Here’s an interview with Douglas Murray about Roger Scruton and a new edition of Scruton’s Confessions of a Heretic…
Tag: Sovereign Individual
Nicholas Bate suggests seven things to choose. What else could you possibly need?
(though I might add forests)…
5. Creativity
6. Music
7. Mountains & Coast
Image: Andrew Munro
You cannot hope to be a scholar. But what you can do is to curb arrogance; what you can do is to rise above pleasures and pains; you can be superior to the lure of popularity; you can keep your temper with the foolish and ungrateful, yes, even care for them.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (8.8)
Photo by Gary Ellis on Unsplash
A salient reminder of where to focus…
- Your career. What are you doing this week to make it sustainable, enjoyable and still viable in 2 years from now?
- Your wellness. How much are you simply moving? What’s the quality of your nutrition? Sleeping sufficient? Taking some time out?
- …
Then, possibly, read Nicholas’ debut novel, Meet Molly. More here.
Photo by Anastasia Petrova on Unsplash
Kurt at Cultural Offering helps us understand why we need a home office…
Don’t you pay bills? Do you budget? Plan things to do around the house? Do you have papers scattered in drawers and cabinets?
You know you need one. The next questions are music and desk.
Photo by Steven Neumann on Unsplash.
Is the anti-obesity drug a breakthrough or a breakdown?
Matthew Syed in yesterday’s Sunday Times…
But after the flicker of delight, I felt a worm of disquiet. For I can’t help thinking that many obese people could lose weight by eating less and exercising more. They don’t have a medical condition; they lack resolve. I don’t mean those with serious thyroid or other conditions — I am talking about people who can’t manage to do what they know, deep inside, is in their best interests.
For what does it do to a person to subcontract a matter of volition to a pharmacological intervention, thus bypassing the will? What does it do to our sense of agency, perhaps our sense of self? These consequences may not show up in the side-effects listed in a clinical trial — but they are serious, nonetheless.
There’s also an interesting parallel from the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Photo by Michael Payne on Unsplash
Ground down by lockdown? You could look at this as the ultimate Stoic test and attempt to live by the maxim:
“It isn’t the things themselves that disturb people, but the judgements that they form about them.”
In other words, like it or not, how we respond to things we can’t control is a choice. Nicholas Bate, as ever, has wise and pithy words, here and here and here…
Covid Career Goals, 7
1. To be measured by the value you create not just the time you put in.
…
5. To be constantly learning. Especially through mistakes.
Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash
Kurt Harden at Cultural Offering has Anton Chekhov’s eight qualities of cultured people…
They have no shallow vanity. They do not care for such false diamonds as knowing celebrities, shaking hands with …
Well worth studying and cultivating.
Give your heart to the trade you have learnt, and draw refreshment from it. Let the rest of your days be spent as one who has wholeheartedly committed his all to the gods, and is thenceforth no man’s master or slave.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (4.31)
I could retreat here.
The Contemporist.com highlights this writer’s studio that’s also home to a 1,700 volume poetry library, designed by architect Eric J. Smith.
Photography by Durston Saylo | Design: Eric J. Smith Architect