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A batch of the best highlights from what Jim's read, .
If it is foolish to think that we can carry with us all the good things from the past—from our personal past or that of our culture—while leaving behind all the unwanted baggage, it is a counsel of despair and, I think, another kind of foolishness to think that if we leave behind the errors and miseries of the past, we must also leave behind everything that gave that world its savor. Wisdom lies in discernment, and utopianism and nostalgia alike are ways of abandoning discernment.
Breaking Bread With the Dead
Alan Jacobs
Caring for the goods of a worthwhile domain and cultivating the skill for revealing meaningful distinctions within it are necessary for resisting the technological way of life. But you can’t just decide to care about a domain, any more than you can make a decision about whom to love. How is anyone to discover what is worth caring about?
All Things Shining
Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly
Once again, I repeat: we are not our thoughts. We are the awareness the thoughts are arising to and within. Most thoughts don’t matter, and some thoughts really don’t matter. Every moment we invest in our unwanted thoughts, every ounce of energy we put into trying to disprove them, is a morsel of time and energy wasted. We are validating and strengthening what’s insignificant—a strange, albeit noisy blip in a flawed system.
Can't Stop Thinking
Colier, Nancy
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