Monday Aphorisms

Monday Map

Hello there, you are reading Monday Map on The Busyminds Project.

I had a splendid weekend. I visited a new state in Nigeria for an important occasion and I had such a great time. But here we are, back to base, the work continues. Today, I have these aphorisms to share with you from Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s Bed of Procrustes. They are sure to get you thinking and questioning. Enjoy.

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1. You exist in full if and only if your conversation (or writings) cannot be easily  reconstructed with clips from other conversations.

2. When we want to do something while unconsciously certain to fail, we seek advice so we can blame someone else for the failure.

3. Much of the difference between what is work and what is leisure is branding.

4. The main reason to go to school is to learn how not to think like a professor.

5. The opposite of manliness isn’t cowardice; it’s technology.

6. It is a very recent disease to mistake the unobserved for the nonexistent; but some are plagued with the worse disease of mistaking the unobserved for the unobservable.

7. Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry

8. Religion isn’t so much about telling man that there is one God as about preventing man from thinking that he is God

9. The fewer the gods, the greater the dogma and theological intolerance. So n = 0 (“modern” atheists), n = 1 (Sunni purists), n = 1–2 (Monophysites), n = 3–12 (Greek Orthodoxy), n flex (Ancient Mediterranean Paganism).

10. Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.

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Thanks for reading. Enjoy your week.