Category Archives: Philosophy

"Aphorisms are literature’s hand luggage. Light and compact, they fit easily into the overhead compartment of your brain and contain everything you need to get through a rough day at the office or a dark night of the soul." – A loveletter to aphorisms, in the IHT

I love quotes and proverbs. (But maybe that’s a sign I’m an alpha male CEO.) Currently my favorite quotes are scattered among my many blog posts, del.icio.us "quotes" tag, and an offline document. I need to consolidate. In the meantime, here’s another set of quotes on the meaning of life from the How to Live blog:

"It is true that the unexamined life is not worth living, but it is equally true that the overexamined life is also not worth living."- John P. Avlon

"The sunrise and sunsets in life are sublime, and every night we see that it is darkest just before the dawn, but on a deeper level we know that the sun never actually goes down – it’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning around. Nature is nudging us, offering fresh evidence for hope and faith, love, and persistence against all appearances." – John P. Avlon

"Choose the meaning of life from one of the four listed below:
1. Life has no intrinsic meaning beyond what we attribute to it. Our task is to infuse our lives with whatever meaning will ensure we stay with it to the end.
2. The meaning of life is way beyond our grasp. Naturally, we do the best to grasp it, but it essentially ungraspable. Our life is a continual process of seeking that meaning, and living in the heart of that seeking. When we stop seeking we have either given up on it or decided that we have it figured out. In either case we are wrong, and life begins to die from there.
3. Life means love. Our lives are treasure hunts for love. When you find the treasure, you find yourself; you are love, you are life, you live.
4. Life is an experiment. Can we bear to live without meaning? If we can live without meaning, we will be destroyed. If we cannot live without meaning, we will destroy ourselves. If we find meaning, we will fight to live. If enough people find enough meaning, humankind will live. If a critical mass does not find meaning soon enough, the experiment will be complete, and humankind will be gone." – Wend Stewart

"No one ever finds the meaning of life – they simply become suitably satisfied by love, children, or career, and these become the outcomes of the quest and human fulfillment of purpose… If you are ever consistently hounded by longings to uncover the meaning of life, it’s you telling yourself that something is missing in your existence. Stop reading books about the subject – that’s the equivalent of reading romance books when you’re lonely. Get out and open yourself up to new experiences. You’re being set up for an internal battle with your own desire for security." – Peter Davison

"Give more than you take. Do your best to leave every situation better than you found it. Seek beauty in all its forms. Chase dreams. Watch sunsets. Endeavor to use more than 10 percent of your brain. Don’t stifle your deep-from-the-gut, cleansing laughter. Take a moment to ponder the enormity of the universe, then admit to yourself that you can’t possibly be the center. Breathe deeply. Swim into the dark water. Let yourself cry when your body tells you to. Love more. Delight in silliness. Don’t be bitter. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive." – Katy Rhodes

"Enjoy your life to the fullest, do what you truly love to do, and be with those you love as much as possible." – David Seaman

Patri Friedman reminds us why it’s important to own up to our failures or missteps, and makes the interesting connection between accepting blame and holding hope:

After the smoke clears, we begin to apportion blame.  We have a natural tendency to try to shift the blame onto others, avoiding guilt and responsibility for errors.  But there are some obvious problems with this strategy.

Errors are valuable training instances, and our bias against accepting blame reduces the number available.  If we could externally shift blame while internally maintaining a rational apportionment, we would not be reducing our training data, but people don’t work like that.  To be believable, our efforts to shift blame must be sincere, and so our brain engages in self-deception rather than partitioning. The result will then be to tend to underestimate the dangers of our action (and inaction) and underestimate the degree to which we can prevent bad outcomes by acting differently.

It is this latter point which gives the connection between blame and hope.  For to avoid blame is to avoid responsibility, and to avoid responsibility is to disempower oneself.  To say "I was not to blame for what happened" is to say "I could not have prevented it", which is to say "In future situations like that, I will be helpless".

So let us instead be honest about how we could have acted differently, even when things turn out craptacularly.  We can trick our minds into doing this by focusing on the positive, forward-looking nature of responsibility: thinking about how we might do better in the future, rather than the negative-sum fight to divide the anti-spoils of the past.  And reminding ourselves that some bitter blame is a small price to pay to hold onto hope.

Henry Abbott at ESPN.com links to Tim Weiner’s NYT piece over the weekend on intelligence operations and excerpts this rule of information from Colin Powell:

The principles of how to arrive at good intelligence estimates are not new. Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said last month that he learned them 17 years ago, while serving under Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

" ‘Look, I have got a rule,’ " he said General Powell told him. " ‘As an intelligence officer, your responsibility is to tell me what you know. Tell me what you don’t know. Then you’re allowed to tell me what you think. But you always keep those three separated.’ "

Three categories: what you know, what you don’t know, and what you think. A good rule of thumb for categorizing information.

(hat tip to CYizzle for the pointer)

Most of my Asian friends in school had parents who put an extraordinary amount of stress on them to achieve academically. As one of my Chinese-American friends put it, “My mom is your typical psycho Asian parent — tons of pressure, enormous expectations for straight A’s.”

The other day I was wondering how these Asian children — now in their teens — might turn out as adults. And how any child who has ultra strict parents will fare.

My sense is that children who must perform under the whip in their childhood go on to hit a lot of singles and doubles in life, to use baseball terminology, but rarely hit a home run. In other words, intense childhood pressure for achievement produces solid performers in life, but rarely greatness.

What overbearing parenting ensures is that your kid probably won’t devolve into drug use or be a complete fuck-up. They’ll follow rules, respond to basic rewards and punishments, go through the formal schooling system. Their 11pm curfew and “no dating” restriction might make them socially miserable in high school, but they’ll probably study more, go to a good college, and enter the real world with discipline and an ability to deliver under pressure, both mighty important skills. A lot of these kids probably go on to be really good lawyers, doctors, or teachers.

Then there are the parents who offer a longer leash. This is a minority of parents. These parents emphasize independence: they’re fine letting Johnny run around outside without supervision, or sit in his room by himself. They rarely exact severe punishments (grounded for three weeks!) or bubbly rewards ($500 if you get straight A’s!). Come adolescence, they tell their kids it’s time they made their own choices.

The kids I know who are products of the long leash usually fall into two camps: they’re the drug addicts (or whatever) or they’re the brilliant, creative, and relaxed world-changers.

To steal from our earlier discussion of hedgehogs vs. foxes in business, you might say that the “overbearing parenting style” has a high expected value but low variance, whereas the “hands-off independent style” has extreme outcomes on either end of the distribution curve.

So, I can’t say I blame the stereotypical Asian parenting style, or any parent who chooses to be a tyrant until their kid is age 21. On average, your kid will do better. But he probably won’t be a legendary figure in history. Do you agree?

(hat tip to Chris Yeh for helping brainstorm this idea)