The Saunterer

Michael Shermer on the difference between seeking fulfillment and seeking happy moments

    Alexandra Wolfe wrote in The Wall Street Journal, September 2 - 3, 2017, that “Dr. Shermer considers organized self-help movements misguided because they tend to encourage people to chase after money and a simple ideal of happiness, rather than to find satisfaction in a purposeful life.” Going on she quotes him:

    Most of what we do doesn’t make us happy, it makes us more fulfilled as a person.

    Noting his morning bike ride wasn’t fun, he says:

    It’s a suffer-fest. It’s 90 degrees out, my lungs are screaming, but I feel better after.

    For a brief biography of Michael Shermer, click here. For images of or relating to Michael Shermer, click here.

Aristotle on the reason for the humanities

    Engineers, scientists, technologists and, above all, business people -- take note of what Aristotle said:

    Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

    (Quoted from page 6 of the Winter 2017 issue of Diamonds in the Ruff, the newsleter of Fayette Friends of Animals, Uniontown, Pennsylvania.)

 

 

    

 

J. R. R. Tolkien on the power of color in fantasy

    Here is what he says:

    When we take the green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter’s power—upon one plane; and the desire to wield that power in the world external to our minds awakes. It does not follow that we shall use that power well on any plane. We may put a deadly green upon a man’s face and produce horror; we may make the rare and terrible blue moon to shine; or we may cause weeds to spring with silver leaves and rams to wear fleeces of gold, and put hot fire in the belly of the cold worm.

    (Quoted from page 9 of The Way to Write, by John Fairfax and John Moat. St. Martin’s Press, 1981.)
    For a brief biography of J. R. R. Tolkien, click here. For images of or relating to J. R. R. Tolkien, click here.

Jaron Lanier on how Al Gore really did invent the internet

    Jaron Lanier explains why Al Gore deserves the credit:

    The packet-switched networks had been around for a long time. But the internet’s a political invention. And yeah, he should be remembered much more prominently than he is as a creator of it.

    (Quoted from Maureen Dowd’s interview of Jaron Lanier in the Arts section of The New York Times, November 9, 2017. )
    For a brief biography of Jaron Lanier, click here. For images of or relating to Jaron Lanier, click here.

Albert Einstein on the fundamental emotion of both art and science

    It is the emotion of the mysterious. Albert Einstein:    

    The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious—the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

    (Quoted from page 233 of Your Atomic Self, by Curt Stager. Thomas Dunne Books, 2014..)
    For a brief biography of Albert Einstein, click here. For images of or relating to Albert Einstein, click here.

 

Lillian Hellman on discovering you really did love a dead person

    She discovered:

    My mother was dead for five years before I knew that I had loved her very much.

    (Quoted from page 7 of An Unfinished Woman—a memoir, by Lillian Hellman. Little Brown and Company, 1969.)
    For a brief biography of Lillian Hellman, click here. For images of or relating to Lillian Hellman, click here.

Karl Ove Knausgaard on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gave the name "flow" to losing awareness of time when engaged fully in an activity such as creative work.  Karl Ove Knausgaard has come to see flow in the following way:    

 

    When you see something, information flows from the eyes and to the back of the brain. The interesting thing is that more information is going the other way, which means that we see what we think we see, and the actual process involving the eyes is a question of correcting what’s already there. I have always suspected something like that! But I got it confirmed in a book called “The Brain: The Story of You,” by David Eagleman. I picked it up at an airport recently and didn’t stop reading it till I came home five hours later. I also learned that the act of seeing involves the whole body and all the other senses — it is not an abstract enterprise, but very physical — and that the things observed always come together in the brain with a delay, so that we basically live in the past. Everything we see has already happened. And finally, that the feeling of flow we all know, when we are so deeply immersed in something that we lose track of time and who we are, has a neurological explanation: In a state of flow, the activity in the frontal lobe is reduced, it is almost shut down — and it is in the frontal lobe the ability for abstract thinking situated, the planning for the future and the sense of self. Everything that makes us human, in other words, and that makes perfect sense: You lose yourself and sink into a state of pure being, like an animal — belonging to the world, not to yourself.

 

    (Quoted from page 7 of the August 20, 2017 issue of The New York Times Book Review.)

    For a brief biography of Karl Ove Knausgaard, click here. For images of or relating to Karl Ove Knausgaard, click here.

Henry David Thoreau on the folly of economizing your time

    Reading Henry David Thoreau’s journals this past summer, we liked the wit of his following entry of September 7, 1851, at age 34:

    Sept. 7. We are receiving our portion of the infinite. The art of life! I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this afternoon. I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it.
    The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. How to live. How to get the most life. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my every-day business. I am as busy as a bee about it. I ramble over all fields on that errand, and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature.

    (Quoted from page 77 of The Journal: 1837-1861, by Henry David Thoreau, Damion Searls editor, New York Review Books, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here. For images of or relating to Henry David Thoreau, click here.

Michael Witmore on the importance of the humanities

    Michael Whitmore, director, Folger Shakespeare Library, said at the Presidential Symposium on Shakespeare, Race, and the Practical Humanities on April 19, 2017:

    Welders pay attention to the seams, where things fit together, where things fall apart. That's also something the humanities are caretakers of.

    For a brief biography of Michael Witmore, click here. For images of or relating to Michael Witmore, click here.

Michael Witmore on the importance of the humanities

    Michael Whitmore, director, Folger Shakespeare Library, said at the Presidential Symposium on Shakespeare, Race, and the Practical Humanities on April 19, 2017:

    Welders pay attention to the seams, where things fit together, where things fall apart. That's also something the humanities are caretakers of.

    For a brief biography of Michael Witmore, click here. For images of or relating to Michael Witmore, click here.