reading list 001
I tend to keep a lot of tabs open with articles I want to read. To help me actually read what I keep bookmarking on my phone, I'm gonna keep a record of the articles I've read and quotes that resonate with me. This week's theme was about long-term thinking - how to keep a digital garden as a way of contextualizing knowledge and seeing the truth of the times we're living in.
Garden History - Maggie Appleton
Gardens present information in a richly linked landscape that grows slowly over time. Everything is arranged and connected in ways that allow you to explore. Think about the way Wikipedia works when you're hopping from Bolshevism to Celestial Mechanics to Dunbar's Number. It's hyperlinking at it's best. You get to actively choose which curiosity trail to follow, rather than defaulting to the algorithmically-filtered ephemeral stream. The garden helps us move away from time-bound streams and into contextual knowledge spaces.
The Allopathic Complex and its Consequences
Non-violence keeps the system working at full speed ahead. What did it get us. Look in the mirror. They want us to be non-violent, so that they can grow fat off the blood they take from us. The only way out is through. Not all of us will make it. Each of us is our own chief executive. You have to decide what you will tolerate.
You and Me Not Dying - Slow Species
At 14, at the end of my patience, I posed an ultimatum to myself: "Do you want to live, or die? Make up your damn mind."
I realize, in retrospect, that I suffered so deeply against my mother's abuse and bitter prophecies because I believed something else—someone else—was possible. The facts of who I was and what I wanted my life to be—what my life would irrepressibly become—glowed irresistibly at the core of me.
We will not give up on one another. We will risk arriving at the clarity of our desires and intentions; risk the unnameable and its gift of loneliness; risk heartbreak. Stopping midway, the complexity of information seems contradictory, overwhelming, and increasing without end. Persisting on the path, contradiction gives way to luminous truths, from which clear actions may arise. We cannot afford to have a little wisdom; we must have a lot of it.
Before we move at the scale of movements and revolutionary change, we must learn to move at the scale of you and me. What you and me need is to pass time together. We need to talk. We need to listen, and share, and learn, and devise a relationship around the mystery of each other. Finding ways to do that in this very moment, as so many constrictions imagined, implanted, and enforced seem to close their jaws around us—this is our most critical task. It is more important than being right, or winning, or scrambling to have all the facts.
Rest and Resets as Revolutionary in Modern Society
Working on her sewing machine, she spoke about the ubiquity of depression and anxiety in urban areas. "In the city, we become disconnected from the earth," she said. "People today are busy and stressed, often trying to fill the void through material consumption. But nothing material can truly fill that void; only you can do that for yourself." Yet, she felt it was time to 出山 (leave the mountain) and possibly return to the city to start a small business focused on sustainability. Her words struck me: "You can't escape; you must face the problems and their roots. Much of the suffering we feel is created by ourselves."
Nomadism sets you apart from life's typical trajectory. While others climb the corporate ladder and nest with partners, I'm confronted by questions like: is travel a crutch?; what am I seeking? My ability to navigate a lifestyle with a degree of freedom and rest comes with inherent privilege. Not everyone can afford to step away from the grind. "Unequal options," said Chua, mean that those with more resources can detach from the system more easily, while those who rely heavily on their jobs face greater risks and pressures. "Wealth and privilege confer the ability to detach from the system as and when one desires," he noted. "The more dependent you are on the system, the harder it is to say 'no' to it."
Perhaps through rest, clarity and calm, we can imagine a world we deserve, and one that is deserving of us.
Long Distance Thinking - Simon Sarris
True things are disclosed slowly. Articulating ideas as simply as possible is attractive, not least because getting people to agree with us is attractive. But we have a tendency to overrate ideas that can be shared easily, with the most apparent advantages. By constant simplifying, we may be lulled into abridging our own ideas a little too much, and sooner or later our audience—or ourselves—might come to expect only these truncated thoughts. What is easy to explain is not necessarily what is best. What is easy to understand is not necessarily what is true.
The cure for over-summary, I think, is something akin to cultivation. States and maturity need good growing conditions and time. The wonder we should concern ourselves with: What else has been hidden by summary? What thoughts must we resist abridging? Those giant sequoias echo a reminder to ask ourselves, what are the unseen things today that could be growing?