kmph-commonplace

[kmph-commonplace]

I've been an inveterate reader all my life, and yet I'm writing this book at the time in my life when I have the least faith I've ever had in books, or indeed reading culture in general. (The fact that this sentiment coincides with having become a published author doesn't escape me.) For my sins, I haven't lost faith in the capacity of books to save us, remake us, take us by the scruff and show us who we were, who we are, and who we might become; that conviction has been unkillable in me for too long. But I have in some crucial way lost my faith in our capacity to truly be commensurate to the work that reading asks of us; in our ability to make our reading culture live up to the world we're reading in-and for.

Elaine Castillo, How to Read Now

[kmph-commonplace]

At his best — which is not his only aspect, to be clear — Toby is what a meritocratic system is supposed to produce: a talented person trained and promoted to a role where his expertise is put to good use, paid appropriately but not extravagantly, and left generally content with his elevated but not too elevated place. But his wife is much more in tune with the deeper and darker ethos of meritocracy: the abiding insecurity that comes with being trained for constant competition and then raised to a position where you’re incredibly privileged and yet your social milieu makes you feel you’re running and running just to stay in place.

Ross Douthat, "Fleishman Is in Trouble" and the Angst of the Striving Upper Class (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/opinion/fleishman-meritocracy.html)

[kmph-commonplace]

There’s 2 fish in a barrel - one of them thinks it’s the ocean - the other one knows it’s trapped in a barrel local drunkards offten piss in. Realistically they’re both in the same situation - and the first - dumb fish - arguably has a far greater chance of being what is commonly defined as happier. But the second one - in it’s knowledge of the circumstances which it found itself in - has something far more valuable than ignorant happiness. It knows that the rules she was always told about were supposed to apply to the ocean: a thing, just like success in capitalism, which she might never see. And with this knowledge she can swim with far more purpose an elegance in a barrel than an ignorant one could in a planet of oceans.

Yugopnik, The Socialist guide to surviving in Capitalism (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlP0nvJSshU)

[kmph-commonplace]

And finally there is no guilt in living a good life as long as it is not at the expense of others. As class conscious individuals we shouldn’t feel jealousy toward members of our own class who were a bit luckier, as we risk to alienate them from the cause - and if we end up being the lucky ones, we must strive to never lose the class consciousness which most likely led us to the place in life we are in.

After savings - whatever you have left that you do not need - if possible - donate to socialist projects you believe in. And if you have actual time on your hands - participate in them or create your own. Mutual aid, food donation kitchens, and direct action in general are perfectly lovely places to start.

Yugopnik, The Socialist guide to surviving in Capitalism (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlP0nvJSshU)

[kmph-commonplace]

Distance your personal identity with that of the firm, or it will swallow you up before you know it. All those corporate drones you avoid at parties? Well - believe it or not they used to be real people like you before a brand replaced their soul - and LinkedIn became their guru.

Yugopnik, The Socialist guide to surviving in Capitalism (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlP0nvJSshU)

[kmph-commonplace]

When I ask Mollie if she is hoping for a big win, she gives a short laugh and a dismissive wave of her hand. “In the beginning there was excitement about winning,” she says, “but the more I gambled, the wiser I got about my chances. Wiser, but also weaker, less able to stop. Today when I win— and I do win, from time to time— I just put it back in the machines. The thing people never understand is that I’m not playing to win.” Why, then, does she play? “To keep playing— to stay in that machine zone where nothing else matters.”

Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (as quoted in Jimmy McGee, Pay to Win Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQIHqkudgNY)

[kmph-commonplace]

But I think the primary problem is that occasionally I would open Google News and it would offer me an article from CNN titled Stop What You’re Doing and Watch this Elephant Play with Bubbles. And this is not information or disinformation or fake news, it’s just none of the above. It’s a pure time waster, but obviously it exists because people click on it. It seems like most things on the internet today exist just because people click on them. There is no other purpose.

Alex Fink (from https://publicinfrastructure.org/podcast/alex-fink-otherweb/)

[kmph-commonplace]

My claim here is the converse. If the Stoic says we are fettered to externals, or vice, or emotion, it may be as accurate to say we are fettered to our inexperience. Only the novice is inflated and grasping and fearful; but we are all novices. Life is regrettably short because it does not allow us enough trials to become as wise as we would wish. Stoic philosophy is a compensation—a substitute for time, or simulation of it. Stoicism means to offer the wisdom while skipping the repetition; it tries to get by contemplation some of the lessons, immunities, and other features of character we would acquire naturally if we lived long enough. The “wise man” of the Stoics thus resembles one who has had long experience of life—far longer, perhaps, than anyone is able to have in fact. Stoicism is the philosophy of a thousand trials.

Ward Farnsworth, The Practicing Stoic (excerpt)

[kmph-commonplace]

In the end, Time, the great and universal comforter, gradually composes the weak man to the same degree of tranquillity which a regard to his own dignity and manhood teaches the wise man to assume in the beginning.

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (as quoted in The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth)

[kmph-commonplace]

Photography is something that you apply to things that you're interested in anyway. If your cameras cease to exist, would you still go to the car show or to the national park or talk to artists? If in the middle of a shoot and your camera evaporated, would you still be excited to be there? Would you still have integrity? Would you do it again?

So I'm toying with this idea that it's not photography that we're enjoying. We're using it as an excuse to interact with the world in a very deliberate way, and that's why we love it.

[kmph-commonplace]

Office hours is a solution that comes up. You say, Every day at these times, I’m online, my phone’s on, I’m on Zoom, my door’s open. You can defer half a dozen different quick conversations to these office hours. It makes a big difference, because six little conversations might otherwise be 50 to 60 messages, each of which requires relatively quick turnaround. It could make the difference in how much context shifting is going on.

[kmph-commonplace]

I still can find no better definition for the word art than this: nature, reality, truth; but with a significance, a conception, a character which the artist brings out in it, and to which he gives expression; which he disentangles and makes free and clears up.

Vincent van Gogh at Borinage, December 1878

[kmph-commonplace]

People here are very ignorant and untaught; most of them cannot read, but at the same time they are intelligent and quick in their difficult work, brave and frank, of small stature but square-shouldered with melancholy deep-set eyes. They are handy in many things, and work terribly hard. They have a nervous temperament; I do not mean weak, but very sensitive. They have an innate deeply rooted hatred and a deep mistrust of everybody who would try to domineer over them. With the charcoal-burners one must have a charcoal-burner's character and temperament and no pretentious pride or mastery, or one would never get on with them or gain their confidence.

Vincent van Gogh at Borinage, December 1878

[kmph-commonplace]

When people finish their day and hurry home, my day starts. My diner is open from midnight to seven in the morning. They call it "Midnight Diner". [cut to menu listing "pork miso soup combo, beer, sake, shochu"] That's all I have on my menu. But I make whatever customers request as long as I have the ingredients for it. That's my policy. Do I even have customers? More than you would expect.

Midnight Diner opening narration

[kmph-commonplace]

Victor [an entrepreneur] wants his children to have a better life. He encourages them to spend many years in college. Victor wants his children to become physicians, lawyers, accountants, executives, and so on. But in so encouraging them, Victor essentially discourages his children from becoming entrepreneurs.

― Thomas J. Stanley, The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy

[kmph-commonplace]

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

[kmph-commonplace]

Nonetheless, I (like many others) felt a wrongness in the world, a wrongness that seeped through the cracks of my privileged, insulated childhood. I never fully accepted what I had been offered as normal. Life, I knew, was supposed to be more joyful than this, more real, more meaningful, and the world was supposed to be more beautiful. We were not supposed to hate Mondays and live for the weekends and holidays. We were not supposed to have to raise our hands to be allowed to pee. We were not supposed to be kept indoors on a beautiful day, day after day.

Charles Eisenstein - The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible