MNTS #28
[Week 47/ Year 2023] Montaigne, Cost of Progress, Intelligence, SUN. SSC, Multi-Disciplinary Thinking, Nic Nac
Mainly, Notes To Self - my weekly attempt to compress everything noteworthy I read, watched, listened to, and discovered during the past week.
Reading
The Complete Essays of Montaigne by Michel Montaigne - I’ve been a student of Montaigne’s essays for several years now, but revisiting them for the first since becoming a dad has been an unexpected pleasure. I feel inspired and at the same time, a sense of duty to codify, in a similar manner, some of my thoughts and perspectives to pass on to my girls. To me, Montaigne’s writing is extremely relevant and modern for being written in the mid to late 1500s, and I find myself using his essays as a reference point whenever I’m pondering one of life’s many quandaries. I always find them rather comforting and reassuring.
The Cost of Progress by Jack Raines
…humanity was not prepared to handle the level of agency and optionality created by modern society after evolving for hundreds of thousands of years in more constrained tribal communities. It argues this optionality creates difficulties in navigating life choices and finding depth when maximizing breadth, potentially leading to a no man's land of achieving neither.
Keep The Talent Funnel Wide (Part 2) by David Epstein
I realized that I had a visual intelligence that no one had ever asked me to use.
With her knowledge of the sun, and her conviction that the sun knew her, in the cosmic carnal sense of the word, came over her a feeling of detachment from people, and a certain contempt for human beings altogether. They were so un-elemental, so unsunned. They were so like graveyard worms.
Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by Scott Alexander
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.o
Listening
Re-visiting this gem of a talk by Peter Kaufman and working on a full write-up.
Random
A few weeks back, I mentioned starting an n-of-1 experiment with nicotine pouches (I’ll publish a separate write-up on this in a few weeks. It’s been a fascinating rabbit hole). In my search for a “clean” option, I came across Nic Nac nicotine mints. They are one of the few brands that are transparent about the ingredients they contain Xylitol, Non-Tobacco Nicotine, Food Grade Essential Oil, Silica, and Stearic Acid. I haven’t tried them yet, but will be adding them to the trial roster. More to come on this.
Until next week.
Stay spirited, stay resilient.
Andrew