Hard Truths to Muddle Through Tough Times

Here are today's quotes. Once again, there seems to be an underlying theme of impending doom. Perhaps that's a bit of an extreme take—or perhaps not.

Yaounde, Cameroon - no real connection to the content here. I just liked the photo and wanted to share.

1. Keith Payne, The Broken Ladder
   "When people escape an impoverished background, they, too, are gone forever in a sense. Even if they return, they think differently, speak differently, and even eat differently. A family member once told me she didn’t want to set up education funds for her children because people came back from college as atheists. And what good is increased earnings potential when compared to eternal damnation?"
   Goodreads

2. Stuart Brown, M.D. & Christopher Vaughan, Play
   "When we stop playing, we stop developing, and when that happens, the laws of entropy take over—things fall apart. Ultimately, we share the fate of the sea squirt and become vegetative, staying in one spot, not fully interacting with the world, more plant than animal. When we stop playing, we start dying."
   Goodreads

3. Li Yuan, China’s Police Are Preying on Small Firms in Search of Cash
   "The money grabs are a sign of just how financially desperate local governments are. The country’s housing market has unraveled. Income from land sales, which used to make up about a third of local government revenue, fell by nearly one-third last year from the peak in 2021, according to the finance ministry."
   The New York Times

4. Washington Post, What Canada’s Carbon Pricing Ruling Says About the Global Struggle Against Climate Change
   "Climate action is rife with problems—from free riders to dissenting ideology, to science denialism, to domineering capital interests, and beyond." (i.e., it is a wicked problem)
   Washington Post

5. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen
   "On one issue, the strongman has been consistent: his drive to control and exploit everyone and everything for personal gain."
   Goodreads

Reflections on a Cold, Dark January 10

Happy January 10. Not much to add to today’s post other than the fact that it is winter—it’s cold, dark, and unmistakably the 10th of January.

Here are three of the nine quotes that popped up in my Reedwise feed today. For whatever reason, these ones spoke to me more than the others I chose not to share here. It’s interesting how often quotes on fascism appear in my feed and how frequently I’m drawn to them, sometimes even repeating ones I’ve posted before. Perhaps it’s a reflection of how I’m feeling about the times we’re living in? 🤔

Quotes

"Fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the brain, and a study of the roots of fascism that treats only the thinkers and the writers misses the most powerful impulses of all."

– Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism

"Studies show that identifying other people’s social class really is child’s play for most of us."
– Keith Payne, The Broken Ladder

"Making my bed correctly was not going to be an opportunity for praise. It was expected of me. It was my first task of the day, and doing it right was important. It demonstrated my discipline. It showed my attention to detail, and at the end of the day it would be a reminder that I had done something well, something to be proud of, no matter how small the task."
– William H. McRaven, Make Your Bed

Happy 2025!

 Some quotes to start the year

Quotes

"Instead of falling all the way down to the bottom of his hierarchy, the awareness of his mortality actually heightened his own personal experience of transcendence. Noting a significant shift in values, Maslow observed: “The dominance hierarchy, the competitiveness and glory, certainly become foolish. There is certainly a shifting of values about what’s basic and what’s not basic, what’s important and what’s not important" (Scott Barry Kaufman PhD, Transcend)

"PUNCH LINE: Avoid burying the lead. Don’t start with something interesting but irrelevant in hopes of entertaining the audience. Instead, work to make the core message itself more interesting." (Chip Heath, Dan Heath, Made to Stick)

"Taiwan now accounts for roughly half of the global production capacity for all semiconductors and a much higher proportion—perhaps 90 percent—for the most advanced chips." (Andrew S. Erickson, The Taiwan Catastrophe)

"The researchers coded the videotapes to see what characteristics of the Chatters might be communicating their class differences. They found that richer Chatters were more disengaged during the conversation. They spent more time grooming themselves, doodling, and fiddling with pens, phones, or other objects. The poorer Chatters, in contrast, were more engaged. They looked directly at their conversation partner, and they nodded and laughed more. Higher status meant that the richer participants didn’t have anything “on the line” in the conversation. The poorer participants, in contrast, were working harder to be liked and accepted." (Keith Payne, The Broken Ladder)

First week of 2025 or last week of 2024

A warped view of an untidy street corner in Cape Town, S.A.

So, here’s the question: is this the first week of 2025 or the last week of 2024? It really depends on how you think about weeks, what day your week starts on, or simply how you choose to look at it. Since these are all just human conventions—and ultimately meaningless—the decision is up to you. Of course, we do have to coexist and interact with one another, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a very minor point.

In other words, this is a lot of words to say almost nothing. But hey, it’s the beginning of a new year!

Today, I came across only one quote in my Readwise feed that stood out to me, which you’ll find below. As you can probably tell, I’m feeling especially creative today (not).

Quote

"People believed the workingman was getting shafted, and they seethed. Perceived societal breaks for minorities made the frustrated white guys of my world crazy." (Alfred Lubrano, Limbo)

Quote for the day - Dec 18, 2024

Not much to add today other than here are some quotes that I found interesting that showed up in my Readwise feed today.

"The core value of the working class is being part of a like-minded group—a family, a union, or a community, which engenders a strong sense of loyalty. The core value of the middle class is achievement by the individual."
–Alfred Lubrano, Limbo

"The division between the emotional brain and the rational brain runs deep in our culture and is clearly expressed in the cultural divide between religion and science that first emerged during the European Enlightenment. It is, in the words of Tony Leiserowitz at the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, “a long cultural mistake” to divide the two."
–George Marshall, Don't Even Think About It