From Celebrity to Vanitas

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I realised just how productive celebrity culture is: how much it shapes us; how we chart celebrity careers against our own ambitions; how we devour the gossip with a mix of ironic detachment and zealous emotional investment; and how useful it is as a social glue that binds us together in voyeuristic fascination.
-- Dead Famous

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In some parts of Christendom, beginning in the sixteenth century, a new and very specific artistic genre emerged that would capture the imagination of the art-buying classes for the next two hundred years. Examples of “vanitas art,” so named in tribute to Ecclesiastes, were hung in domestic environments, most often studies and bedrooms. Each still-life featured a table or sideboard on which was arranged a contrasting muddle of objects. There might be flowers, coins, a guitar or a mandolin, chess pieces, a book of verse, a laurel wreath or a wine bottle: symbols of frivolity and temporal glory. And somewhere among these would be set the two great symbols of death and the brevity of life: a skull and an hourglass.
-- Status Anxiety

I Realised Just How Productive Celebrity Culture Is: How Much it Shapes Us; How We Chart Celebrity Careers Against Our Own Ambitions; How We Devour the Gossip with a Mix of Ironic Detachment and Zealous Emotional Investment; and How Useful it is as a Social Glue That Binds Us Together in Voyeuristic Fascination.?

I realised just how productive celebrity culture is: how much it shapes us; how we chart celebrity careers against our own ambitions; how we devour the gossip with a mix of ironic detachment and zealous emotional investment; and how useful it is as a social glue that binds us together in voyeuristic fascination.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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But I don’t believe we’re all destined for fifteen minutes of fame, or a world filled by 8 billion influencers. And I’m pretty relieved about that. My attitude to celebrity used to be ambivalent, but, the more I read, the more I think celebrity sounds like a lucrative, but existentially grim, purgatory that I’d hate to endure.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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Celebrities rising to reputation wasn’t due to their being glitter-sprayed automatons in some Orwellian power game; the public weren’t brainwashed sheep bleating in excitable acceptance towards whoever the media decided should be famous. No, the truth is, celebrity is a three-way equation, much like the chemical reaction needed for fire: one can’t spark a flame without the triangular relationship of heat, fuel, and oxygen; and one can’t produce celebrity without the interaction between a subject, an audience, and a media industry.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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Existentially Grim, Purgatory That I’d Hate to Endure?

My own personal conception of existential dread is idiosyncratic. Many people, I think, are troubled by their own insignificance, preferring not to think about being a tiny part of a vanishing species in what couldn’t even be called a corner of the galaxy. Not me—I’m fine with that. Moreover, I’m not perturbed by the fact that I’ll be remembered by very few of the 108 billion people who have ever lived. Yes: I’m a standard-model dude in an endless something or other. It’s mostly fine.
-- All the Wrong Moves: A Memoir About Chess, Love, and Ruining Everything

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But I don’t believe we’re all destined for fifteen minutes of fame, or a world filled by 8 billion influencers. And I’m pretty relieved about that. My attitude to celebrity used to be ambivalent, but, the more I read, the more I think celebrity sounds like a lucrative, but existentially grim, purgatory that I’d hate to endure.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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As he sat waiting on the edge of the bed he thought again of the cellars of the Ministry of Love. It was curious how that predestined horror moved in and out of one’s consciousness. There it lay, fixed in future times, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it, but one could perhaps postpone it; and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, willful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened.
-- 1984

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People Are Troubled by Their Own Insignificance, Preferring Not to Think About Being a Tiny Part of a Vanishing Species?

My own personal conception of existential dread is idiosyncratic. Many people, I think, are troubled by their own insignificance, preferring not to think about being a tiny part of a vanishing species in what couldn’t even be called a corner of the galaxy. Not me—I’m fine with that. Moreover, I’m not perturbed by the fact that I’ll be remembered by very few of the 108 billion people who have ever lived. Yes: I’m a standard-model dude in an endless something or other. It’s mostly fine.
-- All the Wrong Moves: A Memoir About Chess, Love, and Ruining Everything

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I was wrong to be impressed by the mere scale of what I was looking at. Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant. Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse. But, in any case, those are mistakes. Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource. The bigger the better.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

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We are like ants preoccupied with our jobs of carrying crumbs in our very brief lifetimes instead of having a broader perspective of the big-picture patterns and cycles, the important interrelated things driving them, where we are within the cycles, and what’s likely to transpire.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

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How Are We Like Ants Preoccupied with Our Jobs of Carrying Crumbs in Our Very Brief Lifetimes?

We are like ants preoccupied with our jobs of carrying crumbs in our very brief lifetimes instead of having a broader perspective of the big-picture patterns and cycles, the important interrelated things driving them, where we are within the cycles, and what’s likely to transpire.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

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Expressing the matter in such startling terms makes it easy to see why philosophers from ancient Greece to the present day have taken the brevity of life to be the defining problem of human existence: we’ve been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically no time at all to put them into action.
-- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

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And yet busyness is really only the beginning. Many other complaints, when you stop to think about them, are essentially complaints about our limited time. Take the daily battle against online distraction, and the alarming sense that our attention spans have shriveled to such a degree that even those of us who were bookworms as children now struggle to make it through a paragraph without experiencing the urge to reach for our phones.
-- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

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What is the Brevity of Life?

Expressing the matter in such startling terms makes it easy to see why philosophers from ancient Greece to the present day have taken the brevity of life to be the defining problem of human existence: we’ve been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically no time at all to put them into action.
-- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

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Brevity, as we’ve heard, is the soul of wit. Brevity is also the soul of accessibility, which is arguably just as important as wit.
-- How to Write Funny: Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing

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"The part of life we really live is small." For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.
-- On the Shortness of Life

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Philosophers From Ancient Greece?

The philosophers associated with these schools were unapologetic about their interest in philosophies of life. According to Epicurus, for example, “Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.”
-- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

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After his death, Socrates’ many followers not only continued to do philosophy but attracted followers of their own. Plato, the best-known of his students, founded the school of philosophy known as the Academy, Aristippus founded the Cyrenaic school, Euclides founded the Megarian school, Phaedo founded the Elian school, and Antisthenes founded the Cynic school. What had been a trickle of philosophical activity before Socrates became, after his death, a veritable torrent. Why did this explosion of interest in philosophy take place? In part because Socrates changed the focus of philosophical inquiry. Before Socrates, philosophers were primarily interested in explaining the world around them and the phenomena of that world—in doing what we would now call science. Although Socrates studied science as a young man, he abandoned it to focus his attention on the human condition. As the Roman orator, politician, and philosopher Cicero put it, Socrates was “the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and set her in the cities of men and bring her also into their homes and compel her to ask questions about life and morality and things good and evil.”
-- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

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AS WE HAVE SEEN, the two questions “What can I know?” and “How should I live?” are for philosophers inseparable. This recognition also helps to explain the lasting impact and fascination of the protagonists of philosophy, their potential iconic status, and their capacity to influence entire eras. The ideal of transposing one’s own thought into a lifeworld—embodied in its purest form by the founding figure of Socrates—further distinguishes philosophy from other paths of knowledge, such as the natural sciences or indeed art. Being a philosopher is a way of leading one’s own life consciously, giving it pull, form, and direction through constant, probing questioning.
-- Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy

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Aristippus, Phaedo, Antisthenes,…?

After his death, Socrates’ many followers not only continued to do philosophy but attracted followers of their own. Plato, the best-known of his students, founded the school of philosophy known as the Academy, Aristippus founded the Cyrenaic school, Euclides founded the Megarian school, Phaedo founded the Elian school, and Antisthenes founded the Cynic school. What had been a trickle of philosophical activity before Socrates became, after his death, a veritable torrent. Why did this explosion of interest in philosophy take place? In part because Socrates changed the focus of philosophical inquiry. Before Socrates, philosophers were primarily interested in explaining the world around them and the phenomena of that world—in doing what we would now call science. Although Socrates studied science as a young man, he abandoned it to focus his attention on the human condition. As the Roman orator, politician, and philosopher Cicero put it, Socrates was “the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and set her in the cities of men and bring her also into their homes and compel her to ask questions about life and morality and things good and evil.”
-- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

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The pre-Socratic thinker Periander of Corinth wrote, more than twenty-five hundred years ago: Use laws that are old but food that is fresh.
-- Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

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CHAEREPHON: Socrates, I think I know plenty of Athenians who do not seek improvement! We have many politicians who think they’re perfect. And many sophists who think they know everything. SOCRATES: But what, specifically, do those politicians believe to be perfect? Their own grandiose plans for how to improve the city. Similarly, each sophist believes that everyone should adopt his ideas, which he sees as an improvement over everything that has been believed before. The laws and customs of Athens are set up to accommodate all these many rival ideas of perfection (as well as more modest proposals for improvement), to subject them to criticism, to winnow out from them what may be the few tiny seeds of truth, and to test out those that seem the most promising. Thus those myriad individuals who can conceive of no improvement of themselves nevertheless add up to a city that relentlessly seeks nothing else for itself, day and night.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

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The Heavens?

“Then let them know that we are here,” the man said, and from his staff and hands leapt forth a white radiance that broke as a sea-wave breaks in sunlight, against the thousand diamonds of the roof and walls: a glory of light, through which the two fled, straight across the great cavern, their shadows racing from them into the white traceries and the glittering crevices and the empty, open grave.
-- The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle Series Book 2)

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When heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent. MENG TZU (MENCIUS), fourth century BCE1
-- The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

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Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

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Nothing Earthly Succeeds by Ignoring Heaven, Nothing Heavenly by Ignoring the Earth?

Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

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There were a lot of fun things to do in heaven. But none were as thrilling as what you could do on Earth.
-- What in God's Name: A Novel

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People are significant in the cosmic scheme of things; and The Earth’s biosphere is incapable of supporting human life.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

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God's Name?

God says, bestowing upon Jesus the same sobriquet (ho Agapitos, “the Beloved”) that God had given to King David.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

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When the faithful are asked whether God really exists, they often begin by talking about the enigmatic mysteries of the universe and the limits of human understanding. “Science cannot explain the Big Bang,” they exclaim, “so that must be God’s doing.” Yet like a magician fooling an audience by imperceptibly replacing one card with another, the faithful quickly replace the cosmic mystery with the worldly lawgiver. After giving the name of “God” to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorce. “We do not understand the Big Bang—therefore you must cover your hair in public and vote against gay marriage.”
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

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Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows – then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.” And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, – then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion.” And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.
-- The Prophet

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God Says, Bestowing Upon Jesus the Same Sobriquet?

God says, bestowing upon Jesus the same sobriquet (ho Agapitos, “the Beloved”) that God had given to King David.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

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Although “Christ” is technically the Greek word for “messiah,” that is not how Paul employs the term. He does not endow Christ with any of the connotations attached to the term “messiah” in the Hebrew Scriptures. He never speaks of Jesus as “the anointed of Israel.”
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

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After all, in the entire first gospel there exists not a single definitive messianic statement from Jesus himself, not even at the very end when he stands before the high priest Caiaphas and somewhat passively accepts the title that others keep foisting upon him (Mark 14:62). The same is true for the early Q source material, which also contains not a single messianic statement by Jesus.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

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Christ?

The big breakthrough came with Christianity. This faith began as an esoteric Jewish sect that sought to convince Jews that Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited messiah. However, one of the sect’s first leaders, Paul of Tarsus, reasoned that if the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, and if He had bothered to incarnate Himself in the flesh and to die on the cross for the salvation of humankind, then this is something everyone should hear about, not just Jews. It was thus necessary to spread the good word – the gospel – about Jesus throughout the world.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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Although “Christ” is technically the Greek word for “messiah,” that is not how Paul employs the term. He does not endow Christ with any of the connotations attached to the term “messiah” in the Hebrew Scriptures. He never speaks of Jesus as “the anointed of Israel.”
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

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The Orthodox Church goes further, making the human side flow upward rather than downward. The fourth-century bishop Athanasius of Alexandria wrote: “Jesus Christ was incarnate so we could be made God” (emphasis mine). It is the very human character of Jesus that can allow us mortals to access God and merge with him, become part of him, in order to partake of the divine. That fusion is called theosis.
-- Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

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Christianity?

The big breakthrough came with Christianity. This faith began as an esoteric Jewish sect that sought to convince Jews that Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited messiah. However, one of the sect’s first leaders, Paul of Tarsus, reasoned that if the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, and if He had bothered to incarnate Himself in the flesh and to die on the cross for the salvation of humankind, then this is something everyone should hear about, not just Jews. It was thus necessary to spread the good word – the gospel – about Jesus throughout the world.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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Christianity had been illegal since the early second century when a query from Pliny the Younger (then governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor) prompted the emperor Trajan to establish a formal policy: While Christians were not to be sought out, those who confessed to the faith were to be executed.
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

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It was precisely the fervor with which the followers of Jesus believed in his resurrection that transformed this tiny Jewish sect into the largest religion in the world.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

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What Parts of the World Was Christianity Illegal?

Christianity had been illegal since the early second century when a query from Pliny the Younger (then governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor) prompted the emperor Trajan to establish a formal policy: While Christians were not to be sought out, those who confessed to the faith were to be executed.
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

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In the 300 years from the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. Local administrators and governors incited some anti-Christian violence of their own. Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.1 In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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From the fifteenth through the seventeenth century, Europe experienced multiple waves of witch hunts, driven primarily by religious wars and conflicts in the wake of the Reformation, and also by fears brought on by recurring plague outbreaks.2 Tens of thousands of innocent people—and possibly hundreds of thousands—were put to death, often after being “put to the question” (that is, tortured) with the aid of boiling oil, red-hot iron bars, or thumbscrews.
-- The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

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Fifteenth Through the Seventeenth Century?

From the fifteenth through the seventeenth century, Europe experienced multiple waves of witch hunts, driven primarily by religious wars and conflicts in the wake of the Reformation, and also by fears brought on by recurring plague outbreaks.2 Tens of thousands of innocent people—and possibly hundreds of thousands—were put to death, often after being “put to the question” (that is, tortured) with the aid of boiling oil, red-hot iron bars, or thumbscrews.
-- The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

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until the late eighteenth century, Asia was the world’s economic powerhouse,
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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“The thought of every age is reflected in its technique,” Wiener asserted shortly after the war. During the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, when figures such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were laying the foundations of modern science, the most advanced and evocative technology had been that of the clock, whose gears seemed to move with the timeless, pristine perfection of a planet orbiting the sun. It was no coincidence that seventeenth-century philosophers such as René Descartes had described even plants and animals as organic clockwork mechanisms. Then, during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, the defining technology had been that of the steam engine, which was capable of converting vast amounts of energy and heat into work. And again it was no coincidence that scientists of that era had conceived of living organisms as biological heat engines, mechanisms that burned food to do useful physiological work.
-- The Dream Machine

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…,seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century?

until the late eighteenth century, Asia was the world’s economic powerhouse,
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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“The thought of every age is reflected in its technique,” Wiener asserted shortly after the war. During the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, when figures such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were laying the foundations of modern science, the most advanced and evocative technology had been that of the clock, whose gears seemed to move with the timeless, pristine perfection of a planet orbiting the sun. It was no coincidence that seventeenth-century philosophers such as René Descartes had described even plants and animals as organic clockwork mechanisms. Then, during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, the defining technology had been that of the steam engine, which was capable of converting vast amounts of energy and heat into work. And again it was no coincidence that scientists of that era had conceived of living organisms as biological heat engines, mechanisms that burned food to do useful physiological work.
-- The Dream Machine

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On the eve of the late-eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution, Asia—especially China and India—accounted for nearly 60 percent of the world economy.
-- Move: The Forces Uprooting Us

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Seventeenth Century?

“The thought of every age is reflected in its technique,” Wiener asserted shortly after the war. During the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, when figures such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were laying the foundations of modern science, the most advanced and evocative technology had been that of the clock, whose gears seemed to move with the timeless, pristine perfection of a planet orbiting the sun. It was no coincidence that seventeenth-century philosophers such as René Descartes had described even plants and animals as organic clockwork mechanisms. Then, during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, the defining technology had been that of the steam engine, which was capable of converting vast amounts of energy and heat into work. And again it was no coincidence that scientists of that era had conceived of living organisms as biological heat engines, mechanisms that burned food to do useful physiological work.
-- The Dream Machine

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until the late eighteenth century, Asia was the world’s economic powerhouse,
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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After a series of attempted revolts in the mid-1500s, the Dutch, who were under the control of Habsburg Spain, finally became powerful enough to gain de facto independence in 1581.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

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When Were the mid-1500s?

After a series of attempted revolts in the mid-1500s, the Dutch, who were under the control of Habsburg Spain, finally became powerful enough to gain de facto independence in 1581.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

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Prior to 1500, science and technology were totally separate fields.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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The world was very different in 1500 yet it operated the same way it does now. That’s because while things have evolved a lot since 1500, they’ve done so in the same ways they always have, with evolutionary uptrends producing advancements and big cycles creating swings and bumps around the uptrends.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

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1500s Century is What?

The Commercial Revolution (1100s–1500s) The Commercial Revolution was the move away from a solely agriculture-based economy to one that included trade in a variety of goods. This evolution began in the 12th century, and by 1500, it was centered in the Italian city-states
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

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The biggest in the year 1500 was the Songhai Empire in West Africa, which had a reputation as a center of trade and Islamic scholarship.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

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Prior to 1500, science and technology were totally separate fields.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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Nth Century?

“The thought of every age is reflected in its technique,” Wiener asserted shortly after the war. During the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, when figures such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were laying the foundations of modern science, the most advanced and evocative technology had been that of the clock, whose gears seemed to move with the timeless, pristine perfection of a planet orbiting the sun. It was no coincidence that seventeenth-century philosophers such as René Descartes had described even plants and animals as organic clockwork mechanisms. Then, during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, the defining technology had been that of the steam engine, which was capable of converting vast amounts of energy and heat into work. And again it was no coincidence that scientists of that era had conceived of living organisms as biological heat engines, mechanisms that burned food to do useful physiological work.
-- The Dream Machine

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The technology that in 1845 ‘‘had been a scarecrow and chimera, began to be treated as a confidential servant,’’ noted a report compiled by the Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company in 1849.
-- The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers

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here are people today who think life was better in the past. They argue that there was not only a simplicity, tranquillity, sociability and spirituality about life in the distant past that has been lost, but a virtue too. This rose-tinted nostalgia, please note, is generally confined to the wealthy. It is easier to wax elegiac for the life of a peasant when you do not have to use a long-drop toilet. Imagine that it is 1800, somewhere in Western Europe or eastern North America. The family is gathering around the hearth in the simple timber-framed house. Father reads aloud from the Bible while mother prepares to dish out a stew of beef and onions. The baby boy is being comforted by one of his sisters and the eldest lad is pouring water from a pitcher into the earthenware mugs on the table. His elder sister is feeding the horse in the stable. Outside there is no noise of traffic, there are no drug dealers and neither dioxins nor radioactive fall-out have been found in the cow’s milk. All is tranquil; a bird sings outside the window.
Oh please! Though this is one of the better-off families in the village, father’s Scripture reading is interrupted by a bronchitic cough that presages the pneumonia that will kill him at 53 – not helped by the wood smoke of the fire. (He is lucky: life expectancy even in England was less than 40 in 1800.) The baby will die of the smallpox that is now causing him to cry; his sister will soon be the chattel of a drunken husband. The water the son is pouring tastes of the cows that drink from the brook. Toothache tortures the mother. The neighbour’s lodger is getting the other girl pregnant in the hayshed even now and her child will be sent to an orphanage. The stew is grey and gristly yet meat is a rare change from gruel; there is no fruit or salad at this season. It is eaten with a wooden spoon from a wooden bowl. Candles cost too much, so firelight is all there is to see by. Nobody in the family has ever seen a play, painted a picture or heard a piano. School is a few years of dull Latin taught by a bigoted martinet at the vicarage. Father visited the city once, but the travel cost him a week’s wages and the others have never travelled more than fifteen miles from home. Each daughter owns two wool dresses, two linen shirts and one pair of shoes. Father’s jacket cost him a month’s wages but is now infested with lice. The children sleep two to a bed on straw mattresses on the floor. As for the bird outside the window, tomorrow it will be trapped and eaten by the boy.
-- The Rational Optimist

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Painted a Picture?

She undertook the exercise herself, too, with a painting called Boy with a Squirrel, by the American artist John Singleton Copley. (It shows a boy with a squirrel.)
-- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

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Art can be used for many purposes.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

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Choose paintings that show traces of the movement of the hand. A drawing with sweeping strokes or an oil painting you’ve done yourself can offer an exciting contrast to perfect prints.
-- The Interior Design Handbook: Furnish, Decorate, and Style Your Space

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Art Can Be Used for Many Purposes?

Art can be used for many purposes.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.990085046081225

Art is high-quality endeavor. That is all that really needs to be said. Or, if something more high-sounding is demanded: Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

similarity = 0.844607528057111

Art is worth appreciating, and it has a place in the world. But art should not be conflated with anything productive in a commercial sense. It’s not even related. It’s not a sign that you want this person helping you write line-of-business apps. It’s not a sign that this person would make a great addition to a team. While it may be a sign that this person is a skilled programmer, it’s not a sign that he is a profitable programmer. It’s definitely not a sign that this person is an efficiencer. What our naked Mario artist actually represents is an ongoing reinforcement of a dynamic: we, as programmers, can be distracted from our own fates and autonomy by asinine gamification.
-- Developer Hegemony: The Future of Labor

similarity = 0.837550174134105

Art is the Godhead as Revealed in the Works of Man?

Art is high-quality endeavor. That is all that really needs to be said. Or, if something more high-sounding is demanded: Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

similarity = 0.922073018034105

Art can be used for many purposes.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.844908333816881

The mere act of creation is the strongest, most powerful force of revelation there is.
-- The Comic Toolbox: How to be Funny Even if You're Not

similarity = 0.844534094866838

Godhead?

Art is high-quality endeavor. That is all that really needs to be said. Or, if something more high-sounding is demanded: Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

similarity = 0.851173599311598

Godself Kink Let's return to a point mentioned in the Introduction: if the ancient wisdom of Vedas are correct and the whole universe is just God playing elaborate rounds of hide'n'seek with Godself, then God is a super-freak. We need only look around our planet to see that God's idea of a fun time includes some seriously edgy, ultra-taboo, hard-core stuff—including war and poverty and pain and ravaging and abuse and atrocities of all variety.
-- Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power (A method for getting what you want by getting off on what you don't)

similarity = 0.850184293866689

“Om,” he pronounced inwardly, and he was conscious of Brahman, of the indestructibleness of life; he remembered all that he had forgotten, all that was divine.
-- Siddhartha

similarity = 0.82983826239548

God's Idea of a Fun Time?

Godself Kink Let's return to a point mentioned in the Introduction: if the ancient wisdom of Vedas are correct and the whole universe is just God playing elaborate rounds of hide'n'seek with Godself, then God is a super-freak. We need only look around our planet to see that God's idea of a fun time includes some seriously edgy, ultra-taboo, hard-core stuff—including war and poverty and pain and ravaging and abuse and atrocities of all variety.
-- Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power (A method for getting what you want by getting off on what you don't)

similarity = 0.847820029848714

There were a lot of fun things to do in heaven. But none were as thrilling as what you could do on Earth.
-- What in God's Name: A Novel

similarity = 0.838690724919208

Gambling may be the second-most enjoyable human activity.
-- The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio (Personal Finance & Investment)

similarity = 0.823941980250551

There Were a Lot of Fun Things to Do in Heaven?

There were a lot of fun things to do in heaven. But none were as thrilling as what you could do on Earth.
-- What in God's Name: A Novel

similarity = 0.941730355012728

It was a better day for walking than bathing—cool and overcast. Still, there were a fair number of people on the beach. Some were pretending to enjoy themselves. A few were doggedly sunbathing in defiance of the fact that the sky was a duvet of clouds. A small number were actually swimming, or at least bouncing in the waves.
-- The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain

similarity = 0.803928025187247

By comparison to the ghostly condition of the shades in Hades, a full-bodied existence in Elysium is enviable, to be sure, if only because happiness outside of the body is very difficult for human beings to imagine and impossible for them to desire. (One can desire deliverance from the body, and desire it ardently, but that is another matter.) Even the beatified souls in Dante's Paradise anticipate with surplus of joy the resurrection of their flesh at the end of time. Their bliss is in fact imperfect until they recover in time what time has robbed them of. the bodily matter with which their personal identity and appearance were bound up. Until…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.801487696727705

Elysium?

There is no doubt that Meneleus would opt for Elysium over Hades-any of us would-but would he gladly give up his worldly life prematurely for that garden existence? It seems not. Why? Because earthly paradises like Dilmun and Elysium offer ease and perpetual spring at the cost of an absolute isolation from the world of mortals-isolation from friends, family, city, and the ongoing story of human action and endeavor. Exile from both the private and public spheres of human interaction is a sorry condition, especially for a polis-loving people like the Greeks. It deprives one of both the cares and the consolations of mortal life, to which most of us are more attached than we may ever suspect. To go on living in such isolated gardens, human beings must either denature themselves like Utnapishtim, who is no longer fully human after so many centuries with no human…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.853919647642733

Immortal life with Kalypso or in Elysium or in the garden of the sun has its distinct appeal, to be sure, yet human beings hold nothing more dear than what they bring into being, or maintain in being, through their own cultivating efforts. This despite the fact that many among us…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.851894811667014

By comparison to the ghostly condition of the shades in Hades, a full-bodied existence in Elysium is enviable, to be sure, if only because happiness outside of the body is very difficult for human beings to imagine and impossible for them to desire. (One can desire deliverance from the body, and desire it ardently, but that is another matter.) Even the beatified souls in Dante's Paradise anticipate with surplus of joy the resurrection of their flesh at the end of time. Their bliss is in fact imperfect until they recover in time what time has robbed them of. the bodily matter with which their personal identity and appearance were bound up. Until…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.836719325406491

Worldly Life?

let us remember that “goal fulfillment” is not confined to “worldly” goals. A life of study or meditation has its own kind of purposefulness—or it can have. But a life without purpose can hardly be said to be human.
-- The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

similarity = 0.845961358934204

Lastly, in a sense this is a religious course: I am preaching the message that, with apparently only one life to live on this earth, you ought to try to make significant contributions to humanity rather than just get along through life comfortably—that the life of trying to achieve excellence in some area is in itself a worthy goal for your life. It has often been observed the true gain is in the struggle and not in the achievement—a life without a struggle on your part to make yourself excellent is hardly a life worth living. This, it must be observed, is an opinion and not a fact, but it is based on observing many people’s lives and speculating on their total happiness rather than the moment-to-moment pleasures they enjoyed.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.842845265507461

A deep life is a good life.
-- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

similarity = 0.840704911565852

In a Sense This is a Religious Course: I Am Preaching the Message That, with Apparently Only One Life to Live on This Earth, You Ought to Try to Make Significant Contributions to Humanity Rather Than Just Get Along Through Life Comfortably?

Lastly, in a sense this is a religious course: I am preaching the message that, with apparently only one life to live on this earth, you ought to try to make significant contributions to humanity rather than just get along through life comfortably—that the life of trying to achieve excellence in some area is in itself a worthy goal for your life. It has often been observed the true gain is in the struggle and not in the achievement—a life without a struggle on your part to make yourself excellent is hardly a life worth living. This, it must be observed, is an opinion and not a fact, but it is based on observing many people’s lives and speculating on their total happiness rather than the moment-to-moment pleasures they enjoyed.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.954405953136881

Why do I believe this talk is important? It is important because as far as I know each of you has but one life to lead, and it seems to me it is better to do significant things than to just get along through life to its end. Certainly near the end it is nice to look back at a life of accomplishments rather than a life where you have merely survived and amused yourself. Thus in a real sense I am preaching the messages that (1) it is worth trying to accomplish the goals you set yourself and (2) it is worth setting yourself high goals.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.903532518981345

let us remember that “goal fulfillment” is not confined to “worldly” goals. A life of study or meditation has its own kind of purposefulness—or it can have. But a life without purpose can hardly be said to be human.
-- The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

similarity = 0.848774420634714

Certainly Near the End it is Nice to Look Back at a Life of Accomplishments Rather Than a Life Where You Have Merely Survived and Amused Yourself?

Why do I believe this talk is important? It is important because as far as I know each of you has but one life to lead, and it seems to me it is better to do significant things than to just get along through life to its end. Certainly near the end it is nice to look back at a life of accomplishments rather than a life where you have merely survived and amused yourself. Thus in a real sense I am preaching the messages that (1) it is worth trying to accomplish the goals you set yourself and (2) it is worth setting yourself high goals.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.872664314565264

Lastly, in a sense this is a religious course: I am preaching the message that, with apparently only one life to live on this earth, you ought to try to make significant contributions to humanity rather than just get along through life comfortably—that the life of trying to achieve excellence in some area is in itself a worthy goal for your life. It has often been observed the true gain is in the struggle and not in the achievement—a life without a struggle on your part to make yourself excellent is hardly a life worth living. This, it must be observed, is an opinion and not a fact, but it is based on observing many people’s lives and speculating on their total happiness rather than the moment-to-moment pleasures they enjoyed.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.852037821093876

After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
-- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

similarity = 0.837866513580846

Death is but the Next Great Adventure?

After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
-- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

similarity = 0.938026841267115

Typically, the thought of death may be expected, first, to usher us towards whatever happens to matter most to us (be it drinking beside the banks of the Nile, writing a book or making a fortune), and second, to encourage us to pay less attention to the verdicts of others—who will not, after all, be doing the dying for us. The prospect of our own extinction may draw us towards that way of life on which our hearts place the greatest value. This theme animates “To His Coy Mistress” (1681), Andrew Marvell’s famous poetic attempt to lure a hesitant young woman into bed, through lines that stress not only her beauty and his fidelity but also the less obviously romantic notion that both she and he will soon enough be stone dead.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.858212435978984

it is wrong to speak of death as the price of life's vitality. Death is rather its matrix. Stevens puts it even more peremptorily: "Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, / Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams / And our desires." Death neither negates nor terminates life but gives birth to its intrinsic potentialities, especially its potentiality for appearance. Without death there is no fulfillment of potentiality nor any ever-changing moods of the phenomenal world. Death may "strew the leaves / Of sure obliteration on our paths," yet "she makes the willows shiver in the sun / For maidens who were wont…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.849198904204753

Death May "strew the Leaves?

it is wrong to speak of death as the price of life's vitality. Death is rather its matrix. Stevens puts it even more peremptorily: "Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, / Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams / And our desires." Death neither negates nor terminates life but gives birth to its intrinsic potentialities, especially its potentiality for appearance. Without death there is no fulfillment of potentiality nor any ever-changing moods of the phenomenal world. Death may "strew the leaves / Of sure obliteration on our paths," yet "she makes the willows shiver in the sun / For maidens who were wont…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.856476471744048

the human life, with its natural progression from springlike growth to summerlike maturation to autumnlike entropy to winterlike death.
-- The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

similarity = 0.845739697272109

Typically, the thought of death may be expected, first, to usher us towards whatever happens to matter most to us (be it drinking beside the banks of the Nile, writing a book or making a fortune), and second, to encourage us to pay less attention to the verdicts of others—who will not, after all, be doing the dying for us. The prospect of our own extinction may draw us towards that way of life on which our hearts place the greatest value. This theme animates “To His Coy Mistress” (1681), Andrew Marvell’s famous poetic attempt to lure a hesitant young woman into bed, through lines that stress not only her beauty and his fidelity but also the less obviously romantic notion that both she and he will soon enough be stone dead.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.842722471478029

The Human Life, with Its Natural Progression From Springlike Growth to Summerlike Maturation to Autumnlike Entropy to Winterlike Death.?

the human life, with its natural progression from springlike growth to summerlike maturation to autumnlike entropy to winterlike death.
-- The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

similarity = 0.999997600914338

Systematic knowledge of the current range of human lifespans has made that range seem natural. Today our society is permeated by the twin ideas that death is both inevitable and random.
-- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

similarity = 0.863053673144697

As I studied history, I saw that it typically transpires via relatively well-defined life cycles, like those of organisms, that evolve as each generation transitions to the next.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.860625739227586

How Do We Deal with the Shortness of Lifes Seasons?

There are many ways, some of them seemingly small, in which the real world of technology denies the existence and the reality of nature. For instance, there is little sense of season as one walks through a North American or western European supermarket. As a child in Berlin, I still experienced a sense of special occasion when participating in small festive events around the family table to celebrate the first asparagus of the season, the first strawberries, the rare and special gift of an orange in winter. Today such occasions for marking the seasons are rare. Just as there is little sense of season, there is little sense of climate. Everything possible is done to equalize the ambience — to construct an environment that is warm in the winter, cool in the summer — equilibrating temperature and humidity to create an environment that does not reflect nature. Nature is then the outside for “us” who are in an internal cocoon. Indeed, technology does allow us to design nature out of much of our lives. This, however, may be quite stupid. People are part of nature whether they like it or not. Machines and instruments will thrive and work well in even temperatures and constant humidity. People, in fact, may not. For the sake of our own mental and physical health, we may need the rhythm of the seasons and the experience of different climates that can link us to nature and to life.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.846466296609675

the human life, with its natural progression from springlike growth to summerlike maturation to autumnlike entropy to winterlike death.
-- The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

similarity = 0.839266274624912

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.  But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.
-- On the Shortness of Life

similarity = 0.829267024457066

First Asparagus of the Season, the First Strawberries, the Rare and Special Gift of an Orange in Winter?

I was not a gardener and never had been in my life, but thanks to Sam Kass and our family’s efforts to eat better at home, I now knew that strawberries were at their most succulent in June, that darker-leaf lettuces had the most nutrients, and that it wasn’t so hard to make kale chips in the oven. I saw my daughters eating things like spring pea salad and cauliflower mac and cheese and understood that until recently most of what we knew about food had come through food-industry advertising of everything boxed, frozen, or otherwise processed for convenience, whether it was in snap-crackle TV jingles or clever packaging aimed at the harried parent dashing through the grocery store. Nobody, really, was out there advertising the fresh, healthy stuff—the gratifying crunch of a fresh carrot or the unparalleled sweetness of a tomato plucked right off the vine.
-- Becoming

similarity = 0.824218428545574

She brought home bread, dried fish, but above all, “the gifts of the forest,” as she explained with a smile: pine kernels, young fir shoots, which she boiled up with semolina. To his surprise, he felt himself growing increasingly separate from the wind, the earth, the cold, into which he had almost merged.
-- Music of a Life: A Novel

similarity = 0.81492297706767

I lived in a mile-long village in the middle of a western province in Kyrgyzstan: there were larch trees on the snowy mountains, flocks of sheep crossing dusty roads, but there was no running water, no grocery store. The resourceful villagers preserved peppers and tomatoes, stockpiled apples and onions, but it was so difficult to get fresh produce otherwise that I regularly fantasized about spinach and oranges, and would spend entire weekends trying to obtain them.
-- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

similarity = 0.81052637562372

The Gratifying Crunch of a Fresh Carrot or the Unparalleled Sweetness of a Tomato Plucked Right Off the Vine?

I was not a gardener and never had been in my life, but thanks to Sam Kass and our family’s efforts to eat better at home, I now knew that strawberries were at their most succulent in June, that darker-leaf lettuces had the most nutrients, and that it wasn’t so hard to make kale chips in the oven. I saw my daughters eating things like spring pea salad and cauliflower mac and cheese and understood that until recently most of what we knew about food had come through food-industry advertising of everything boxed, frozen, or otherwise processed for convenience, whether it was in snap-crackle TV jingles or clever packaging aimed at the harried parent dashing through the grocery store. Nobody, really, was out there advertising the fresh, healthy stuff—the gratifying crunch of a fresh carrot or the unparalleled sweetness of a tomato plucked right off the vine.
-- Becoming

similarity = 0.860856939104945

Like Eve's eating of the pomegranate, gardening brings about a transformation of perception, a fundamental change in one's way of seeing the world, call it a phenomenological conversion. No longer does the eye stop at the surface of nature's living forms; it looks to the depths in which they stake their…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.823644978984712

When she ate the pomegranate, it was as if every seed with its wet red shining coat of sweet flesh clinging to the dark core was one of nature's eyes. Afterward, it was nature that was blind, and she who was wild with…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.82163996126504

Nature's Living Forms?

the human life, with its natural progression from springlike growth to summerlike maturation to autumnlike entropy to winterlike death.
-- The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

similarity = 0.847511594546203

if we can see living organisms as (enormously complex) feedback systems actively interacting with their environments, then we can begin to comprehend how the ineffable qualities of mind are not separate from the body but rather inextricably bound up in it.
-- The Dream Machine

similarity = 0.83985025443617

EVERY LIVING THING possesses the drive to survive and pass on its genes to future generations. We consider plants our friends because they feed us, but plants regard all plant predators, including us, as enemies.
-- The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

similarity = 0.832549341812275

Plants Our Friends Because They Feed Us?

EVERY LIVING THING possesses the drive to survive and pass on its genes to future generations. We consider plants our friends because they feed us, but plants regard all plant predators, including us, as enemies.
-- The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

similarity = 0.88771910683886

Plants are great chemists—and alchemists, for that matter: they can turn sunbeams into matter! They have evolved to use biological warfare to repel predators—poisoning, paralyzing, or disorienting them—or to reduce their own digestibility to stay alive and protect their seeds, enhancing the chances that their species will endure.
-- The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

similarity = 0.830201260951106

The only power source an unaided human has are muscles, first our own and later that of the handful of animals that we could tame. Starvation, disease, and injury were common and had the unfortunately high likelihood of proving lethal. And any provided-by-nature root or rabbit that you ate was one that someone else would not be eating. So, sure, we lived in “harmony with nature” . . . which is another way of saying we tended to beat the crap out of our neighbors whenever we saw them. Odds are, whoever won the fight ate the loser. Pretty exciting, eh?
-- The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

similarity = 0.816158666279083

Odds Are, Whoever Won the Fight Ate the Loser?

The only power source an unaided human has are muscles, first our own and later that of the handful of animals that we could tame. Starvation, disease, and injury were common and had the unfortunately high likelihood of proving lethal. And any provided-by-nature root or rabbit that you ate was one that someone else would not be eating. So, sure, we lived in “harmony with nature” . . . which is another way of saying we tended to beat the crap out of our neighbors whenever we saw them. Odds are, whoever won the fight ate the loser. Pretty exciting, eh?
-- The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

similarity = 0.808871599250096

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
-- How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

similarity = 0.802470944683249

History shows us that after the fight for power in which the common enemy is defeated, those who united against the common enemy typically fight among themselves for power and those in the losing party do the same as they plan their next attack. I call this the “purge” state of the balance of power dynamic. It has happened in all cases, with the Reign of Terror in France and the Red Terror in the Soviet Union being the most well-known. This same sort of fighting has happened between countries, as with the US and the Soviet Union, who were allies in World War II. Similarly, the united front of Chinese communists and nationalists that fought the Japanese in the war immediately battled each other for power when the war was over. Understanding this typical dynamic, one should look out for internal fighting among the winners right after the big war is over.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.799552091901373

Victorious Warriors?

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
-- How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

similarity = 0.901160097651649

I remembered the words of Sancho Panza: An adventuring knight is someone who’s beaten and then finds himself emperor.
-- Educated: A Memoir

similarity = 0.826196680436072

In the great age of conquerors warfare was a low-damage, high-profit affair. At the Battle of Hastings in 1066 William the Conqueror gained the whole of England in a single day for the cost of a few thousand dead. Nuclear weapons and cyberwarfare, by contrast, are high-damage, low-profit technologies. You can use such tools to destroy entire countries but not to build profitable empires.
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

similarity = 0.820220320790154

What is the Feeling a Victorious Warrior Has?

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
-- How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

similarity = 0.839466338372876

And sometimes I would give in to that inevitable human resistance against doing what’s best for us, and waste an evening distracting myself. I knew quite well, however, that when I did overcome my lethargy, I would be rewarded with a little miracle: I knew that, no matter how I felt on climbing the dojo stairs, two hours later—after hundreds of throws and falls—I would walk out tingling and fully alive, feeling so good, in fact, that the night itself would seem to sparkle and gleam.
-- Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

similarity = 0.79671964731496

English we do not have a perfect word to describe the positive feeling we get from experiencing success. I’ve read piles of scientific literature on related topics, and I’ve done my own research in this area, and I am convinced that we are lacking a good word. (The closest label is “authentic pride,” but that’s not an exact match.)
-- Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

similarity = 0.793655048545702

What is Another Term for Authentic Pride?

English we do not have a perfect word to describe the positive feeling we get from experiencing success. I’ve read piles of scientific literature on related topics, and I’ve done my own research in this area, and I am convinced that we are lacking a good word. (The closest label is “authentic pride,” but that’s not an exact match.)
-- Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

similarity = 0.839439502420239

Like seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage is grape juice, and the purple robes are sheep wool dyed with shellfish blood. Or making love—something rubbing against your penis, a brief seizure and a little cloudy liquid. Perceptions like that—latching onto things and piercing through them, so we see what they really are. That’s what we need to do all the time—all through our lives when things lay claim to our trust—to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them. Pride is a master of deception: when you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell. (Compare Crates on Xenocrates.)
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

similarity = 0.782357487904118

(Many people learn to redirect their drive for prestige into various sublimations that have no obvious connection to a visible peer group, such as “honor”, “ethical integrity”, “piety” etc.; this does not change the underlying mechanism.)
-- The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

similarity = 0.780654818918732

Piety?

He instructed his followers to avoid killing, promiscuous sex and theft, since such acts necessarily stoke the fire of craving (for power, for sensual pleasure, or for wealth).
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.820136582170685

Nothing is more pathetic than people who run around in circles, “delving into the things that lie beneath” and conducting investigations into the souls of the people around them, never realizing that all you have to do is to be attentive to the power inside you and worship it sincerely. To worship it is to keep it from being muddied with turmoil and becoming aimless and dissatisfied with nature—divine and human. What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. And our pity too, sometimes, for its inability to tell good from bad—as terrible a blindness as the kind that can’t tell white from black.
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

similarity = 0.819415307752621

A cultural idea – such as belief in Christian heaven above the clouds or Communist paradise here on earth – can compel a human to dedicate his or her life to spreading that idea, even at the price of death.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.81897584100659

What is the Term for a Group of Christians on Earth?

The big breakthrough came with Christianity. This faith began as an esoteric Jewish sect that sought to convince Jews that Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited messiah. However, one of the sect’s first leaders, Paul of Tarsus, reasoned that if the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, and if He had bothered to incarnate Himself in the flesh and to die on the cross for the salvation of humankind, then this is something everyone should hear about, not just Jews. It was thus necessary to spread the good word – the gospel – about Jesus throughout the world.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.803247146167336

It was precisely the fervor with which the followers of Jesus believed in his resurrection that transformed this tiny Jewish sect into the largest religion in the world.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

similarity = 0.802634214806068

The task of defining Jesus’s message fell instead to a new crop of educated, urbanized, Greek-speaking Diaspora Jews who would become the primary vehicles for the expansion of the new faith.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

similarity = 0.795903653864655

What Does Christiantiy Deal with Death?

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is, in the best tradition of the Christian memento mori, a study in how the idea of death may reorient our priorities away from the worldly and towards the spiritual, away from whist and dinner parties and towards truth and love.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.821141389409431

It is the rich, the beautiful, the famous and the powerful for whom death has in store the cruellest lessons—the very categories of people, that is, whose worldly goods take them, in the Christian understanding, furthest from God.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.817843331629802

After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
-- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

similarity = 0.810544532024006

Christian Memento Mori Items?

In some parts of Christendom, beginning in the sixteenth century, a new and very specific artistic genre emerged that would capture the imagination of the art-buying classes for the next two hundred years. Examples of “vanitas art,” so named in tribute to Ecclesiastes, were hung in domestic environments, most often studies and bedrooms. Each still-life featured a table or sideboard on which was arranged a contrasting muddle of objects. There might be flowers, coins, a guitar or a mandolin, chess pieces, a book of verse, a laurel wreath or a wine bottle: symbols of frivolity and temporal glory. And somewhere among these would be set the two great symbols of death and the brevity of life: a skull and an hourglass.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.840501785400754

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is, in the best tradition of the Christian memento mori, a study in how the idea of death may reorient our priorities away from the worldly and towards the spiritual, away from whist and dinner parties and towards truth and love.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.834051105039556

Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.
-- Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

similarity = 0.813489831866293

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