George Eliot died 140 years ago today, leaving us some tremendous literature and her lived lesson in why we grow happier as we grow older: https://t.co/WfRKMgNwUs
(https://twitter.com/brainpicker/status/1341452643466678273?s=02)
What is it, how can we best pursue it, why should we? Supporting the study of these and related questions at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond. PHIL 3160 – Philosophy of Happiness - "Examining the concept of human happiness and its application in everyday living as discussed since antiquity by philosophers, psychologists, writers, spiritual leaders, and contributors to pop culture."
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Why we grow happier as we grow older
Friday, December 18, 2020
What Is Death?
How the pandemic is changing our understanding of mortality.
Beyond fear and isolation, maybe this is what the pandemic holds for us: the understanding that living in the face of death can set off a cascade of realization and appreciation. Death is the force that shows you what you love and urges you to revel in that love while the clock ticks. Reveling in love is one sure way to see through and beyond yourself to the wider world, where immortality lives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/opinion/coronavirus-death.html?smid=em-share
Monday, December 14, 2020
Spinoza's path
(https://twitter.com/BostonReview/status/1338672639343292416?s=02)
Sunday, December 13, 2020
Buddshit
"Every spiritual tradition is prone to bullshit on its own behalf. "Buddshit" is simply distinctively Buddhist bullshit. The claim that Buddhism was the path to happiness was Buddshit..." Owen Flanagan
Library Books: A Small Antidote to a Life of Perpetual Dissatisfaction
A little realism goes a long way in a world where the next book purchase, the next apartment, the next significant other promise to finally deliver the goods.
"Library-induced realism is a great thing, one that can do much to increase your happiness. Because the world in which you are perpetually under the impression that the next book purchase, the next apartment, the next significant other will be the one that finally delivers the goods is not a life of happiness. It is a life of perpetual dissatisfaction, a life of thin and sugary highs followed by long and unenlightening lows. The library is, with its careworn and temporary offerings, as lovely and as poignant a reminder of our actual human condition as the tides or a forest in fall. To quote Penelope Fitzgerald (whose books are well worth owning): “Our lives are only lent to us.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/magazine/public-libraries.html?smid=em-share