"We all know the elephant in the room' — the topic that everyone knows is there, but no one talks about. But what about the mosquitoes in the room, the tiny things we sense but ignore?"
— Mariana Alessandri, 'The fourth wall' (New Philosopher, #49)
…
I almost didn't post this due to one of the words being misspelled, but I think that's part of the charm.
More people need to spend some time learning about Pragmatism which, by way of analogy, is to 'pragmatism' the way that being Stoic is to being 'stoic'.
…I came across a simpler version of this that not only attributes this to Gandhi himself, but misspelled his name. So I created a version using Gemini.
The original list via Wikipedia:
Seven Social Sins is a list by Frederic Donaldson that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi published in his weekly newspaper Young India on 22 October 1925. Later he gave this same list written on a piece of paper to his grandson, Arun Gandhi, on their final day together shortly before his assassination.
…
One of the advantages and drawbacks of having studied Philosophy, History, Education, and Systems Thinking while having a background in technology is that you realise that everything... is just made up. Not just in a Steve Jobs "everything around you around was made by someone no smarter than you" kind of way, but in a William James "blooming, buzzing confusion" kind of way.
…I'm listening to the audiobook of Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene at the moment, read by Jeremy Northam. I think I've read it before, but thankfully I can't remember the ending.
Greene has some great turns of phrase:
…This article by Justin Garson on the American Philosophical Association's blog is extremely relevant to my life at the moment. A few months ago, shortly before receiving a diagnosis of Overtraining Syndrom from a consultant, my GP prescribed me an SNRI deal with both physical and mental symptoms that I was experiencing. I'm still on it.
…This is a good episode of Philosophy Bites with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. Summary via my LRF as I'm on the go:
Goldstein defines mattering as being deserving of attention, and her key move is that the attention we're most anxious to deserve is our own. That makes us normative, value-seeking creatures by nature, distinct from other animals. She dates the arrival of these existential questions to Jaspers' Axial Age (roughly 800–200 BCE), framing them as a luxury that depends on baseline survival being met.
…
