“Is ‘aggression’ about thought, emotion, or something done with muscles?”
— Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Category: Commonplace
Quotes, art, questions, videos, podcasts, music, and whatever else inspires.
“Can you ever separate doing good from the expectation of reciprocity, public acclaim, self-esteem, or the promise of paradise?”
— Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Susan Sontag on America
Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. ‘Our country is strong,’ we are told again and again. I for one don’t find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that’s not all America has to be.”
— Susan Sontag (via Literary Hub)
“The point of ‘doing nothing’ is to clean up our inner lives. There is so much that happens to us every day, so many excitements, regrets, suggestions and emotions that we should—if we are living consciously—spend at least an hour a day processing events. Most of us manage—at best—a few minutes—and thereby let the marrow of life escape us. We do so not because we are forgetful or bad, but because our societies protect us from our responsibilities to ourselves through their cult of activity. We are granted every excuse not to undertake the truly difficult labour of leading more conscious, more searching and more intensely felt lives.
The next time we feel extremely lazy, we should imagine that perhaps a deep part of us is preparing to give birth to a big thought. As with a pregnancy, there is no point hurrying the process. We need to lie still and let the idea gestate—sure that it may one day prove its worth. We may need to risk being accused of gross laziness in order one day to put in motion projects and initiatives we can feel proud of. ”
What if we measured true success not by the amount of money you have but by the amount of human energy you unlock, the amount of potential you enable? If that were our metric, our world would be a different place.”
— Jacqueline Novogratz (via swissmiss)
Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius: Volume 1
None of us is pure, and purity is a dreary pursuit left to Puritans.”
— Rebecca Solnit, Mysteries of Thoreau, Unsolved (via Austin Kleon)
“In the painting she stares out unflinchingly against a backdrop of luxuriant foliage. In the centre of her forehead, just above the two dark bushy eyebrows, is a perfectly circular round hole, within which is a rural landscape dominated by a skull and crossbones.
The face is neither frightened nor filled with despair; it is calm. She seems to say that if death and suffering can be accepted as a natural part of life then fulfilment is possible. It is one of her many self-portraits that relentlessly lay bare her pre-occupations with death and her own physical fragility.
It demonstrates her fearlessness in confronting what lies at the centre of existence: death.
By putting death in the place of the third eye, the chakra, she makes it the source of all wisdom.”
Lisa Marie Blair 