Miscellaneous Musings
NN Taleb delineates some features of true wealth. What do you think, is anything missing?
TRUE WEALTH
Worriless sleeping
Clear conscience
Reciprocal gratitude
Absence of envy
Muscle strength
Frequent laughs
No meals alone
No gym classes
Good digestive functions
No meeting rooms
Periodic surprises
Foamy coffee
Crusty bread
Ability to nap
Access to a hammock— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) June 11, 2020
Warning, the quote below has bad language, the misspellings are the authors.
If you focus on them, you’re missing his point. @Aja_Cortes, a fitness bro on Twitter explained what he thinks the problem with conservatives is:
Conservatives lose because they have no sexual or creative energy
None.
Its an impotent movement
Nothing sexy, no Art because conservative “values” are whitebread LARPing & there is nothing to create artistry with
Even the name is peak Loserdom, no adventure, no badasseryThe Left gets protests
they get LAID and fuck afterwards
They get hot and attractive people making statements
They actually CANCEL things and ruin people, they make things happen for what they believe inWhats the “right” do?
“But we have principles!”
Fuckingg NOTHING.The right had DECADES when they actually had cultural power
What did you do?
Build beautiful buildings?
Subsidize arts?
Do ANYTHING that could be considered cool?
Nope. Its a bunch of squares sucking the ghost dick of Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan
SQUARESYou seen the dudes that are Conservative “Youth” leaders?
Do any of them incline bench and look like they FUCK?
Hell no
Its a bunch of pencil necked dweebsI know militant lesbians with more masculine energy and balls
Maybe they might finally lose badly enough that they decide to get HOT and AESTHETIC and develop a vision of the world that isnt a fantasy roleplay and worshipping pussified evanlegical Jesus and saying “patriot” 10,000 timesUntil then, you get defeated. You deserve it.
I could have ripped on them for the unabashed racism that got completely ignored until literally that last 4 years , but that would be shooting a dead horseWatch the ConservaBros cry in my mentions
Same dudes that wear cargo sho rts with 26% bodyfat and sunglasses in their profile Pic and comment “beautiful” under some political Thotianas selfiesDORKS
A list of “Conservative Values”
-Defending the military industrial prison complex
-Writing articles that only old white men read
-Evangelical grifting
-thinking anyone gives a fuck about dead economists
-Pretending racism has never existed ever
-Losing
I want to post my own comments, but the thread is simply a work of art as far as twitter threads go.
Ancient philosophy was characterized by the philosopher’s burden to help individuals and city-states overcome their slavery to the passions through mental and physical exercises designed to strengthen the will’s resolve and aim it in the direction of the good.
To Philosophers like Musonius Rufus, Philo of Alexandria, Epicurus, or Clement of Alexandria, a spiritual exercise was some thought process, physical habit, or specific activity that was designed to aim the practitioner in the appropriate life direction, either by changing bad ideas, removing bad habits, or adding good habits.
Read in this light, the Old Testament is full of such exercises, like memorizing Scripture, reciting Scripture in the morning and evening, designating meal times for prayer, or negative visualization (imagining the loss of everything as in Ecclesiastes). One such exercise I’ve been using is a combination of material from the Old Testament and the Stoics. Solomon recommends memorizing brief sayings of the wise and mulling them over to obtain wisdom, and the Stoics speak highly of this practice as well, though Seneca says it can go too far and recommends making your own maxims as you grow in maturity.
My version of the maxim practice is to just pick four maxims per month to focus your attention. Some could be from Scripture, from a favorite author, or even your own devising to help you measure up to the circumstances that you face.
For this March 2020, I chose:
What maxims would help you this month?
This is a good, brief listen for a big education:
Identity politics are a game that can probably only be eschewed by the people who are going to lose.
Pointing out that identity politics is unfair and unreasonable to the people who play/live by those rules just means that they automatically win.
An example of this would be expecting parent not to prefer their child over other children in parent teacher conferences or school administrative meetings. People side with the group they identify with and maybe they’re obligated to do so (maybe not) absent violations of truth, goodness, and beauty. But it seems that many of the Americans who reject identity politics as tool for political power or ethical reasoning still watch various versions of sports and have deep emotional attachments to those teams. They also tend to show a lot of loyalty to their alma mater.