Tell me what it’s like to live without
curiosity, without awe.
Solomon laid out this conundrum succinctly Ecclesiastes 5:10 - "A lover of silver will never be satisfied with silver, nor a lover of wealth with income. This too is futility."
"A few years ago, I saw a cartoon of a man on his deathbed saying, “I wish I’d bought more crap.” It has always amazed me that many wealthy people keep working to increase their wealth, amassing far more money than they could possibly spend or even usefully bequeath. One day I asked a wealthy friend why this is so. Many people who have gotten rich know how to measure their self-worth only in pecuniary terms, he explained, so they stay on the hamster wheel, year after year. They believe that at some point, they will finally accumulate enough to feel truly successful, happy, and therefore ready to die.
Lyrical Bohemians:
In order to be born, you needed:
- 2 parents
- 4 grandparents
- 8 great-grandparents
- 16 second great-grandparents
- 32 third great-grandparents
- 64 fourth great-grandparents
- 128 fifth great-grandparents
- 256 sixth great-grandparents
- 512 seventh great-grandparents
- 1,024 eighth great-grandparents
- 2,048 ninth great-grandparents
For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total sum of 4,094 ancestors over the last 400 years.
Think for a moment – How many struggles? How many battles? How many difficulties? How much sadness? How much happiness? How many love stories? How many expressions of hope for the future? – did your ancestors have to undergo for you to exist in this present moment…
The great Roger Scruton would have been 80 this past February 27th, and to commemorate the event, Jash Dolani, a poster on X, put up a list of 11 Scruton quotes, which I repost below:
1. Scruton on the fundamental right-wing impulse: “Conservatism starts from the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”
2. The hypocrisy of liberals: “Liberty is not the same thing as equality, and that those who call themselves liberals are far more interested in equalizing than in liberating their fellows.”
3. Scruton on when to ignore a writer: “A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t. Deconstruction deconstructs itself, and disappears up its own behind, leaving only a disembodied smile and a faint smell of sulphur.”
Beyond the Culture of Repudiation
“This Mozilla AI Intersections Database searchable AI database maps intersections between the key social justice and human rights areas of our time and documented AI impacts and their manifestations in society.
Further, the database catalogs civil society organizations, social movement actors, researchers, and other entities that are either actively doing work at these intersections, or are well suited for engagement on these issues via partnerships.”
