Join 📚 Roger's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what roger's read, .
The capture of the unnamed Englishman coincided with the end of Mongol penetration into Europe. They had followed the grass steppes across central Asia, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Hungary; but where the pastures ended, the Mongols stopped. With five horses per warrior, they needed that pasture to function. Their marked advantages of speed, mobility, and surprise were all lost when they had to pick their way through forests, rivers, and plowed fields with crops and ditches, hedges, and wooden fences. The soft furrows of the peasant’s field offered an insecure foothold for the horses. The place where fields began also marked the transition from the dry steppe to the humid climate of the coastal zones, where the dampness caused the Mongol bows to lose strength and accuracy.
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Jack Weatherford
TM is not an acquired skill that you will get “better” at after weeks or months of practice. You master it in a few hours over a few days, and then it’s yours for the rest of your life. As I mentioned earlier, TM is practiced for twenty minutes, twice a day, sitting up comfortably in a chair (or on your bed or wherever you can sit up comfortably), with your eyes closed. It can be practiced in the privacy of your home but can be done just as easily on a train or airplane or in a car (as long as someone else is driving!). It is a silent technique, so you are not going to disturb anyone while you meditate. If you feel an itch, by all means scratch it. I once taught a record company executive, and when I said he could move during his meditation, his eyes actually welled up with tears of relief. For decades, he had worked hard trying to master meditation techniques that required concentration and control of the mind and body. He always felt like a failure if he had too many thoughts or needed to scratch an itch or move his leg to get more comfortable. Not only that, but should you feel sleepy at any time during the meditation, you don’t need to fight it. It’s fine. If you do fall asleep because you’re tired, it will be usually for a minute or two, and then you’ll awaken rested and refreshed and continue with your practice. It just means your body needed the extra deep rest. Such moments are part of the meditation.
Strength in Stillness
Bob Roth
RESPONSIVE LISTENING There’s a body of scientific literature on responsive listening, but I came to understand it in a personal way through my work. In acting, this kind of relating is fundamental. You don’t say your next line simply because it’s in the script. You say it because the other person has behaved in a way that makes you say it. Relating to them allows them to have an effect on you—to change you, in way. And that’s why you respond the way you do. For an actor, it’s the difference between planning how you’re going to behave, which looks like acting, and finding your performance in the other person’s eyes, which makes you respond to one another—and which looks like life. But, with all that behind me, here I was supposedly in conversation with the solar panel scientist, and I wasn’t relating to him. Slowly, it was beginning to dawn on me: It’s not just in acting that genuine relating has to take place—real conversation can’t happen if listening is just my waiting for you to finish talking. LISTENING AND WILLING TO BE CHANGED I so loved this idea—that on the stage the other actor has to be able to affect you if a scene is to take place—that I came to the conclusion that, even in life, unless I’m responding with my whole self—unless, in fact, I’m willing to be changed by you—I’m probably not really listening. But if I do listen—openly, naïvely, and innocently—there’s a chance, possibly the only chance, that a true dialogue and real communication will take place between us. This was the first step in understanding what had to take place before doctors (and dentists) could talk with their patients; before people in business could relate to their customers, parents could advise their children, and couples could work together—with far fewer misunderstandings and hard feelings. At first, though, I was concentrating on helping scientists get their story out in the most human-sounding way. Once I began to relearn listening as a human interaction, and not just an acting technique, I could go into each interview for Scientific American Frontiers without a set of questions. It wasn’t really an interview anymore. It was a conversation. After a while, I saw that I was having trouble talking with them whenever I thought I knew more than I really did about their work. I was boxing in the scientists with questions that were based on false assumptions. I took a bold step and stopped reading the scientists’ research papers before I met with them. I would come in armed only with curiosity and my own natural ignorance. I was learning the value of bringing my ignorance to the surface. The
If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
Alan Alda
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise