At the end one can rage or approach the inevitable with a clarity that appears as ambivalence.
It is not ambivalence or complacency but wisdom: dignity and grace in the face of the inevitable.
Tag: mortality
- Theme: Self
Postpone until death
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1–2 minutesOn your deathbed, you will be grateful for those with you.
But why wait?
Today may be your last, and you can decide to be grateful now for those with you.
- Theme: Politics
Freedom is scaffolding
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1–2 minutesWe err when we consider ideas, like freedom, as rights inherent to the species; we should think of them as scaffolding.
Freedom is built to lift us out of the filth and normalized through familiarity and cultural pressure.
To forget how the “right” arrived (i.e., to think they are immanent to the individual) is to allow ourselves to become passive in their upkeep. Once tolerant, we are easily determined (guided). While assuming we have freedom (because it is constitutive to ourselves), we perpetuate unfreedom: kicking out the scaffolding because we forgot why it was there.
- Theme: Self
The pleasure of being already dead
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1–2 minutesThe ultimate freedom is the realization of your death: you are simply pre-dead, an inevitable corpse.
Instead of clinging to your dead-end job, stagnating in a pool of fear, knowing you are dead already brings you the courage to really live gracefully and fully. - Theme: Self
Fear Your Greatness
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1–2 minutesWe should legitimately fear our awesomeness.
Your greatness is mighty, and as you embrace it, it can fly free, disintegrating the current you.But that is only letting the small you die to become the greater you.
- Theme: Growth
Accomplishment Treadmill
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1–2 minutesThe compulsion to achieve goals is a self-satisfaction loop.
Achievement is tangible agency and verifiable proof that your will is manifesting change in the world. And yet, the infatuation with achievement can replace the reason to achieve.
Once we acquiesce to the “utilitarian treadmill” we create measurable tasks for more manageable, rapid fulfillment, displacing and neglecting the more long-term emotional or relational goals that would make a truly satisfying life.
(Concepts: Goodhart’s law + reverse hedonic treadmill + memento mori)
- Theme: Self
winter reveals the lost
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1–2 minutesWinter is a time of scarcity and sparseness, mild desperation, and waiting. Without the lush distractions of life, forgotten things are revealed, and repressed lessons are recalled.
- Theme: Self
Good days require perspective: future you would be ashamed
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1–2 minutesPicture yourself on your deathbed, and you’ll realize that you never really wanted to keep everything at a moderate low hum of annoyance and make it through the day, trading minor abuse for fleeting rays of happiness.
You wanted to believe in something and throw yourself into it, caring deeply about it. You wanted to live a courageous life following your bliss. - Theme: Culture
Uselessness is worse than death
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1–2 minutesThe idea of being useless is somehow worse than the idea of death: to be useless scuttles social standing and personal ambition.
Being useless is to be alone and irrelevant in our society, which reveals our primary dysfunction. - Theme: Self
The Evil of Expediency
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1–2 minutesIt is not in anyone s political interest to stand up for you. To do so incurs risk without expedient reward.
We must live beyond expediency: it makes cowards of us all.
The evil consequence of waiting (i.e., letting others fight their own battles) hardens those we should cherish into callow monsters and slick-talking relativists.