The Old and the New
Happy Sunday!
Here are a few things I found interesting this week:
I’m on a deep dive into to “spiritual” dimensions of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, and the guide who has me very captivated is Pierre Hadot. He’s credited with helping revive the understanding of ancient philosophy as primarily a way of life, and indeed a spiritual life at that, and not an intellectual analysis of old texts.
“The relationship between theory and practice in the philosophy of this period must be understood from the perspective of these exercises of meditation. Theory is never considered an end in itself; it is clearly and decidedly put in the service of practice.” - Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life
On a more future-looking front, ShortlyAI.com is a shot across the bow of writers. With a short prompt, the Open AI GPT-3 powered software just finishes paragraphs for you. I didn’t use ShortlyAI for this post but I could have, and no one would have been the wiser. With writing becoming a commodity, helpful and inspiring ideas are the thing of value.
Canva. While not new, Canva makes doing basic visual design tasks so easy. I’ve been using it to create quick quote posts for IG. I’m not naturally attracted to social media, so whatever makes my participation easy, I’m a fan of. With creative production becoming a commodity, again, helpful and inspiring ideas are the thing of value.
What the Buddha Taught is such a great intro to Buddhist thought. Wapola Rahula eloquently and succinctly distills what the Buddha taught into the core principles. Well worth the read or listen.
“‘One is one’s own refuge, who else could be the refuge?’ said the Buddha. He admonished his disciples to ‘be a refuge to themselves’, and never to seek refuge in or help from anybody else. He taught, encouraged and stimulated each person to develop himself and to work out his own emancipation, for man has the power to liberate himself from all bondage through his own personal effort and intelligence.” - Wapola Rahula
If you work with a team I highly recommend the writings of Roger Schwarz. It was interesting to learn that the models I associate with him (Unilateral Control vs Mutual Learning Mindsets), are really from the work of Chris Argyris and Donald Schon. They called these two approaches Model I and Model II, but Roger borrowed his language from Robert Putnam, Diana McLain Smith, and Phil MacArthur. Everything is always evolving and getting remixed!
Enjoy your week!
Warmly,
Jacob