Join Favorite Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Stefan's read, .
The goals were power and wealth; the cultural capital that could secure those goals was courtly elegance or refinement (miyabi). The more elegant the person, the more desirable. An expression of that courtly elegance was an enhanced sensitivity called aware, later commonly expressed more fully as mono no aware. Deriving from a common exclamation meaning “ah!,” it signals coming across something striking. Mixed with attentiveness to the ephemeral, aware transformed the traditional Buddhist resignation toward impermanence into an aesthetic of poignancy. The cherry blossoms, for example, are all the more stunning because they bloom for such a short time.
Engaging Japanese Philosophy – A Short History
Thomas P. Kasulis
“If the news is fake, imagine history.” This pithy tweet reverses Orwell, because he who is acknowledged to be faking the present can no longer distort the past. That is, once enough people see that the establishment has been lying about today’s events, they naturally begin to think the establishment might have been lying about yesterday’s news as well.
The Network State
Balaji Srinivasan
The universe had once been bright, too. For a short time after the big bang, all matter existed in the form of light, and only after the universe turned to burnt ash did heavier elements precipitate out of the darkness and form planets and life. Darkness was the mother of life and of civilization.
The Dark Forest
Cixin Liu
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise