THE VALUE OF CIVILIZATION
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr:
… the chief worth of civilization is just that it makes the means of living more complex; that it calls for great and combined intellectual efforts, instead of simple, uncoordinated ones, in order that the crowd may be fed and clothed and housed and moved from place to place.
LIVING AN ENTIRELY PRIVATE LIFE IS A DEPRIVATION
Hannah Arendt:
To live an entirely private life means above all to be deprived of things essential to a truly human life: to be deprived of the reality that comes from being seen and heard by others, to be deprived of an ‘objective’ relationship with them that comes from being related to and separated from them through the intermediary of a common world of things, to be deprived of the possibility of achieving something more permanent than life itself.
OF A CERTAIN AGE …
Ian McEwan:
In your mid-thirties you could begin to ask what kind of person you were.
REASON, PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD, IS PUBLIC AND SHARABLE
Cristine Korsgaard:
…if our social nature is deep, in the sense that it is the nature of our reasons that they are public and shareable, then justifications of morality can and should appeal to it.
PURPOSE VS GOALS
I’m thinking today about the relationship between one’s sense of purpose in life and the goals one might set in life.
Read moreCHATGPT: POINT AND COUNTER-POINT, ETC
First prompt: write a blog post in the voice of George Orwell explaining why climate change is a problem.
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