timeless. Table of Contents 1. Only items 1 to 8 of the 16 have survived the impact of science. The next two paragraphs summarize the claims of the two camps. 2.
How To Lose Your Mind & Create A New One |
Breaking the habit of being yourself requires – dare I say it? – discipline. Daily discipline. And once you embark on it, it’s the most wonderful process in the making. It is exciting and fun, and it becomes easier and easier with every time you practice, just like training a muscle. You do indeed create your life! So why not actively create your life, instead of mostly running in automatic-reactive-survival mode? Interacting with the quantum field Nobody is doomed by their genetic makeup or hard wired to live a specific way for the rest of their lives. Says Dr. “You… broadcast a distinct energy pattern or signature. In essence, we influence the quantum field through our Being-states (and not only through what we want). Vision and creative mode A brain region called the frontal lobe plays a key role in envisioning the life you desire. This is exactly what we admire in great leaders: Gandhi, Dr. Mechanics of change and the art of ‘becoming familiar with’ Mind is what the brain does.
Salman Rushdie's PEN World Voices Lecture on Censorship
No writer ever really wants to talk about censorship. Writers want to talk about creation, and censorship is anti-creation, negative energy, uncreation, the bringing into being of non-being, or, to use Tom Stoppard’s description of death, “the absence of presence.” Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it. And writers want to talk about how much they get paid, and they want to gossip about other writers and how much they get paid, and they want to complain about critics and publishers, and gripe about politicians, and they want to talk about what they love, the writers they love, the stories and even sentences that have meant something to them, and, finally, they want to talk about their own ideas and their own stories. Their things. Consider, if you will, the air. The creative act requires not only freedom but also this assumption of freedom. Illustration by Matthew Hollister.
www.rdn.bc.ca/cms/wpattachments/wpID3098atID5932.pdf
The 48 Laws of Power
Background[edit] Greene initially formulated some of the ideas in The 48 Laws of Power while working as a writer in Hollywood and concluding that today's power elite shared similar traits with powerful figures throughout history.[5] In 1995, Greene worked as a writer at Fabrica, an art and media school, and met a book packager named Joost Elffers.[4][8] Greene pitched a book about power to Elffers and six months later, Elffers requested that Greene write a treatment.[4] Although Greene was unhappy in his current job, he was comfortable and saw the time needed to write a proper book proposal as too risky.[10] However, at the time Greene was rereading his favorite biography about Julius Caesar and took inspiration from Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon River and fight Pompey, thus inciting the Great Roman Civil War.[10] Greene would follow Caesar's example and write the treatment, which later became The 48 Laws of Power.[10] He would note this as the turning point of his life.[10]
