Counterintuition

Why I Don't Read The News (Much)

Wed, 14 May 2008 03:03:18 -0400

“To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Wisdom

Wed, 14 May 2008 02:15:13 -0400

“Wisdom is a state of the human mind characterized by profound understanding and deep insight. It is often, but not necessarily, accompanied by extensive formal knowledge. Unschooled people can acquire wisdom, and wise people can be found among carpenters, fishermen, or housewives. Wherever it exists, wisdom shows itself as a perception of the relativity and relationships among things. It is an awareness of wholeness that does not lose sight of particularity or concreteness, or of the intricacies of interrelationships. It is where left and right brain come together in a union of logic and poetry and sensation, and where self-awareness is no longer at odds with awareness of the otherness of the world. Wisdom cannot be confined to a specialized field, nor is it an academic discipline; it is the consciousness of wholeness and integrity that transcends both. Wisdom is complexity understood and relationships accepted.”
— “Wisdom and Wilderness,” Joseph Meeker

Curiousity

Tue, 13 May 2008 02:42:00 -0400

“And there’s the sign, Ridcully,” said the Dean. “You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says ‘Do not, under any circumstances, open this door’?”
“Of course I’ve read it,” said Ridcully. “Why d’yer think I want it opened?”
“Er…why?” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
“To see why they wanted it shut, of course.”
— Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

Secret of Success

Tue, 13 May 2008 02:27:00 -0400

“Corporations hope that the right concept will turn things around overnight. This is what you might call the crash-diet approach: starve yourself for a few days and you’ll be thin for life. The Toyota approach is more like a regular, sustained diet—less immediately dramatic but, as everyone knows, much harder to sustain. In the nineteen-nineties, a McKinsey study of companies that had put quality-improvement programs in place found that two-thirds abandoned them as failures. Toyota’s innovative methods may seem mundane, but their sheer relentlessness defeats many companies. That’s why Toyota can afford to hide in plain sight: it knows the system is easy to understand but hard to follow.”
— The Open Secret of Success

Insight: Secret of Success = Patient Perseverance

I think, therefore I am

Tue, 13 May 2008 02:18:00 -0400

To Twitter or to Tumblr? That is the question. Perhaps that’s the wrong question because each answers a different question:

Twitter - “What are you doing?”
Tumblr - “What are you thinking?”

Since I would rather die than tell people what I’m doing (it’s the anti-authoritarian in me), and since my usual answer is “thinking,” I guess Tumblr it will be for me.

Cogito, ergo sum.