- Humans use reason to shape how they imagine a useful object of desire. With reason and desire working in tandem we choose and pursue our goals. In Phaedrus, Plato said the soul is guided by a dark horse of passion and a white horse of reason. Socrates agreed, but said the white horse is of greater importance – we must use reason to pursue the right things; to let desire reign over reason is to chase the eventually meaningless and temporal.
I have stopped reading right about here: so I will only conclude that author has learned some lesson. Better late than never. But since I know how the narrative in pieces like this goes, I went straight for the ending and got: See? I was right. Good for him! So, have some shit that I've learned from my father so far: - In all likelihood you have only this one life, so try to be happy. - Moderate yourself as much and long as you are comfortable (and I don't have to bail you out). - Don't obsess over minor failings. Every problem is bigger that it really is on first glance. Look at it when you'll get over it. - You probably don't know what you want. - Don't be a dick. Or at least try to not be one and treat others as they deserve. - Hard work or not, you are not entitled to anything in life. There's likely someone much better anyway. - As with toilets, try to leave the place in at least the state you found it yourself. - Fear is the mind-killer, but not everything requires higher mental faculties. - You can strive for true perfection but you can never achieve it. It also applies to this list. And I didn't even need to quote philosophers.And yet a new school of thinking is challenging these received ways and arguing that straying from the path, even engaging in hedonistic behaviour, might be the surest way to success.
That he ever thought he could achieve perfection, without setbacks, without respites, Franklin admitted, was his gravest error. He had been naïve. And prideful.
Wow, these are great! You could write a book. I think I know where he's going with this but does he mean that hard work doesn't mean you deserve anything you might want? That one's a bit ambiguous for me. I'm going to try to apply this one I hadn't ever thought of it like that before.Hard work or not, you are not entitled to anything in life. There's likely someone much better anyway.
Fear is the mind-killer, but not everything requires higher mental faculties.
The opposite is what the prevailing theory was for a long time, according to the article. People often believe that they're better off than someone else because they worked harder. That's not always the case. About the fear quote, I was actually focusing on the last part. Sometimes, when I'm feeling fearful, I'm afraid my brain will freeze. But as he says, there are things that don't require a lot of brain power, quite a few things, I think. This might sound like a silly question, but I'm serious. How do you force yourself not to expect success? If you're taking an exam, how do you not expect it to go well?Perhaps that's something that can't be translated from Polish all that well, but just because you are working hard it does not mean that someone else didn't.
Duckworth, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, with a MacArthur Fellowship under her belt (largely due to her grit-related findings), has become an in-demand public speaker and a preacher of meritocratic ascension: she espouses the idea that success is about effort and anyone, no matter where they’re from, can get to the top. It’s a theory tailor-made for the middle and upper classes: ‘We’re here because we tried; you’re there because you didn’t.’