Overestimating the potential upside of every new sign of tech progress is as common as downplaying the downsides. It's easy to let our imaginations run wild with how any new development is going to change everything practically overnight. The unforeseen technical roadblocks that inevitably spring up are only one reason for this consistent miscalculation. Human nature is simply out of sync with the nature of technological development. We see progress as linear, a straight line of improvement. In reality, this is only true with mature technologies that have already been developed and deployed. [...]
      Before the predictable progress phase, there are two previous phases: struggle and then breakthrough. This fits the axiom of Bill Gates, "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." We expect linear progress, but what we get are years of setbacks and maturation. Then the right technologies combine or a critical mass is reached and boom, it takes off vertically for a while, surprising us again, until it reaches the mature phase and levels off. Our minds see tech progress as a straight diagonal line, but it's usually more of an S-shape.

Deep Thinking / Garry Kasparov

The willingness to keep trying new things - different methods, uncomfortable tasks - when you are already an expert at something is what separates good from great. Focusing on your strengths is required for peak performance, but improving your weaknesses has the potential for the greatest gains. This is true for athletes, executives, and entire companies. Leaving your comfort zone involves risk, however, and when you are already doing well the temptation to stick with the status quo can be overwhelming, leading to stagnation.

Deep Thinking / Garry Kasparov

"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Michael Jordan

      The gains in life expectancy we've witnessed over the past 120 years, and those to come, could be wiped out for a generation unless we address the greatest threat to our lives: other life-forms that seek to prey on us. It doesn't matter if we live for decades upon decades longer if a pandemic quickly snuffs out hundreds of millions of lives - negating and even rolling back the gains in average lifespan we will have achieved. Global warming is a long-term, critical issue to deal with, but one could also argue that, at least within our lifetimes, infections are our greatest threat.

Lifespan / David Sinclair / 2019

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

This Be The Verse / Philip Larkin

"What day is it?" asked the Pooh.
"It's today," squeeked Piglet.
"My favourite day," said Pooh.

At Facebook, figuring it out is a way of life. The company got its start with a bunch of Harvard undergraduates who knew how to code but had almost no experience with anything else. They figured it out. Each new wave of employees followed the same path. Some took too long and were pushed out. The rest got comfortable with the notion that experience was not helpful. At Facebook, the winners were people who could solve any problem they encountered. The downside of this model is that it encourages employees to circumvent anything inconvenient or hard to fix.

Zucked / Roger McNamee

In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all of its moments - which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves. Unlike your experiencing self - which is absorbed in the moment - your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valleys of misery but also how the story works out as a whole. That is profoundly affected by how things ultimately turn out. Why would a football fan let a few flubbed minutes at the end of the game ruin three hours of bliss? Because a football game is a story. And in stories, endings matter.

Being Mortal / Atul Gawande

      Elementary introductions to computers explain them as TOM, the Totally Obedient Moron - an inspired acronym that captures the essence of all computer programs to date: They have no idea what they are doing or why. So it won't help to give AIs more and more predetermined functionalities in the hope that these will eventually constitute Generality - the elusive G in AGI. We are aiming for the opposite, a DATA: a Disobedient Autonomous Thinking Application.

Possible Minds / John Brockman | David Deutsch: Beyond Reward and Punishment

Any system simple enough to be understandable will not be compli- cated enough to behave intelligently, while any system complicated enough to behave intelligently will be too complicated to understand.

Possible Minds / John Brockman | George Dyson: The Third Law

DNA replication is imperfect, and we have plenty of spellcheckers in our cells. But mutations arise, mostly single changes, occasionally chunkier sections of DNA. Withouit them, no evolution would occur, for there would be no variation on which selection could act. From an evolutionary point of view, perfection is boring and impractical, and infidelity is essential, at least when it comes to the code. The process of DNA replication has to be imperfect. You have acquired through nothing other than chance at least 100 mutations that are unique to you. If you have children, you may well pass them on to your children, and they will acquire plenty of their own. As long as humans keep having sex and that sex results in more humans, then we are evolving. We can avoid these evolutionary changes no more easily than we can change the weather.

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived / Adam Rutherford

Are you really just a pile of genes?

Technically, yes. But embedded within your genome, there are many potential versions of you. The person you see in the mirror is just one of them, fished out by the unique things you've been exposed to since conception. The new science of epigenetics is the study of how chemical changes made to DNA, or proteins that interact with DNA, can affect gene activity. DNA can be modified by environmental factors in ways that can profoundly affect development and behavior. Recently, it's also been shown that the microbes in your body - aka your microbiome - can be a significant environmental factor that affects myriad behaviors, from overeating to depression. In sum, we are our genes - but our genes cannot be evaluated outside the context of our environment. Genes are the piano keys, but the environment plays the song.

Bill Sullivan / National Geographic 09.2019

The terror of sickness and old age is not merely the terror of the losses one is forced to endure but also the terror of the isolation. As people become aware of the finitude of their life, they do not ask for much. They do not seek more riches. They do not seek more power. They ask only to be permitted, insofar as possible, to keep shaping the story of their life in the world - to make choices and sustain connections to others according to their own priorities.

Being Mortal / Atul Gawande

      If we shift as we age toward appreciating everyday pleasures and relationships rather than toward achieving, having, and getting, and if we find this more fulfilling, then why do we take so long to do it? Why do we wait until we're old? The common view was that these lessons are hard to learn. Living is a kind of skill. The calm and wisdom of old age are achieved over time.
      [...]What if the change in needs and desires has nothing to do with age per se? Suppose it merely has to do with perspective - your personal sense of how finite your time in this world is.

Being Mortal / Atul Gawande

Corporations like Google, Facebook, Amazon, all of these large companies, are making tens or hundreds of billions of dollars off of monetising people's data. I've been telling companies and governments for years that data is probably your most valuable asset. Individuals should be able to monetise their data - that's their own human value - not to be exploited

Brittany Kaiser / The Guardian

Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but they refuse. They cling to the realm or the Gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.

Game of Thrones S3E6 / Littlefinger

Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.

Fisrt Law of Technology / Melvin Kranzberg

Three Useless Phrases

Visitors to Iceland in the 1990s reported that the official tourist guide handed out at Reykjavik airport had, like all other such guides, a 'useful phrases' section. Unlike them, I was told, the Icelandic guide also had a 'useless phrases' section. Apparently it contained three phrases, which were, in English: 'Where is the railway station?', 'It's a nice day today', and 'Is there anything cheaper?'

23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism / Ha-Joon Chang

Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer;
it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten
steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away.
As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So
what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to
keep walking.

Eduardo Galeano / Rutger Bregman 'Utopia for Realists'

      How does a zipper work? Rate your understanding on a scale from 0 (no clue) to 10 (easy-peasy). Write the number down. Now sketch out on a piece of paper how a zipper actually works. Add a brief description, as though you were trying to explain it very precisely to someone who'd never seen a zipper before. Give yourself a couple of minutes. Finished? Now reassess your understanding of zippers on the same scale.

     Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil, researchers at Yale University, confronted hundreds of people with equally simple questions. How does a toilet work? How does a battery work? The results were always the same: we think we understand these things reasonably well until we're forced to explain them. Only then do we appreciate how many gaps there are in our knowledge. You're probably similar. You were convinced you understood more than you actually did. That's the knowledge illusion.
[...]
     In sum: think independently, don't be too faithful to the party line, and above all give dogmas a wide berth. The quicker you understand that you don't understand the world, the better you'll understand the world

The Art of the Good Life / Rolf Dobelli

On Optimal Human Diet

     What we can do is implement some principles that get us close to the optimal human diet. We can begin with the key observation that humans in the wild would have eaten small amounts of as many different foods as they could harvest, collect, pluck, dig out, net, scavenge, hunt, steal and sometimes store. Further, despite the Tarzan fantasies of some - particularly the paleo diet enthusiasts and the meat industry - most of the energy among both present-day gatherer-hunters and our ancestors is and was derived from plant foods, not animal foods.
     How does that translate into action in the present day? Well, like this:

• walk the aisles of your farmers' market, grocery store or supermarket and choose a wide variety of fresh plant foods - vegetables, fruit, grains, nuts, legumes and seeds;
• don't think of a meal as 'meat and three vegetables', at least not every day;
• rather think of our ancestors having a little of this and a little of that - and sometimes going without altogether;
• think of the rich variety of a stir-fry or an adventurous vegetable stew;
• don't overcook;
• don't use lots of added fat;
• use herbs and spices for flavour and because they add important micronutrients and phytochemicals;
• eat slowly with awareness, don't wolf down food, learn or relearn the feeling of being full;
• at least once a week, try new foods - a bean or another legume you have not previously eaten, a grain you have not tried;
• consult cookbooks, friends, experts and the internet (our substitute for the shaman and the wise woman who had all the tribe's knowledge of plants and foods) about how to prepare these new dishes or foods or new variants on old recipes by using, say, chickpeas, quinoa or spelt.

     Super Foods and Magic Foods: there aren't any.

Thought for Food. Why What We Eat Matters / John D. Potter

In 2013 a Team in Cambridge took digital files of Shakespeare's sonnets, a video of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech, and Crick and Watson's original 1953 paper on the structure of DNA, and converted them into a new DNA code. They synthesized the DNA and dried it into a powder. They sent it to a lab in Germany with instructions on how to decode it. The German Team unscrambled it and translated it back into the original files with an error rate of exactly zero.

Genetics / Adam Rutherford

One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies.

Optimism over Despair / Noam Chomsky

     As a result of his time in Naples Lewis underwent a conversion.The experience occurred when a group of girls between the ages of nine and twelve appeared in the doorway of a restaurant where he was eating. The girls were orphans, attracted to the restaurant by the smell of food. Noticing that they were weeping and realizing they were blind, he expected his fellow diners to interrupt their meal. But nobody moved. The girls were treated as though they did not exist. 'Forkfuls of food were thrust into open mouths, the rattle of conversation continued, nobody saw the tears.'
     Reflecting on the scene Lewis found 'the experience changed my outlook. Until now I had clung to the comforting belief that human beings eventually come to terms with pain and sorrow. Now I understood I was wrong, and like Paul I suffered a conversion - but to pessimism . . . I knew that, condemned to everlasting darkness, hunger and loss, they would weep incessantly. They would never recover from their pain, and I would never recover from the memory of it.'

THE SILENCE OF ANIMALS / JOHN GRAY

The moment to leave isn't when we're sad; it's when we identify that our lover is contributing sorrows above and beyond those that belong to love in general, when aspects of their character are embittering life far more than the normal rules of relationship mandate, and when we can see that the hurts we are facing don't belong anywhere even on the dark and long list of woes provided by the Romantic Realist. It is then that we should accept that we aren't simply being mature; we are unnecessarily ruining our lives.

Yet if, after an honest audit of our troubles, we come to suspect that our many griefs simply cannot be laid at the door of our partner but are the work of that less blameful entity, life itself, we should make our peace and stay put. We will know that we are encountering the misery of existence in the company of one particular person, but not - as it is so easy to presume - because of another person.

We will know we are sad not because love has gone wrong, but because it has gone exactly as it was always meant to go.

The Sorrows of Love

Being right is based upon knowledge and experience and is often provable. Knowledge comes from the past, so it's safe. It is also out of date. It's the opposite of originality. Experience is built from solutions to old situations and problems. The old situations are probably different from the present ones, so that old solutions will have to be bent to fit new problems ( and possibly fit badly ) . Also the likelihood is that, if you've got the experience, you'll probably use it.

This is lazy. Experience is the opposite of being creative. If you can prove you're right, you're set in concrete. You cannot move with the times or with other people.

Being right is also being boring. Your mind is closed. You are not open to new ideas. You are rooted in your own rightness, which is arrogant. Arrogance is a valuable tool, but only if used very sparingly. Worst of all, being right has a tone of morality about it. To be anything else sounds weak or fallible, and people who are right would hate to be thought fallible.

So: it's wrong to be right, because people who are right are rooted in the past, rigid-minded, dull and smug. There's no talking to them.

Start being wrong and suddenly anything is possible. You're no longer trying to be infallible. You're in the unknown. There is no way of knowing what can happen, but there is more chance of it being amazing than if you try to be right.

Of course, being wrong is a risk. People worry about suggesting stupid ideas because of what others will think. You will have been in meetings where new thinking has been called for, at your original suggestion. Instead of saying, 'That's the kind of suggestion that leads us to a novel solution', the room goes quiet, they look up to the ceiling, roll their eyes and return to the discussion.

Risks are a measure of people. People who won't take them are trying to preserve what they have. People who do take them often end up by having more. Some risks have a future, and some people call them wrong. But being right may be like walking backwards proving where you've been.

Being wrong isn't in the future, or in the past. Being wrong isn't anywhere but being here. Best place to be, right?

"It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be" by Paul Arden

PL
     - Wsłuchaj się w cichość - mówi Małgorzata do Mistrza, a piasek chrzęści pod jej bosymi stopami. - Słuchaj... napawaj się tym, czego nie zaznałeś w życiu: ciszą. Patrz, oto stoi przed tobą twój wieczysty dom, twoja nagroda. Widzę już okno weneckie i pnącza winorośli sięgające samego dachu. Oto twój dom, twój wieczysty dom. Wiedz, że jeszcze dziś wieczorem przyjdą do ciebie ci, których kochasz i których jesteś tak ciekaw. Nie będziesz się ich bał. A oni będą ci grali, śpiewali, i zobaczysz, jak piękne może być światło, gdy w domu płoną świece. Będziesz zasypiał w swej nieodłącznej, wymiętej czapce i zaśniesz z uśmiechem na ustach. Sen da ci siłę i obdarzy mądrością. I już nie będziesz mnie od siebie odpychał. A ja będę strzegła twego snu.

     Tak mówi Małgorzata, idąc wraz z Mistrzem do ich wieczystego domu, i wydaje się Mistrzowi, że słowa Małgorzaty płyną niczym ten szemrzący strumień, który dopiero co minęli. I pamięć Mistrza, jego niespokojna, boleśnie pokłuta pamięć, zaczyna przygasać. Ktoś daje mu wolność, tak jak i on uwolnił przed chwilą stworzonego przez siebie bohatera. Bohater ów odszedł w bezkres, odszedł bezpowrotnie, dostąpiwszy przebaczenia w noc przed zmartwychwstaniem - syn króla astrologa, okrutny piąty prokurator Judei, rzymski ekwita Poncjusz Piłat.

EN
     "Listen to the silence," Margarita was saying to the Master, the sand crunching under her bare feet. "Listen and take pleasure in what you were not given in life — quiet. Look, there up ahead is your eternal home, which you've been given as a reward. I can see the Venetian window and the grapevine curling up to the roof. There is your home, your eternal home. I know that in the evenings people you like will come to see you, people who interest you and who will not upset you. They will play for you, sing for you, and you will see how the room looks in candlelight. You will fall asleep with your grimy eternal cap on your head, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will begin to reason wisely. And you will never be able to chase me away. I will guard your sleep."

     Thus spoke Margarita as she walked with the Master toward their eternal home, and it seemed to the Master that Margarita's words flowed like the stream they had left behind, flowed and whispered, and the Master's anxious, needle-pricked memory began to fade. Someone was releasing the Master into freedom, as he himself had released the hero he created. That hero, who was absolved on Sunday morning, had departed into the abyss, never to return, the son of an astrologer-king, the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the knight Pontius Pilate.

The Master and Margarita

PL
Pozostań wierny swoim ideałom, pamiętaj, że dbając o własne szczęście, spokój ducha i spełnienie, musisz przyczyniać się do pomyślności innych ludzi. Harmonia części jest harmonią całości, całość jest bowiem obecna w części, a część w całości. Naszym bliźnim jesteśmy dłużni tylko miłość, a miłość jest spełnieniem prawa zdrowia, szczęścia i spokoju umysłu.

EN
Remain true to your ideal. Know definitely and absolutely that whatever contributes to your peace, happiness and fulfillment must of necessity bless all men who walk the earth. The harmony of the part is the harmony of the whole, for the whole is in the part, and the part is in the whole. All you owe the other is love, and love is the fulfilling of the law of health, happiness and peace of mind.

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind / Joseph Murphy

In a number of respects the US now resembles an emerging country more than the advanced economy it was some decades ago. Its industrial base is largely gone, sold off or off-shored, and its public infrastructure is in visible disrepair. Because of the severity of the real estate collapse, parts of its housing stock are being abandoned and once-thriving neighbourhoods are now slums.

Like Britain, whose global position became untenable long before it was destroyed in the course of the Second World War, America continues to act as if it can lead the world while its power is inexorably leaking away.

The days of the dollar as the world's reserve currency are numbered.

Among recent experiments in engineering the free market in late twentieth-century conditions, those in Britain, New Zealand and Mexico are particularly notable. [...] Kelsey summarizes the upshot of the New Zealand experiment by observing 'The result of a decade of radical structural adjustment was a deeply divided society.' More generally, she comments that 'In less than a decade, New Zealand had gone from a bastion of welfare interventionism to a neo-liberal's paradise. Real economic and political power had shifted outside the realms of the central state. In this process of what might be termed "privatization of power", citizens were reduced to consumers in the economic rather than the political market-place.' There is much evidence to support these assessments. One estimate put 17.8 per cent of the New Zealand population under the poverty line in 1991.

The destruction of Chinese traditions in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution went in tandem with the degradation of China's natural environment. In a characteristically hubristic Maoist programme designed to eradicate all pests, war was declared on China's sparrows. The sparrows were exterminated, resulting in a plague of the insects the sparrows had controlled, and consequent damage to crops.

The spread of new technologies throughout the world is not working to advance human freedom. Instead it has resulted in the emancipation of market forces from social and political control. By allowing that freedom to world markets we ensure that the age of globalization will be remembered as another turn in the history of servitude.

False Dawn. The delusions of global capitalism - John Gray

PL
[GUSMAN] Naprawdę nie wiem, jaki to musi być człowiek, by móc postąpić wobec nas tak podle [...]
[SGANAREL] Ja to rozumiem bez trudu; i gdybyś znał tego pana, zobaczyłbyś, że to dla niego dość łatwe. [...] powiem ci inter nos, że widzisz w Don Juanie, moim panu, największego łajdaka, jakiego ziemia nosiła, szaleńca, diabła, Turka, heretyka, który nie wierzy ani w Niebo, ani w piekło, ani w wilkołaka, który to życie pędzi jak prawdziwe bydlę, jak prosię Epikura, jak prawdziwy Sardanapal, który zamyka uszy na wszelkie chrześcijańskie napomnienia, jakie mu się robi, i ma za bzdury wszystko, w co wierzymy. Mówisz, że poślubił twoją panią: wierz mi, że zrobiłby więcej dla swej żądzy i razem z nią poślubiłby jeszcze ciebie, jej psa i jej kota

EN
[GUSMAN] T' is true I don't know what sort of man he may be, if he can have done us this wrong [...]
[SGANARELLE] I have no great trouble in conceiving it, I can tell and, if you knew the fellow, you would find thing simple enough for him. [...] I 'll tell you, inter nos, that you have in my master Don Juan the greatest scoundrel the earth ever bore, a madman, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic, who believes neither in Heavean or Hell nor Hobgoblin, who spends his life like the beasts that perish, a swine of Epicurus, a very Sardanapalus, who stops his ears to all the remonstrances that can be made, and treats all we believe in as old wives' tales. You say he has married your mistress; believe me, he would have done more than that for his passion, and with her would have married you too, and her dog and her cat.
Molier - Don Juan

[KING] Now, Hamlet, where is Polonius?
[HAMLET] At supper.
[KING] At supper! Where?
[HAMLET] Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms that are eating on him. Your work is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots; your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service - two dishes. but to one table. That's the end.
[KING] Alas, alas!
[HAMLET] A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
[KING] What dost thou mean by this?
[HAMLET] Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Invictus / William Ernest Henley

Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild.

Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail-down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.'

Just So Stories / Rudyard Kipling

Pay attention to your thoughts, because they become words.
Pay attention to your words, because they become actions.
Pay attention to your actions, because they become habits.
Pay attention to your habits, because they become your character.
Pay attention to your character, because it is your fate.

Talmud / The Decision Book

     The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.
     Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.
     A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

The Dead / Dubliners

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I am happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?

Charles Schulz

Look at the sky. Ask yourself: 'Has the lamb eaten the flower, yes or no?' And you will see how everything is different.

One fact which must be appreciated for applying this theory is the essential individual uniqueness of each of our minds, of each of our brains. It is no easy work to analyze either one's self or someone else. This theory is not, cannot be, a miracle key to a given human mind. It is devilishly hard work digging up enough of the basic facts and enough of the basic programs and metaprograms controlling each mind from within to change its poor operations into better ones. This theory can help one to sort out and arrange stored information and facts into more effective patterns for change. But the basic investigation of self or other selves is not easy or fast. Our built-in prejudices, biases, repressions and denials fight against understanding. Our Unconscious automatically controls our behavior. Eventually we may be able to progress farther. It may take several generations of those willing to work on these problems.

Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer
John Lilly

Until the 1980s, change within companies was usually dictated from the top. The CEO made the decision, and the middle and bottom levels implemented it. The underlying values were control, consistency and predictability. The result: employees often did not know why something was being changed and also did not understand what was expected of them in the future. With the growing importance of psychology in business studies, a new approach to change emerged. Employees were no longer expected to submissively obey ('Of course!'), but to think for themselves ('Why are we doing that?'). The point was: change has to be understood if it is to be carried out effectively. Change management has developed into a discipline in its own right; today there are hundreds of models that deal with the subject, including pioneering ones like John Kotter's eight-stage model. But what most of them don't take account of is that change is rarely a painless process. Because change presupposes movement, which leads to friction. Friction causes pain. Every change - whether in a private or wider context - requires sacrifice and effort.

The Change Book

Duizm głosi, że każde życie zna dwie śmierci, przednią i tylną, to jest tę sprzed narodzin i tę po agonii. Teologowie dychtońscy za szperklapy się brali ze zdziwienia, słysząc potem ode mnie, że my tak na Ziemi nie myślimy i że są Kościoły, interesujące się tylko jednym, mianowicie przednim bytowaniem pośmiertnym. Nie mogli pojąć, czemu ludziom przykro myśleć o tym, że ich kiedyś nie będzie, a nie jest im tak samo przykro rozmyślać o tym, że ich przedtem nigdy nie było.

Podróż dwudziesta pierwsza
Lem

Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Harper Lee

Gdyby to tylko on ją kochał, ba! Ale ona odwzajemniła uczucia... Kto nie rozumie tej prostej prawdy, kto myśli, jak pouczały naszych dziadów ich wiktoriańskie guwernantki, że umiemy kochać innych, a nie siebie w tych innych, ten niech lepiej nie bierze do ręki zasmucającego romansu, jakim obdarzył nas pan Marcel Coscat. Jego Robinson wymarzył sobie dziewczynę, której nie chciał oddawać jawie do końca, ponieważ ona była nim, ponieważ z tej jawy, która nigdy nas nie opuszcza, nie ma innego, niż śmierć, przebudzenia.

Les Robinsonades
Lem

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Gibran

Some people come into your life as a blessing.

And others come into your life as a lesson.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

     Wieczór. Okryci ziemską skorupą umarli z wolna toczą codzienną trasą ziemskie koło i nie burzy im spokoju zaćmienie, asteroida ani rozprysła w proch supernowa. Ich kości plami pleśń, a komórki szpiku krucho kamienieją. Umarli o palcach w oplocie korzeni toczą koło, w całkowitej jedni z Tutem i Agamemnonem, z nasieniem i z tym, co nienarodzone.
     Już odeszli. Uciekli, wygnani w śmierć lub na obczyznę, straceni, zgubieni. Słońce i wiatr wciąż wędrują nad ową krainą, aby palić i kołysać drzewa, trawy. Żaden awatar, potomek ni ślad nie pozostał po tym ludzie. Na ustach obcej rasy, która dziś tam mieszka, jego imiona są mitem, legendą, prochem.

Strażnik sadu / The Orchard Keeper

Gdy tak nieraz się nad tym zastanawiam, dochodzę do wniosku, że wolność to tylko słowo, jak wiele takich słów. Nie znaczą, co chciałyby znaczyć, bo to niemożliwe. Za wysoko mierzą i dosięgły złudzeń. I nie ma się co dziwić, skoro całe nasze życie to jedno pasmo złudzeń. Kierują nami złudzenia, powodują nami złudzenia. Złudzenia nas pchają, wstrzymują, wyznaczają nam cele. Rodzimy się ze złudzeń i śmierć też jest tylko przejściem z jednego złudzenia w inne.

/ traktat o łuskaniu fasoli /

Próbował się przyjrzeć ich butom, chciał zobaczyć, co mieli na nogach, ale ich szaty sięgały aż do ziemi. Zobaczył natomiast dziwność tego świata, zobaczył, jak mało wiemy i że człowiek nie bardzo może się przygotować na to, co musi nadejść. Zrozumiał, że ludzkie życie to niewiele więcej niż mgnienie oka i że jeśli czas jest wieczny, to każdy człowiek zawsze i wiecznie znajduje się w połowie swojej podrózy, bez względu na to, ile ma lat i jaki dystans przebył. Pomyślał, że w milczeniu świata dostrzega wielki spisek, i zrozumiał, że w takim razie i on musi być jego częśćią, i że posunął się już poza swoich zdobywców i ich plany. Jeżeli doznał jakiegoś olśnienia, to jedynie takiego: jest jak gdyby składnicą tego, co wie i co poznał, tylko dlatego że odrzucił wszystkie swoje dawniejsze poglądy. Z tą myślą zwrócił się do swoich prześladowców i powiedział: Nic wam nie powiem.

Nic wam nie powiem. Tak własnie powiedział i tylko tyle.

Cities of the Plain

PL
Zobaczyliśmy po drodze Padwę i później Weronę, które wyszły naprzeciwko pociągowi, prawie do samego dworca, żeby nas pożegnać; jadąc dalej widzieliśmy je wracające do siebie - jako że nie wybierały się w podróż - aby prowadzić swoje życie, jedna wśród swych pól, druga na swym wzgórzu.

EN
Then the train started and we saw Padua and Verona come to meet us, to speed us on our way, almost on to the platforms of their stations, and, when we had drawn away from them, return — they who were not travelling and were about to resume their normal life — one to its plain, the other to its hill.

FR
Puis le train partit et nous vîmes Padoue et Vérone venir au-devant de nous, nous dire adieu presque jusqu’à la gare et, quand nous nous fûmes éloignés, regagner — elles qui ne partaient pas et allaient reprendre leur vie — l’une sa plaine, l’autre sa colline.

ibidem

Intelekt nie jest instrumentem najsubtelniejszym, najpotężniejszym, najlepiej przystosowanym do chwytania prawdy, stanowi tylko jeszcze jeden powód, żeby zaczynać od intelektu, a nie od półświadomej intuicji, wiary w przeczucia. Dopiero życie pozwala nam stopniowo, od wypadku do wypadku, spostrzec, że to, co najwięcej znaczy dla naszego serca i dla naszego umysłu, dociera do nas za pośrednictwem nie rozumu, lecz innych organów. I wówczas intelekt zdaje sobie sprawę z wyższości tych ostatnich, świadomie abdykuje na ich korzyść, godząc się być ich współpracownikiem i sługą.

Albertine disparue