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Category: Growth

  • Theme:

    Solvitur Ambulando: Wisdom in Motion

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    1–2 minutes

    “Solvitur ambulando”—it is solved by walking—offers a pragmatic epistemology. Rather than abstract theorizing, resolution emerges through movement, embodiment, and engagement with the world. (Often the phrase is employed to move from abstract arguments to real world situations, and practical examples.)

    However, rather than merely shifting to talking about reality, walking itself becomes both literal and metaphorical: a way to process thought, defuse anxiety, and restore perspective. Problems that feel insurmountable spur bodily motion, anxiety transformed into repetitious rhythm, which provides clarity.

    Thinking is aided by moving, wisdom enhanced by action.

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    The Gravity of Aggregation

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    1–2 minutes

    Narrative coherence arises from the aggregation of distress into a single focal point.

    Just as stories clarify viewpoints through conflict (an argument or battle), life’s scattered anxieties coalesce into a definable center—a problem to solve or a burden to bear.

    Without such consolidation, anxiety multiplies into paranoid simulations of endless doom. The unending cycle of possibility without resolution mirrors dystopia: no climax, no catharsis.

    Meaning is found not in the myriad of troubles but in the moment they crystallize into focus. From there, transformation begins—not through avoidance, but through articulation.

    Interestingly, when the anxieties are too great, our ability to appropriately target the center of our distress is skewed, so we often take action in unproductive ways, intensifying our problems as a sort of hyperactive death drive to reach a cathartic obliteration of self.

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    Fast & Slow thinking

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    1–2 minutes

    A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

    It isn’t 10 cents.

    If you slow down you realize the bat is $1 MORE than the ball, so if the ball is 10 cents the bat would have to be $1.10. The total cost for both would then be $1.20. The correct answer is 5 cents.

    x+1=1.10 is wrong. x+(x+1)=1.10 is correct

    Researched, then popularized by Daniel Kahneman, fast thinking (system 1) is our default reaction, while it takes effort to engage in deeper, slow thinking (system 2).

    Applied to education, the goal is to create habitual doubt in fast thinking and overcome the slightly painful transition into deeper consideration. Thus, artificial intelligence in education will have the inverse goal of speedy answers: it must challenge us to become comfortable slowing down.

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    turning petulance into resilience

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    1–2 minutes

    Nobody likes to be controlled.
    Some wish to live in peace, contented, but some always push. They cut against the grain or swim upstream; they are contrary and ornery, petulant and ungrateful.
    Yet, contentment and comfort do not create resilient, authentic individuals. In a passive world to find a challenge from which to strengthen yourself is self-creation.
    While seemingly childish and impulsive, this struggle (against nothing?) can grow into a strength from which mercy and compassion are real, not just affectations to dodge responsibility.
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  • Theme:

    the unseen blade is hardest to parry

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    1–2 minutes

    The worst trouble -the most danger- comes from the unexpected: attack from the clear blue sky.

    We can only defend against the future we can see; prediction allocates our resources.
    This leaves us vulnerable to ambush from unforecast betrayal, against which only the paranoid can prepare. But even the paranoid must trade risk for the capacity to function.

    A possible solution is to move faster than plotters, quicker than disaster can strike. Make of yourself the blade that cuts through expectation, become the chaos others must prepare against.
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    Language when losing

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    1–2 minutes

    When you are losing, change your terminology: retreat becomes a tactical withdrawal or negotiated resolution, rejection or firing is merely exploring new opportunities, collapse is restructuring, and downgrading is optimization.

    This morale maintenance is more than applying a silver lining; it is a rejection of reality reframed so we never have to learn from failure. More than this, to maintain values, we must believe the surrogate terminology as wisdom and set up irrationality as necessary faith.

  • Theme:

    mo betta

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    1–2 minutes

    What is it to go beyond, to be overoptimizing at 110% all the time?
    To quote Radiohead, to be “better, fitter, more productive” is also to be more flawed and frantic, not necessarily “mo betta.”
    The notion of perfection includes balance, yet our society worships excess until inevitable failure.

  • Theme:

    Distance for Clarity, Flexibility

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    1–2 minutes

    Ideologies, like battle plans, fail on first contact with reality.

    Rigid beliefs break; adaptable principles endure.

    Wisdom lies in conviction tempered by flexibility—engage critically, but don’t be consumed. A belief too fragile for reality isn’t worth holding.

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    Diagnosis vs Solution

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    1–2 minutes

    It is one thing to diagnose a problem and another to solve it. Why do we suppose the same person should do both?

    The skills of deconstruction do not necessarily entail the temperament for reconstruction or creative leaps. Yet, we assume that the insight to spot a problem offers a unique insight, allowing for a solution.

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    All Good Things: not compatible

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    1–2 minutes

    By declaring other values “good,” which is itself a value, we conflate and redefine them as familial. At best, they are a dysfunctional group that is variously at odds and antagonistic to each other.

    The optimistic view…that all good things must be  compatible , and that therefore freedom, order, knowledge, happiness…must be at least  compatible , and perhaps even entail one another in a systematic fashion…is not self-evidently true… Indeed, it is perhaps one of the least plausible beliefs ever entertained by profound and influential thinkers.”

    Isaiah Berlin