Sunday, August 04, 2013

Happiness


The greatest happiness comes with the most complete possession of one's faculties. It is in the moments when the mind is most active and the fewest things are forgotten that the most intense joys are experienced. This indeed is one of the best touchstones of happiness. The happiness that requires intoxication of no matter what sort is a spurious and unsatisfying kind. The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties, and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.

~ Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

Sunday, July 07, 2013

Creativity and Discipline

Let me tell you a personal story. My oldest, closest friend is a guy who came to the United States from Latvia when he was fifteen, fleeing from Hitler. He escaped to New York with his parents and went to George Washington High School, which in those days at least was the school for bright Jewish kids in New York City. 

And once he told me that the first thing that stuck him about American schools was the fact that if he got a "C" in a course, nobody cared, but if he came to school three minutes late he was sent to the principal's office--and that generalized. He realized that what it meant is, what's valued here is the ability to work on an assembly line, even if it's an intellectual assembly line. 

The important thing is to be able to obey orders, and to do what you're told, and to be where you're supposed to be, The values are, you're going to be a factory worker somewhere--maybe they'll call it a university--but you're going to be following somebody else's orders, and just doing your work in some prescribed way. And what matters is discipline, not figuring things out for yourself or understanding things that interest you--those are kind of marginal: just make sure you meet the requirements of a factory

~ Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power (p236)

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Control


[Battlestar Galactica : Season 1, Episode 10 - The Hand of God]


Adama : You should take a good look at yourself;  I had to go through the same transition. When you're in the cockpit you're in control. Its hard to give it up.

Thrace :  It would just be a lot easier if I was flying with them.

Adama : All you can do now is wait and hope you didn't make any mistakes.

Thrace : I never wanted this kind of responsibility.

Adama : The cylons never asked us what we wanted. Welcome to the big leagues.