Aeon+Psyche
Stats + related links for To feel the awe of living, learn to live with terror and wonder

Existential therapy explores the darkest corners and craggy edges of the many-sided self. The result is true transformation Open at source
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Aeon+Psyche
What can we learn from the secret habits of genius?Aeon+Psyche
~12 min read · Jan 26th · I travelled the world and trawled the archive to unearth the hidden lessons from history’s most brilliant people
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if you seek the truth, consult the original primary sources; the rest is simply hearsay
The secret to her success? Elizabeth not only read books voraciously (three hours a day was her wont) but also people. She read, she studied, she observed, and she kept her mouth shut
Thus, a last class takeaway applicable to all: be on guard if there’s a genius in your midst. If you work for a genius, you might be berated or abused, or you could lose your job. If someone close to you is a genius, you might find that his or her work or passion always comes first. Yet to those so abused, made miserable or redundant, exploited or ignored, sincere thanks is in order for ‘taking one for the team’, the team being all of us who subsequently benefit from the greater cultural good that ‘your’ genius has done. To paraphrase the writer Edmond de Goncourt: almost no one loves the genius until he or she is dead. But then we do, because now life is better.
Aeon+Psyche
What can we learn from the perennial philosophy of Aldous Huxley?Aeon+Psyche
~12 min read · 2020-02-19 · Aldous Huxley argued that all religions in the world were underpinned by universal beliefs and experiences. Was he right?
psychology
Aeon+Psyche
The self is not singular but a fluid network of identitiesAeon+Psyche
~13 min read · May 18th · You cannot be reduced to a body, a mind or a particular social role. An emerging theory of selfhood gets this complexity
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What philosophers call ‘4E views’ of cognition – for embodied, embedded, enactive and extended cognition – are also a move in the direction of a more relational, less ‘container’, view of the self.
The point is that who you are is more complex than any one of your identities. Thinking of the self as a network is a way to conceptualise this complexity and fluidity.
The self is a cumulative network because its history persists, even if there are many aspects of its history that a self disavows going forward or even if the way in which its history is relevant changes. Recognising that the self is a cumulative network allows us to account for why radical transformation is of a self and not, literally, a different self.
Aeon+Psyche
Art, like loss, can shock us into our authentic selfAeon+Psyche
20+ min read · Feb 26th · A devastating loss can shatter the façade we put up for others, exposing our deepest, rawest self. A work of art can do the same
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‘Don’t show off! Don’t pretend to be, be!’
The true self is genuinely present, unmuffled, and visible to anyone who cares to look.
Aeon+Psyche
For Schopenhauer, happiness is a state of semi-satisfactionAeon+Psyche
~14 min read · 2020-08-18 · Renowned for his pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer was nonetheless a conoisseur of very distinctive kinds of happiness
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What her line of 13 December doesn’t reveal is that Johanna simply couldn’t tolerate Arthur: ‘All your good qualities,’ she wrote on 6 November, ‘become obscured by your super-cleverness and are made useless to the world merely because of your rage at wanting to know everything better than others … If you were less like you, you would only be ridiculous, but thus as you are, you are highly annoying.’ He was, in short, a boorish and tiresome know-it-all
He defended himself against loneliness with the belief that solitude is the only fitting condition for a philosopher: ‘Were I a King,’ he said, ‘my prime command would be – Leave me alone.
Schopenhauer’s pessimism is based on two kinds of observation. The first is an inward-looking observation that we aren’t simply rational beings who seek to know and understand the world, but also desiring beings who strive to obtain things from the world. Behind every striving is a painful lack of something, Schopenhauer claims, yet obtaining this thing rarely makes us happy. For, even if we do manage to satisfy one desire, there are always several more unsatisfied ones ready to take its place. Or else we become bored, aware that a life with nothing to desire is dull and empty. If we are lucky enough to satisfy our basic needs, such as hunger and thirst, then in order to escape boredom we develop new needs for luxury items, such as alcohol, tobacco or fashionable clothing. At no point, Schopenhauer says, do we arrive at final and lasting satisfaction. Hence one of his well-known lines: ‘life swings back and forth like a pendulum between pain and boredom’.
The Paris Review
The Myth of Self-RelianceThe Paris Review
~11 min read · 2020-01-15 · Jenny Odell on an encounter with Emerson’s ‘Essays .’
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Aeon+Psyche
How the brain responds to grief can change who we areAeon+Psyche
9 min read · Aug 10th · The five stages of grief can’t begin to explain it: grief affects the body, brain and sense of self, and patience is the key
brain
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Like a stern nurse imposing bed rest, the brain suppresses the control centres of decision-making and planning
Most bereaved people vacillate between actively grieving and moving through the obligations of daily life
This fog of grief, it turns out, is as common as grief itself.
Aeon+Psyche
Self-knowledge is a super powerAeon+Psyche
7 min read · May 27th · Self-knowledge is a powerful thing – if it’s not an illusion. What can we know about our own minds, and why does it matter?
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psychology
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It would be impossible for poker players to bluff if they didn’t have control over facts about their own mind
We have a way of knowing facts about the contents of our own mind, such as our sensations or some of our attitudes, via a means that no one else can use to know those very same facts.
privileged access is valuable because it’s needed in order to have a particular type of robust control over the contents of our minds
Aeon+Psyche
The tragedy of the commons is a false and dangerous mythAeon+Psyche
~14 min read · May 4th · Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight
psychology
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humans, when left to their own devices, compete with one another for resources until the resources run out.
The challenge of understanding the complexity of all species continues, as does the challenge of seeing possibility in what so often looks like a collective tragedy.
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