We often dismiss the small decisions as inconsequential because of their slight impact.
We assume our character is reflected in big decisions: to whom you get married or your job. However, these events happen to you because of who you are.
Who you are is aggregated daily through small contacts and seemingly trivial chores. Your approach to the small inevitably becomes large.
Category: Growth
- Theme: Growth
Size matters: the small things are more important
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1–2 minutes - Theme: Growth
Capitalism’s victory
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1–2 minutesCapitalism allowed all men to be equal rather than blindly despised.
The traditional tribal divisions of race, religion, nationality, and gender were supplanted by individual virtues of ambition, merit, and commerce. Necessarily, destructive tendencies emerge, yet trade made others potentially valuable. Thus consideration replaced prejudice. - Theme: Growth
Pissy problem solver
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1–2 minutesI am always pissy until I solve a problem.
This means I am perpetually annoyed because life is nothing but problems (challenges) I seek to exterminate. A healthier approach is to cohabitate with problems; accept instead of conquer. - Theme: Growth
Why defend (and fund) the arts?
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1–2 minutesThe village may pay the bard, who does not defend the village, but the bard can make the village worth defending.
~ Balaji Srinivasan - Theme: Growth
Potential: the vitality of the unknown
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1–2 minutesWhen we are young, our potential is abundant. We channel our shiny-eyed, optimistic life energy into opportunities.
Most opportunities foreclose who we are, solidifying how we fit into the world.
Over time we trade fortuity for stability, scheduling manufactured excitements and working hard to rob ourselves of the vitality of the unknown. - Theme: Growth
Concept Creep
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1–2 minutesConcepts change their meaning over time, both vertically and horizontally.
A vertical expansion extends the term’s definitional understanding: trauma used to refer to a physical wound incurred during a battle, but now can mean psychological heightened states.
A horizontal expansion extends the context: Once bullying was exclusively top-down abuse (status or physical dominance), yet now it has shifted to be used in a bottom-up context where an employee can bully a boss.As the concept opens (creeps into society and expands) previous instances can be named, and thus we can attend to them. Yet, the promiscuity of the term allows for abuse as well.
"the art of manliness" podcast – the dangers of concept creep
- Theme: Growth
A Shinier Stick
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1–2 minutesI watched a kid pick up a stick and hit some things. Then throw it, pick it up, and hit stuff until it broke.
Anything can relieve boredom, but a shinier toy offers more attachment and subsequent loss when it breaks… and it tends to break quicker.
- Theme: Growth
Describing vs. Explaining
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1–2 minutesWe tend to explain how something works to describe what it is.
We can break it down into categories and measurements, but this pretends to be understood without clarifying or enlightening.We need to know how something fits into the world more than we need a fact sheet.
- Theme: Growth
Don’t outlast; instead outdo
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1–2 minutesExtending life is more important to most people than the intensity of life. Conflating longevity with quality robs us of peak experience in favor of caution for a gray future of deterioration.
The best advice is to prioritize your top 25 dreams, go for the top 5 and ignore the rest. Don’t outlast; instead, outdo. - Theme: Growth
solidarity in refusal to work
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1–2 minutesSolidarity is found in work, in manifesting a shared purpose. Workers can also find communion in refusing to work, shifting "non-work" into political work.
Yet, the daily negation of production has a psychological cost."Doing nothing" to manifest change has an inverse logic, requiring more communal discipline than the simple satisfaction creation.