Quantität: Das Buch hat etwa 1 Zitation pro Seite und eine ausführliche Bibliografie im Anhang.
Qualität: Auf den ersten Blick würde ich sagen solide. Einige spannende Studien habe ich etwas näher angeschaut und fand ich gut. Habe aber jetzt bei weitem nicht gewissenhaft genug geschaut, um ein Urteil fällen zu können. Teilweise wurden Behauptungen auch nicht mit Studien unterfüttert. Das ist mir 2x aufgefallen, als ich für eine These im Anhang geschaut habe und nichts gefunden habe. Im Text verschwinden die Studienergebnisse. Der ist, wie gesagt, sehr anekdotisch gehalten und liest sich nicht wissenschaftlich, sondern wir eine Aneinandereihung von Patienten-Schicksalen mit ein paar Schaubildern.
Hallo Leute! Falls euch irgendwas davon besonders interessiert, meldet euch. Ich schreibe die Tage wieder einen Jahresrückblick für die Lesenotizen und kann bei Wünschen gesondert auf bestimmte Aspekte eingehen. Ansonsten werde ich wie letztes Jahr die Highlights besprechen.
Bis dahin: Frohe Weihnachten
Danke für Deine Lesenotizen - diese bereichern das Forum ungemein.
TCM von Pélissier und Alte Sorten von Arenz.
SUM: Forty Tales ist unglaublich gut und sollte jeder mal lesen (keine Angst, ist sehr kompakt - aber dafür geht es tief...).
Ich finde ja, dass du mehr aus deinen Notizen machen solltest. Einen ZK hast du hoffentlich (HAST DU DOCH ODER..........???!!?!?!?!??!). Falls du Hilfe brauchst, schreib mich an und dann sprechen wir das durch.
Wieso hast du The Picture of Dorian Gray eigentlich abgebrochen? Habe das Buch auch noch hier rumliegen und wollte es demnächst mal lesen.
Ansonsten gerne noch was zu House of the Dragon. Attack on Titan würde mich auch interessieren, ist aber schon ewig her als ich das zuletzt gesehen habe...
@Johannes machst du eigentlich zu jedem Autor/ Interviewgast eine Art von Biografie?
Mir ist bei meinen eigenen Notizen aufgefallen, dass es Vorteile hätte so etwas anzulegen. Weil für mich hilft eine kurze Biografie einmal die Erfahrungen der Person einzuordnen und auch die Qualität der Informationen einzuordnen (z.B. eine Person mit akademischer Ausbildung in einem Gebiet auf dem sie dann zusätzlich ein Sport Team für 2 Jahre in dem Bereich betreut hat, würde für mich erstmal eine höhere Glaubwürdigkeit genießen, als ein Quereinsteiger der nur in seinem direktem Umfeld seine Expertise aufgebaut hat.
Wenn er ein Westeuropäer ist, dessen Familie Ärzte in verschiedenen Bereiche hat, ein Studium der TCM in Australien absolvierte, würde ich ihm eine gewisse Weltoffenheit in seinem Fachbereich unterstellen (oder das er zumindest zwei größere Bereiche auf dem Schirm hat)..
Desweiteren habe ich mich gefragt, ob du so eine Übersicht hast, welche Personen, in welchem Bereich zum empfehlen sind?
Z.B. Peterson für Psychologie, Dan John für Kettlebell und Olympic Weightlifiting)?
Hier sehe ich den Vorteil, das man für ein Thema gezielter/ bessere Ressourcen raussuchen kann.
@Sascha vlt. auch interessant für den Zettelkasten, falls es noch nicht integriert/ berücksichtigt wurde.
@Sascha vlt. auch interessant für den Zettelkasten, falls es noch nicht integriert/ berücksichtigt wurde.
Interessant. Das geht bei wissenschaftlicher Arbeit automatisch, weil nach ein paar Tagen Bearbeitung eines Themas immer wieder die gleichen Namen auftauchen. Aber die Idee ist gut. Kommst in die Danksagungen, wenn ich das benutze.
@Sascha vlt. auch interessant für den Zettelkasten, falls es noch nicht integriert/ berücksichtigt wurde.
Interessant. Das geht bei wissenschaftlicher Arbeit automatisch, weil nach ein paar Tagen Bearbeitung eines Themas immer wieder die gleichen Namen auftauchen. Aber die Idee ist gut. Kommst in die Danksagungen, wenn ich das benutze.
Yes, vlt. ins Buch geschafft .
Dieser übegeordnete Zettel mit welche Person für welchen Themenbereich sehe ich auch als wichtiger an, weil du damit eine Quelle hast um Zeit bei den Recherchen zu sparen (oder im schlimmsten Falle tauchen deine für gute befunden Quellen gar nicht bei der Recherche auf).
Wie fertigst du eigentlich deine Notizen an? Wird das Buch 1x gelesen und nebenbei schon die Notizen gemacht? Oder 2x gelesen (erster Durchgang: markieren relevanter Stellen/Informationen; 2.Durchgang: Verarbeiten nur dieser Stellen)? Oder hast du da gar eine andere Methode?
A “wild problem”: a big decision where the right path isn’t obvious, where the pleasure and pain from choosing one path over another are ultimately hidden from us, where the path we choose defines who we are and who we might become.
Everything has a price — everything involves giving up something to have something else.
We have embraced the idea that measuring — collecting data — and improving the process that produces the measurement, and using those measurements to get stronger, more productive, and healthier, is the road to a better life.
Through most of human history, authority and tradition — the kings who ruled us, our parents, the religion we were born into, the culture surrounding us — tamed the wild problems we faced. (S.4)
Paths to success don’t replicate. (S.5)
What was once destiny is now a decision. (S.5)
By focusing on what you know about and can imagine, you’re ignoring the full range of choices open to you. (S.6)
Instead of spending more time trying to make the right decision, I show you that often there is no right decision in the way we usually think of the term. (S.7)
Decide in advance the top six attributes that are important to the job, and assign each candidate a score from 1 to 5 on each attribute (S.16)
We are always searching for a formula, a calculation that will remove the uncertainty. (S.19)
The rationality of a cost-benefit list of expected well-being from the decisions we make in the face of wild problems is actually an illusion. (S.20)
When Darwin was trying to decide whether to marry, the information he really wanted was how his life would turn out if he decided to marry versus how it would turn out as a single man. (S.21)
L.A. Paul uses the choice to become a vampire as a metaphor for the big decisions that are the focus of this book. (S.25)
And the only way to get that data is to take the leap of faith (or in this case, anti-faith, maybe) into Vampire World. Once you’ve made the leap and find you don’t care for an all-liquid , heavy-on-the-hemoglobin diet, you can’t go back. One of the weirdest parts of the decision, as Paul points out, is that once you become a vampire, what you like and what you dislike change. Which “you” should you consider when deciding what’s best for you? The current you or the you you will become? (S.26)
Many decisions involve burning bridges, crossing into a new experience that will change you in ways you can’t imagine, including what you care about and what brings you joy or sorrow. (S.26)
“I had entered into an alternate and strange world: a world predicated by our children. I wondered what exactly I had cared about so much before I had them. ” (S.26)
“Making the decision to have a child — it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” (S.34)
Would you want to be part of that spectacle, knowing that it can fill you with light you’ll never otherwise see but that it also can break your heart and leave you in tears? (S.37)
You should indeed make that list of costs and benefits, but not for the purpose of assessing them rationally. Rather, he argues, make the list in order to figure out what you’re “really after.” And by that he means where your heart lies. (S.43)
Normal human beings have trouble making decisions, and when we do, we often will come up with reasons that are merely an after-the-fact narrative — something we tell ourselves and others to justify what we’ve done or plan to do. (S.48)
Bentham argued that human beings care about two things — pleasure and pain. If you have to make a decision, consider each choice and see which produces the most pleasure relative to pain. (S.49)
The economist’s view of life is that your goal is to accumulate the greatest amount of satisfaction given the constraints of income and time. (S.51)
Human beings care about more than the day-to-day pleasures and pains of daily existence. We want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. We aspire. We want to matter. These overarching sensations — the texture of our lives above and beyond what we call happiness or everyday pleasure — define who we are and how we see ourselves. These longings are at the heart of a life well lived. (S.51)
A life well lived is something more than a pleasant life. The Greeks called the condition of a life well lived eudaemonia. That word is sometimes translated as happiness or contentment. Those words fall short of capturing eudaemonia. “Flourishing” is a better translation and the word I will use here. Something flourishes by becoming something beautiful and worthy of admiration. That means more than simply accumulating pleasures and avoiding pain. Flourishing includes living and acting with integrity, virtue, purpose, meaning, dignity, and autonomy — aspects of life that are not just difficult to quantify but that you might put front and center, regardless of the cost. (S.52)
The parts of our well-being related to flourishing persist and overlay our daily experiences. (S.57)
Our essence is not easily compared to our day-to-day feelings of pleasure and pain. That’s because who I am in my essence lies above and beyond whatever I feel today and tomorrow. Purpose , meaning , dignity , being a spouse or parent — these aspects of our lives aren’t just pleasant or unpleasant. They define us and suffuse all of our days, not just this one or that one. (S.58)
Adding up the costs and benefits is the wrong way to think about how to live. Flourishing is something subtler that overarches our day-to-day pleasures and pains. The part of existence I am calling flourishing both transcends and elevates our day-to-day experience.
The ideal of a spiritual practice is for it to transcend the time you spend meditating or in religious devotion. It should transform you in some way and change not just what you feel but who you are. And who you are, in turn, affects how you treat others and move through the world. (S.64)
With wild problems, your choices often produce a state of being that suffuses your days in good ways and bad. Thinking you can do a cost-benefit analysis of this transformation is an illusion. (S.64)
Pain, especially when it’s in service of an ideal, can be a source of meaning. (S.65)
Being a spouse transcends and elevates my daily experience. (S.72)
It was anxiety about his new self- narrative — the way he would see himself, Harvard professor — relative to his old one, Stanford professor. (S.78)
An alternative is to value friendship independently of how rewarding it is, as an essential part of your being. (S.79)
The importance of flourishing is not just harder to remember than the pleasures and pains of our daily lives. It’s more than just something you’ll enjoy down the road. It’s harder to conceptualize before you’ve experienced it. (S.86)
“Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.” By “loved,” he meant not just cared about but praised, appreciated, admired, and respected. We want to matter. And by “lovely,” Smith meant worthy of praise, appreciation, admiration, and respect . (S.86)
This is a problem that runs through all of our biggest decisions — we have multiple options. Which one is the best one? Which one is the best one if I want to flourish? (S.91)
With wild problems, the quest for the best is a mistake, whether it’s the quest for the best career, the best place to go to college, the best spouse, the best anything. (S.97)
Not be seduced by the precision of the measurement. (S.100)
I’m not encouraging you to settle; I’m telling you that you have to settle. The best spouse/partner/career/city doesn’t exist and it’s not just because they’re hard to find. It’s not a meaningful concept. What some people call “settling” is simply realizing that it is time to make a decision and there is no reason to think there is a better option. That’s not settling. That’s deciding. (S.100)
Marriage is a case where the best is truly the enemy of the good enough. (S.101)
His view was that the power of eHarmony’s algorithm that purported to find you a good or even the best match available using responses to its questionnaire was not the key to its success. It was much simpler than that. The success was due to matching people who were serious about getting married. (S.102)
If you’re eager to get married, try to date people who are serious about marriage. (S.102)
In modern times, we typically look for love and try to imagine who we’ll be the most happy with. But what about flourishing? (S.103)
Beyond the standard tourist highlights, you would like to spend time just walking without an explicit destination in mind, being what is called a flaneur, wandering not aimlessly, but thoughtfully, appreciating the morning light on the walls of the ruins of the Colosseum, standing on a bridge spanning the Tiber as a rower passes below you, watching the sunset from the Spanish Steps, just taking Rome in and being grateful for the chance to see it. (S.103)
Chesterton’s Fence: When you come across something that doesn’t make sense to you — a fence in the middle of nowhere with no apparent purpose — you might be tempted to tear it down. Before you do, you should try to find out why it’s there — it may have a cause or purpose that isn’t obvious. (S.107)
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. (S.115)
We have a choice in how we perceive and frame our daily experiences. One choice is to see ourselves as fundamentally atomistic, heroic, and existentially lonely. The other is to see ourselves as connected and belonging to something, with that belonging at the center of the experience. (S.125)
How would you live differently if you saw yourself as part of an ensemble rather than the main character? (S.125)
It’s better to discover what you want to say through the process of conversation and not a preplanned script. (S.126)
Rather than see your friends and family as objects to serve your goals and increase your utility, see them as partners you commit to with no agenda as to what might emerge from interacting with them. (S.127)
Sacks said that marriage turns love into loyalty. (S.130)
You can build a habit of partnership and turn a sacrifice into a satisfying habit. (S.130)
In the choir of life, don’t be a diva. Lower your voice and revel in the harmony. On the dance floor of life, make room for the other dancers and let your partner shine. Try to be aware of your natural impulse to ask, what’s in it for me, and make room instead for what the people around you need for the journey we’re all in together. (S.131)
Narrow utilitarianism is often in tension with some higher principle related to flourishing. (S.133)
Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” (S.141)
When it comes to decisions when your essence is on the line, don’t consider the cost. Save your sense of self. Return the diamond, no matter how large. No trade - offs. (S.142)
Max Beerbohm “The Happy Hypocrite.” (S.151)
Once the mask has been removed, La Gambogi discovers, as do George and his new wife, that the face beneath the mask now matches what the mask displayed to the world — the face of a saint. The inner man now matches the outer one. Hell has become Heaven. He no longer needs the mask.(S.152)
Frank Knight wrote, “Insofar as man is wise or good, his ‘character’ is acquired chiefly by posing as better than he is, until a part of his pretense becomes a habit.” (S.153)
Doing good can become a source of pleasure. (S.154)
Use this idea for living. Try to have more experiences than fewer. Try stuff. Stop doing the stuff that isn’t for you. Embrace the opportunities that make your heart sing. Spend less time trying to figure out in advance what those might be and more time taking chances as long as you can opt out at a low enough cost. Exploring can turn out much better than a planned itinerary. (S.164)
Often in such situations, we’ll say, I took the job, but it was a mistake. I got engaged, but it was a mistake. I went to law school, but it was a mistake. But none of those things are mistakes. A mistake is when you know you don’t like anchovies but you keep ordering them on your pizza. A mistake is trusting someone you know is a person without honor. (S.166)
Life choices that turn out differently from what we hoped aren’t mistakes. They’re just choices that turned out differently than we hoped. We shouldn’t call those mistakes. You shouldn’t beat yourself up over them. Forgive yourself. Wild problems that don’t turn out well aren’t mistakes. They’re more like adventures. Adventures have twists and turns and ups and downs. Belichick teaches us that if you can go on an adventure that you can end without great cost, go. If it turns out badly, cut it short. If it turns out well, enjoy the ride. This beats trying to figure out in advance with any precision which adventures are the best ones. (S.166)
If you hate law and leave it behind, don’t say you made a mistake. How can it be a mistake when your information was so incomplete? When life turns out to be different than you thought it would be, or you turn out differently than you thought you’d like to be, change. (S.167)
One way to avoid letting life pass you by is to stop worrying about making a “mistake.” It’s not a mistake when you can’t do any better. So spend less time on figuring out the “right” decision and more time on thinking about how to widen your options and how to cope with disappointment if the decision turns out badly. (S.169)
Recognizing that you are not in control doesn’t mean there’s no control at all or zero planning. It means trusting the opportunity to adjust the plan or journey to the new information that you learn as you go through the experience. (S.175)
Taking advantage of optionality means saying yes to things that are not obviously worth doing but have the chance to expand your horizons , your experiences , your connections . (S.176)
In life , knowing when to persevere and when to quit is a craft to cultivate . (S.177)
Becoming a great writer requires becoming a great editor — learning to revise is essential to writing well. That’s true of life, too . Don’t worry about the rough draft. As long as you’re able to kill your darlings and take advantage of optionality, you will thrive. (S.180)
Life is like a book that you are writing and reading at the same time. You might have a plan for how it turns out. But for it to be a great book, it needs to be savored and chewed and digested along the way. (S.181)
We have skills : some given to us , some we earn through effort. We should use those gifts and the precious time allotted to us to the utmost. The challenge is that we too often think that doing one’s utmost is about racing around at full speed toward a goal. (S.182)
The exploring is part of what makes the world so magical. (S.189)
Ich finds cool, dass du es schaffst so viel zu lesen. Würdest vermutlich gerne viel mehr lesen. Übrigens, falls du es noch nicht gelesen hast, The Master and his emissary könnte glaube ich interessant sein für dich. Oder du wartest noch, bis ich meine Rezension hier im Forum poste (dauert aber noch).
@Dominique schrieb:
Ich finds cool, dass du es schaffst so viel zu lesen. Würdest vermutlich gerne viel mehr lesen. Übrigens, falls du es noch nicht gelesen hast, The Master and his emissary könnte glaube ich interessant sein für dich. Oder du wartest noch, bis ich meine Rezension hier im Forum poste (dauert aber noch).
Das Buch steht auf meiner List, wobei ich unsicher bin, ob ich es lesen werde. Es scheint mir äußerst gehaltvoll zu sein, und für so einen Brecher fehlt mir momentan die Zeit und der Wille, mich so lange so weit von meinen eigentlichen Themen zu entfernen.
@Phlynx schrieb:
@ Johannes:
Dein letzter Beitrag erscheint mir eine Sammlung von Sätzen, Sentenzen zu sein, erstmal recht unzusammenhängend. Handelt es sich um Zitate aus dem genannten Titel, die für Dich Kernsätze darstellen?
Worum geht es Russel Roberts? Handelt es sich bei seinem Werk um einen Selbsthilferatgeber?
Das sind einfach nur meine Markierungen. Kernsätze also weniger, eher Dinge, die mich interessiert oder aus irgendeinem Grund angeregt haben, sodass ich weiter darüber nachdenken wollte.
Kommentare
Wie gut arbeitet sie empirisch?
Quantität: Das Buch hat etwa 1 Zitation pro Seite und eine ausführliche Bibliografie im Anhang.
Qualität: Auf den ersten Blick würde ich sagen solide. Einige spannende Studien habe ich etwas näher angeschaut und fand ich gut. Habe aber jetzt bei weitem nicht gewissenhaft genug geschaut, um ein Urteil fällen zu können. Teilweise wurden Behauptungen auch nicht mit Studien unterfüttert. Das ist mir 2x aufgefallen, als ich für eine These im Anhang geschaut habe und nichts gefunden habe. Im Text verschwinden die Studienergebnisse. Der ist, wie gesagt, sehr anekdotisch gehalten und liest sich nicht wissenschaftlich, sondern wir eine Aneinandereihung von Patienten-Schicksalen mit ein paar Schaubildern.
Ah, so ein Ami-Buch. Ich wüsste gerne, wie stark der Verlag die in diese Richtung gedrängt hat.
Naja, danke für die Auskunft.
Hallo Leute! Falls euch irgendwas davon besonders interessiert, meldet euch. Ich schreibe die Tage wieder einen Jahresrückblick für die Lesenotizen und kann bei Wünschen gesondert auf bestimmte Aspekte eingehen. Ansonsten werde ich wie letztes Jahr die Highlights besprechen.
Bis dahin: Frohe Weihnachten
Mich interessieren "Infinite Intensity" und "Traditionelle Chinesische Medizin"
Danke für Deine Lesenotizen - diese bereichern das Forum ungemein.
TCM von Pélissier und Alte Sorten von Arenz.
SUM: Forty Tales ist unglaublich gut und sollte jeder mal lesen (keine Angst, ist sehr kompakt - aber dafür geht es tief...).
Ich finde ja, dass du mehr aus deinen Notizen machen solltest. Einen ZK hast du hoffentlich (HAST DU DOCH ODER..........???!!?!?!?!??!). Falls du Hilfe brauchst, schreib mich an und dann sprechen wir das durch.
@TylerDurden Ist notiert
@saschaz Danke! Ist notiert. SUM fand ich auch gut!
@Sascha Wollte mich eh die Tage mal bei dir melden
Wieso hast du The Picture of Dorian Gray eigentlich abgebrochen? Habe das Buch auch noch hier rumliegen und wollte es demnächst mal lesen.
Ansonsten gerne noch was zu House of the Dragon. Attack on Titan würde mich auch interessieren, ist aber schon ewig her als ich das zuletzt gesehen habe...
@Johannes machst du eigentlich zu jedem Autor/ Interviewgast eine Art von Biografie?
Mir ist bei meinen eigenen Notizen aufgefallen, dass es Vorteile hätte so etwas anzulegen. Weil für mich hilft eine kurze Biografie einmal die Erfahrungen der Person einzuordnen und auch die Qualität der Informationen einzuordnen (z.B. eine Person mit akademischer Ausbildung in einem Gebiet auf dem sie dann zusätzlich ein Sport Team für 2 Jahre in dem Bereich betreut hat, würde für mich erstmal eine höhere Glaubwürdigkeit genießen, als ein Quereinsteiger der nur in seinem direktem Umfeld seine Expertise aufgebaut hat.
Wenn er ein Westeuropäer ist, dessen Familie Ärzte in verschiedenen Bereiche hat, ein Studium der TCM in Australien absolvierte, würde ich ihm eine gewisse Weltoffenheit in seinem Fachbereich unterstellen (oder das er zumindest zwei größere Bereiche auf dem Schirm hat)..
Desweiteren habe ich mich gefragt, ob du so eine Übersicht hast, welche Personen, in welchem Bereich zum empfehlen sind?
Z.B. Peterson für Psychologie, Dan John für Kettlebell und Olympic Weightlifiting)?
Hier sehe ich den Vorteil, das man für ein Thema gezielter/ bessere Ressourcen raussuchen kann.
@Sascha vlt. auch interessant für den Zettelkasten, falls es noch nicht integriert/ berücksichtigt wurde.
Interessant. Das geht bei wissenschaftlicher Arbeit automatisch, weil nach ein paar Tagen Bearbeitung eines Themas immer wieder die gleichen Namen auftauchen. Aber die Idee ist gut. Kommst in die Danksagungen, wenn ich das benutze.
Yes, vlt. ins Buch geschafft
.
Dieser übegeordnete Zettel mit welche Person für welchen Themenbereich sehe ich auch als wichtiger an, weil du damit eine Quelle hast um Zeit bei den Recherchen zu sparen (oder im schlimmsten Falle tauchen deine für gute befunden Quellen gar nicht bei der Recherche auf).
Hallo Johannes,
Wie fertigst du eigentlich deine Notizen an? Wird das Buch 1x gelesen und nebenbei schon die Notizen gemacht? Oder 2x gelesen (erster Durchgang: markieren relevanter Stellen/Informationen; 2.Durchgang: Verarbeiten nur dieser Stellen)? Oder hast du da gar eine andere Methode?
WILD PROBLEMS by RUSSELL ROBERTS
A “wild problem”: a big decision where the right path isn’t obvious, where the pleasure and pain from choosing one path over another are ultimately hidden from us, where the path we choose defines who we are and who we might become.
Everything has a price — everything involves giving up something to have something else.
We have embraced the idea that measuring — collecting data — and improving the process that produces the measurement, and using those measurements to get stronger, more productive, and healthier, is the road to a better life.
Through most of human history, authority and tradition — the kings who ruled us, our parents, the religion we were born into, the culture surrounding us — tamed the wild problems we faced. (S.4)
Paths to success don’t replicate. (S.5)
What was once destiny is now a decision. (S.5)
By focusing on what you know about and can imagine, you’re ignoring the full range of choices open to you. (S.6)
Instead of spending more time trying to make the right decision, I show you that often there is no right decision in the way we usually think of the term. (S.7)
Decide in advance the top six attributes that are important to the job, and assign each candidate a score from 1 to 5 on each attribute (S.16)
We are always searching for a formula, a calculation that will remove the uncertainty. (S.19)
The rationality of a cost-benefit list of expected well-being from the decisions we make in the face of wild problems is actually an illusion. (S.20)
When Darwin was trying to decide whether to marry, the information he really wanted was how his life would turn out if he decided to marry versus how it would turn out as a single man. (S.21)
L.A. Paul uses the choice to become a vampire as a metaphor for the big decisions that are the focus of this book. (S.25)
And the only way to get that data is to take the leap of faith (or in this case, anti-faith, maybe) into Vampire World. Once you’ve made the leap and find you don’t care for an all-liquid , heavy-on-the-hemoglobin diet, you can’t go back. One of the weirdest parts of the decision, as Paul points out, is that once you become a vampire, what you like and what you dislike change. Which “you” should you consider when deciding what’s best for you? The current you or the you you will become? (S.26)
Many decisions involve burning bridges, crossing into a new experience that will change you in ways you can’t imagine, including what you care about and what brings you joy or sorrow. (S.26)
“I had entered into an alternate and strange world: a world predicated by our children. I wondered what exactly I had cared about so much before I had them. ” (S.26)
“Making the decision to have a child — it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” (S.34)
Would you want to be part of that spectacle, knowing that it can fill you with light you’ll never otherwise see but that it also can break your heart and leave you in tears? (S.37)
You should indeed make that list of costs and benefits, but not for the purpose of assessing them rationally. Rather, he argues, make the list in order to figure out what you’re “really after.” And by that he means where your heart lies. (S.43)
Normal human beings have trouble making decisions, and when we do, we often will come up with reasons that are merely an after-the-fact narrative — something we tell ourselves and others to justify what we’ve done or plan to do. (S.48)
Bentham argued that human beings care about two things — pleasure and pain. If you have to make a decision, consider each choice and see which produces the most pleasure relative to pain. (S.49)
The economist’s view of life is that your goal is to accumulate the greatest amount of satisfaction given the constraints of income and time. (S.51)
Human beings care about more than the day-to-day pleasures and pains of daily existence. We want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. We aspire. We want to matter. These overarching sensations — the texture of our lives above and beyond what we call happiness or everyday pleasure — define who we are and how we see ourselves. These longings are at the heart of a life well lived. (S.51)
A life well lived is something more than a pleasant life. The Greeks called the condition of a life well lived eudaemonia. That word is sometimes translated as happiness or contentment. Those words fall short of capturing eudaemonia. “Flourishing” is a better translation and the word I will use here. Something flourishes by becoming something beautiful and worthy of admiration. That means more than simply accumulating pleasures and avoiding pain. Flourishing includes living and acting with integrity, virtue, purpose, meaning, dignity, and autonomy — aspects of life that are not just difficult to quantify but that you might put front and center, regardless of the cost. (S.52)
The parts of our well-being related to flourishing persist and overlay our daily experiences. (S.57)
Our essence is not easily compared to our day-to-day feelings of pleasure and pain. That’s because who I am in my essence lies above and beyond whatever I feel today and tomorrow. Purpose , meaning , dignity , being a spouse or parent — these aspects of our lives aren’t just pleasant or unpleasant. They define us and suffuse all of our days, not just this one or that one. (S.58)
Adding up the costs and benefits is the wrong way to think about how to live. Flourishing is something subtler that overarches our day-to-day pleasures and pains. The part of existence I am calling flourishing both transcends and elevates our day-to-day experience.
The ideal of a spiritual practice is for it to transcend the time you spend meditating or in religious devotion. It should transform you in some way and change not just what you feel but who you are. And who you are, in turn, affects how you treat others and move through the world. (S.64)
With wild problems, your choices often produce a state of being that suffuses your days in good ways and bad. Thinking you can do a cost-benefit analysis of this transformation is an illusion. (S.64)
Pain, especially when it’s in service of an ideal, can be a source of meaning. (S.65)
Being a spouse transcends and elevates my daily experience. (S.72)
It was anxiety about his new self- narrative — the way he would see himself, Harvard professor — relative to his old one, Stanford professor. (S.78)
An alternative is to value friendship independently of how rewarding it is, as an essential part of your being. (S.79)
The importance of flourishing is not just harder to remember than the pleasures and pains of our daily lives. It’s more than just something you’ll enjoy down the road. It’s harder to conceptualize before you’ve experienced it. (S.86)
“Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.” By “loved,” he meant not just cared about but praised, appreciated, admired, and respected. We want to matter. And by “lovely,” Smith meant worthy of praise, appreciation, admiration, and respect . (S.86)
This is a problem that runs through all of our biggest decisions — we have multiple options. Which one is the best one? Which one is the best one if I want to flourish? (S.91)
With wild problems, the quest for the best is a mistake, whether it’s the quest for the best career, the best place to go to college, the best spouse, the best anything. (S.97)
Not be seduced by the precision of the measurement. (S.100)
I’m not encouraging you to settle; I’m telling you that you have to settle. The best spouse/partner/career/city doesn’t exist and it’s not just because they’re hard to find. It’s not a meaningful concept. What some people call “settling” is simply realizing that it is time to make a decision and there is no reason to think there is a better option. That’s not settling. That’s deciding. (S.100)
Marriage is a case where the best is truly the enemy of the good enough. (S.101)
His view was that the power of eHarmony’s algorithm that purported to find you a good or even the best match available using responses to its questionnaire was not the key to its success. It was much simpler than that. The success was due to matching people who were serious about getting married. (S.102)
If you’re eager to get married, try to date people who are serious about marriage. (S.102)
In modern times, we typically look for love and try to imagine who we’ll be the most happy with. But what about flourishing? (S.103)
Beyond the standard tourist highlights, you would like to spend time just walking without an explicit destination in mind, being what is called a flaneur, wandering not aimlessly, but thoughtfully, appreciating the morning light on the walls of the ruins of the Colosseum, standing on a bridge spanning the Tiber as a rower passes below you, watching the sunset from the Spanish Steps, just taking Rome in and being grateful for the chance to see it. (S.103)
Chesterton’s Fence: When you come across something that doesn’t make sense to you — a fence in the middle of nowhere with no apparent purpose — you might be tempted to tear it down. Before you do, you should try to find out why it’s there — it may have a cause or purpose that isn’t obvious. (S.107)
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. (S.115)
We have a choice in how we perceive and frame our daily experiences. One choice is to see ourselves as fundamentally atomistic, heroic, and existentially lonely. The other is to see ourselves as connected and belonging to something, with that belonging at the center of the experience. (S.125)
How would you live differently if you saw yourself as part of an ensemble rather than the main character? (S.125)
It’s better to discover what you want to say through the process of conversation and not a preplanned script. (S.126)
Rather than see your friends and family as objects to serve your goals and increase your utility, see them as partners you commit to with no agenda as to what might emerge from interacting with them. (S.127)
Sacks said that marriage turns love into loyalty. (S.130)
You can build a habit of partnership and turn a sacrifice into a satisfying habit. (S.130)
In the choir of life, don’t be a diva. Lower your voice and revel in the harmony. On the dance floor of life, make room for the other dancers and let your partner shine. Try to be aware of your natural impulse to ask, what’s in it for me, and make room instead for what the people around you need for the journey we’re all in together. (S.131)
Narrow utilitarianism is often in tension with some higher principle related to flourishing. (S.133)
Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” (S.141)
When it comes to decisions when your essence is on the line, don’t consider the cost. Save your sense of self. Return the diamond, no matter how large. No trade - offs. (S.142)
Max Beerbohm “The Happy Hypocrite.” (S.151)
Once the mask has been removed, La Gambogi discovers, as do George and his new wife, that the face beneath the mask now matches what the mask displayed to the world — the face of a saint. The inner man now matches the outer one. Hell has become Heaven. He no longer needs the mask.(S.152)
Frank Knight wrote, “Insofar as man is wise or good, his ‘character’ is acquired chiefly by posing as better than he is, until a part of his pretense becomes a habit.” (S.153)
Doing good can become a source of pleasure. (S.154)
Use this idea for living. Try to have more experiences than fewer. Try stuff. Stop doing the stuff that isn’t for you. Embrace the opportunities that make your heart sing. Spend less time trying to figure out in advance what those might be and more time taking chances as long as you can opt out at a low enough cost. Exploring can turn out much better than a planned itinerary. (S.164)
Often in such situations, we’ll say, I took the job, but it was a mistake. I got engaged, but it was a mistake. I went to law school, but it was a mistake. But none of those things are mistakes. A mistake is when you know you don’t like anchovies but you keep ordering them on your pizza. A mistake is trusting someone you know is a person without honor. (S.166)
Life choices that turn out differently from what we hoped aren’t mistakes. They’re just choices that turned out differently than we hoped. We shouldn’t call those mistakes. You shouldn’t beat yourself up over them. Forgive yourself. Wild problems that don’t turn out well aren’t mistakes. They’re more like adventures. Adventures have twists and turns and ups and downs. Belichick teaches us that if you can go on an adventure that you can end without great cost, go. If it turns out badly, cut it short. If it turns out well, enjoy the ride. This beats trying to figure out in advance with any precision which adventures are the best ones. (S.166)
If you hate law and leave it behind, don’t say you made a mistake. How can it be a mistake when your information was so incomplete? When life turns out to be different than you thought it would be, or you turn out differently than you thought you’d like to be, change. (S.167)
One way to avoid letting life pass you by is to stop worrying about making a “mistake.” It’s not a mistake when you can’t do any better. So spend less time on figuring out the “right” decision and more time on thinking about how to widen your options and how to cope with disappointment if the decision turns out badly. (S.169)
Recognizing that you are not in control doesn’t mean there’s no control at all or zero planning. It means trusting the opportunity to adjust the plan or journey to the new information that you learn as you go through the experience. (S.175)
Taking advantage of optionality means saying yes to things that are not obviously worth doing but have the chance to expand your horizons , your experiences , your connections . (S.176)
In life , knowing when to persevere and when to quit is a craft to cultivate . (S.177)
Becoming a great writer requires becoming a great editor — learning to revise is essential to writing well. That’s true of life, too . Don’t worry about the rough draft. As long as you’re able to kill your darlings and take advantage of optionality, you will thrive. (S.180)
Life is like a book that you are writing and reading at the same time. You might have a plan for how it turns out. But for it to be a great book, it needs to be savored and chewed and digested along the way. (S.181)
We have skills : some given to us , some we earn through effort. We should use those gifts and the precious time allotted to us to the utmost. The challenge is that we too often think that doing one’s utmost is about racing around at full speed toward a goal. (S.182)
The exploring is part of what makes the world so magical. (S.189)
Ich finds cool, dass du es schaffst so viel zu lesen. Würdest vermutlich gerne viel mehr lesen. Übrigens, falls du es noch nicht gelesen hast, The Master and his emissary könnte glaube ich interessant sein für dich. Oder du wartest noch, bis ich meine Rezension hier im Forum poste (dauert aber noch).
Das Buch steht auf meiner List, wobei ich unsicher bin, ob ich es lesen werde. Es scheint mir äußerst gehaltvoll zu sein, und für so einen Brecher fehlt mir momentan die Zeit und der Wille, mich so lange so weit von meinen eigentlichen Themen zu entfernen.
Das sind einfach nur meine Markierungen. Kernsätze also weniger, eher Dinge, die mich interessiert oder aus irgendeinem Grund angeregt haben, sodass ich weiter darüber nachdenken wollte.