In The Narcissistic Personality of Our Time, I discussed the trade-off of modernity, which recapped the ideas of A Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch. The belief of modern society, and perhaps even more so in the future, with the rise of techno-utopianism, is the belief that a combination of multiple autophile behaviors will be … Read more
The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is often cited as one of the best books on investment, most notably by Warren Buffet. Graham lays the foundation for laymen by giving a sound approach to investment, written with simple language that is easy (albeit dated) to understand. You are presented with Graham’s personal investment philosophy and … Read more
In Essays and Aphorisms, Arthur Schopenhauer makes an interesting remark about the pitfalls of reading too much. He refers to Alexander Pope’s poem. Forever reading, never to be read. Alexander Pope When you read the thoughts of others, you are allowing their flow of thoughts to steer you in one direction or another, even if … Read more
Ivan the Fool is a short parable by Leo Tolstoy first published in 1886. It presents Tolstoy’s philosophical critique of militarism and commercialism. Ivan belongs to a peasant family. He has two brothers. One of his brothers is a soldier, the other is a fat merchant. Ivan is the story’s hero; he is called a … Read more
Altered Traits by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson takes a scientific look at the practice of meditation. From the start, we are assured that the authors are not interested in giving us a sales pitch about meditation. They acknowledge that many hucksters try to make money by promoting meditation in a dishonest way, promising benefits … Read more
The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch was published in 1979. Lasch argues that the “me generation” that Tom Wolfe previously celebrated, was in fact, dysfunctional, empty, and worthy of contempt. He bases his argument on Sigmund Freud’s insights, who wrote an important paper on the subject called, On Narcissism. At first, Lasch points out … Read more
Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious Author(s): Gerd Gigerenzer First published: 2007 Gut feelings are the result of unconscious mental processes—processes that apply rules of thumb that we’ve derived from our environment and prior experiences. But gut feelings are not things to run away from, they lead to good practical decisions, and underlie the … Read more
It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of — namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant … Read more
Should you become a specialist or a generalist? In a previous post, I argued that unless you were a genius or a polymath like Leonardo Da Vinci, you should specialize. If you are normal, it will take you a long time to become good enough at something to be able to innovate or add value … Read more
In the last few decades, the possibility of downloading our thoughts into a computer has been discussed. And just as with the internet, the first people who talked about mind uploading were small in number, and eccentric in character. But now, the idea of human-machine intelligence has entered into the mainstream. Ray Kurzweil predicts that … Read more