A few months ago, I posted a poem worth reading. Yesterday, I found another.
“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, 1875
–
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.
“Show me a man who isn’t a slave; one who is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition; all are slaves to hope or fear. I could show you a man who has been a Consul who is a slave to his ‘little old woman’, a millionaire who is the slave of a little girl in domestic service. And there is no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed.” - Marcus Aurelius
"It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything." - Tyler Durden
If you're doing something regularly, you ought to know why you're doing it. You're not the first person to ever to do what you're doing; others have come before you. Some of these folks wrote about their experiences. Reading what they wrote can help you understand why they did the same things you're doing. Understanding this makes it easier to commit, negotiate, and make decisions. It gives you conceptual ground--the shoulders of giants--to stand on. If all you ever do is execute, you're a blind cog. Reflection is necessary for clarity of purpose and direction. Theory helps you reflect more intelligently and act more wisely.
Ever wonder how mashups are performed?
On Tuesday, a friend sent me an interesting article in The Atlantic about a really lofty topic: Davos and the future of the World Order. My first reaction was to chuckle at the loftiness of it, but once I started reading, I found the text informative and inspiring. Here are a few excerpts that summarize important things from which I think we often feel disconnected (bolding is mine):
Moving Past a Decade of Distractions
"For America, the completion of the 9/11 Memorial provided closure that was, in many respects, more than symbolic. After all, in 2011 the U.S. further undercut Al Qaeda's global reach and assassinated Osama bin Laden. It officially ended the Iraq War and announced its timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Taken together, the events of 2011 ended the post-9/11 era of security-focused US foreign policy.
Likewise, the financial crisis of 2008-2009 has faded as the fundamental driver of macroeconomic global policy. The euro zone has been left to deal with its current debt crisis largely on its own, as the rest of the world lets market pressure spur muddled results. The United States is showing signs of recovery in fits and starts as it puts the crisis behind it. On the whole, emerging market powerhouses like China have long since rebounded from the crisis and have returned to relentless growth. Most importantly, international cooperation in response to the crisis has not extended beyond it: the greater influence of institutions like the G20, so vital at the beginning of the global financial crisis, has since waned, and coordinated multinational policy has proved fleeting.
In 2012, it is now clear that a US security-driven foreign policy was just a decade-long detour that will not shape geopolitics in years to come. Likewise, the financial crisis no longer dominates policy, nor have its residual institutions engendered sustained international collaboration.
If the old global order is out, what is the new global order? If both the major security concern and the most significant economic event of the last decade have come and gone, where does that leave us? When the dust settles, where will global leadership and international governance come from?"
The Re-emergence of Geography
"We have entered the era of G-Zero, where institutions cannot provide coordinated leadership, nor can any durable alliance of states...In response to the global power vacuum, we'll see a return to geography as a primary organizing principle, where a country's placement will determine its friends and enemies, trading partners, and foreign policy focus to an outsized degree. Countries are already coming together in new ways on a regional level, filling the void left by global institutions with smaller-scale governance within limited spheres of influence. We will see new institutions, organized geographically that promote and reflect regional interests, and new trends exposing the ascendancy of neighborhoods in a G-Zero world."
This reassures my choice to major Geography in college, which is nice, since most people tend to think Geography entails only the memorizing of states and capitals...
The Importance of Youth
I wrote a post entitled "Dialogue of the Generations" a couple of months ago, discussing how the powers of old need and the powers of new need to have a more robust dialogue if we want the future to be any better than the past. The wisdom of elders is fertilizer for the enthusiasm of youth if both parties embrace this reality.
It's no secret that the 21st century presents tough challenges. Doomsayers jump on every opportunity to predict the imminent apocalypse, but I think that they're only denying their own wish for self-destruction, and selfishly imposing it on others. If everyone were to believe that the world's doomed, it would be exactly that. Prophecies--both negative and positive--are self-fulfilling. To paraphrase Henry Ford, what we believe will happen often ends up happening. So it makes sense to believe that the future is bright, and take aggressive, relentless action to ensure that this manifests. Communication is a huge part of this. We've got to have the tough conversations early.
Pipe up.
I'm finally reading Seneca's "Letters from a Stoic" and find myself vigorously underlining most sentences...because it's that good. Here's one of many awesome passages:
"Fear keeps pace with hope. Nor does their so moving together surprise me; both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present. Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse. Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present."
Wow.
"If you always put limit on everything you do,physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus,and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee was a deeply philosophical man. This video blew my mind:
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h/t to Chirag Sagar for the quote
