Category: Tuesday Book Club
-
Day 316 of 1000: Transcending Self and Culture
Flow psychologist Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas about how individuals can influence cultural and social evolution. I’m skeptical.
-
Day 309 of 1000: Inefficient Preparation & Accepting Incompetence in Midlife Reinvention
Ideas from Henry Oliver’s book Second Act about midlife reinvention. On not having goals and objectives and accepting a lack of expertise when you start.
-
Day 302 of 1000: Modelski’s Long Cycles Theory
George Modelski proposed that world leadership plays out in long cycles of roughly 100 years each, divided into four phases. We’re in the last phase.
-
Day 295 of 1000: Everydayness vs. Festiveness
Byung-Chul Han on Heidegger’s concept of everydayness, and how it should be complemented with festiveness.
-
Day 288 of 1000: Time to Be Defensive with Investments
In Mastering the Market Cycle, Howard Marks writes that calibrating between aggressiveness and defensiveness is a key decision for investors.
-
Day 281 of 1000: Identifying a Stock Market Top… or bottom
How to identify a stock market top, from William O’Neil’s How to Make Money in Stocks. Also, how to know when to get back in.
-
Day 274 of 1000: Cultivating the Excluding Instinct
Learning to exclude crowding and intrusive stimuli so as to live the vita contemplativa. Ideas from Han and Nietzsche.
-
Day 261 of 1000: Hopefulness and concrete Goals
Nietzsche and Han on how hope turns our thoughts to concrete goals as a way of composing the story of the future.
-
Day 254 of 1000: Reason vs. Hope – Spinoza vs. Han
Early modern philosopher Spinoza said if you live according to reason, you need not depend on Hope. Byung-Chul Han says hope takes you places that reason cannot.
-
Day 247 of 1000: Why the U.S. Needs the Fourth Turning
Contemplating Neil Howe and William’s Strauss’ The Fourth Turning as a dialectic. The dollar as reserve currency, and the problems therein.
-
Day 240 of 1000: Seeing Justly and Lovingly
British philosopher Iris Murdoch proposed that morality lies not in what actions we take but in how we cultivate a just and loving gaze.
-
Day 233 of 1000: Is Japan Going Broke?
Ray Dalio’s How Countries Go Broke would seem to apply to Japan. Or does it?
-
Day 226 of 1000: Against Buy-and-Hold Investing
Why I use market timing rules to limit losses in my investment portfolio rather than just doing buy-and-hold.
-
Day 219 of 1000: The Joy of Giving
Erich Fromm on giving as a relational process, with nods to Erik Erikson’s generativity and Nel Nodding’s definition of care.
-
Day 213 of 1000: Dropping your masks at midlife
The Chariot, as an auspicious card for a road trip departure, and a caution at midlife, reminding you to end reliance on personas developed for earlly adulthood.
-
Day 206 of 1000: Flawed or unlucky?
From Lily King’s novel Heart the Lover, some ideas about hamartia, a core concept in Greek tragedy. The problems of causal reductionism.
-
Day 199 of 1000: Iris Murdoch on art as an entryway into virtue
Iris Murdoch on art as a way of overcoming self-absorption and purposelessness. How art evokes both truth and compassion.
-
Day 192 of 1000: The safety of elders
Thinking about elder care issues including dog care and driving. The tradeoff between safety and independence.
-
Day 178 of 1000: Learning to love, and to care
What is our purpose here as human beings? I propose it is to learn how to love, and how to care.
-
Day 171 of 1000: Remarriage, symbolically or actually
Exploring the idea of living my unlived life symbolically, following suggestions from Robert A. Johnson’s Living Your Unlived Life.
-
DAy 164 of 1000: On border situations
Karl Jaspers’ concept of border situations, in which you extraordinary demands or dilemmas.
-
Day 150 of 1000: Love as negation
To love, you must strip away your self and your ego, writes Simon Critchley in Mysticism. Iris Murdoch believed this too.
-
Day 143 of 1000: Charles Taylor on authenticity
An exploration of Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s The Ethics of Authenticity. How he seeks to rescue a moral ideal of authenticity.
-
Day 137 of 1000: The aesthetic life vs the ethical life
Kierkegaard’s aesthetic life vs ethical life. Applying the concept to the movie High Fidelity.
-
Day 130 of 1000: Developing a business model not a hobby
In This Is Strategy, Seth Godin advises against trying to turn a hobby into a business. My writing hobby vs my writing business.
-
Day 123 of 1000: World construction from the point of view of two
Quotes and thoughts from Alain Badiou’s In Praise of Love. A report of how world construction when you’re in love takes place.
-
Day 116 of 1000: Romantic imagination in a consumer society
In the modern society, daters look for romantic fantasy using rational, scientific means. Implications for my book project.
-
Day 109 of 1000: Writing useful nonfiction
Some ideas from Rob Fitzpatrick’s Write Useful Books guide to writing nonfiction. Most important: make your book solves a problem effectively.
-
Day 103 of 1000: Making it easy is not enough
Oliver Burkeman suggests you ask yourself, when facing a daunting task, what if this were easy? I want my memoir rewrite to be fun too.
-
Day 89 of 1000: Ten tips for Finding your voice as an artist
Ten tips from artist-art coach-writer Eric Maisel on finding or reclaiming your artistic voice, the basis of passion.
-
Day 82 of 1000: tasks of the second half of life
In the second half of life you are called to let go of your ego and pursue soul work instead.
-
Day 75 of 1000: Sneaking a life
Sneaking the life you want instead of going for it openly. From Estés on The Red Shoes.
-
Day 68 of 1000: When life turns out how it does
In The Last Word on Power, Tracy Goss says life turns out the way it does, not the way it should. How do you respond?
-
Day 54 of 1000: Finding my voice as a memoir writer
How do I find my voice as a memoir writer? Thinking about how to reframe the first essay in the Things Men Gave me series.
-
Day 47 of 1000: True self in relationship
On true selves and false selves, Winnicott’s and Buber’s in-between spaces, and transactional vs true relationships.
-
Day 40 of 1000: What does it mean to be in love?
A set of digressions about two exes who have a hard time with love, about definitions and kinds of love, learning to love by parenting, and whether not finding fulfillment in love is inevitable.
-
Day 33 of 1000: The tower in a Tarot reading
I pulled the Tower in a reading about my romantic situation. Rather than some sort of disaster, this card suggests I’m ready to tear down old beliefs.
-
Day 26 of 1000: The dharma of dog walking
Being present, transforming painful emotions into compassion each week during my weekly dogwalking shift at the shelter.
-
day 19 of 1000: Why are we here? Love
Reflections on death leading me to concluding that the purpose of life is to give and receive love.
-
day 12 of 1000: breaking out of the mold
Pushing yourself into a mold versus building yourself from a deep sense of mission.
-
day 5 of 1000: Purpose or money first?
In Beyond Anxiety, Martha Beck suggests that people who prioritize purpose find ways to make it work financially.