The Pearl: Curious Things
Written by Martin Vidal | 08/29/2021
Food for Thought:
Why Has Education Become Synonymous With Training?
I wrote this article for the same reason I’ve written many others: to express and understand a lingering point of frustration. My frustration on this topic stems from the fact that all of the smartest people I know hate school. They love learning but dislike school. Is there anything more backwards? Why is this the case? The problem is that school doesn’t exist for one to learn but to be trained. We can’t go to school just to explore sundry subjects and come into contact with all the intellectual lights of the world. There’s really no room for untrammeled curiosity in those supposed sanctuaries of learning. Instead, we pick what our career will be, and with few exceptions, we will be narrowly focused on learning how to perform that job. We are simply being trained for a job in order to make money. It’s a commercial enterprise, not an intellectual one.
Read it here.
Personal Development:
Prayer and Mindfulness
With all the talk of “mindfulness” by eccentric social media personalities, it can come to look like something without much there there. However, scientists have studied in-depth what allows a person to demonstrate optimal self-control, and practicing mindfulness is actually one of the top methods. One textbook on self-control, defines mindfulness as “the non-judgmental, accepting, and present-focused awareness of one’s inner and outer experiences.” To practice mindfulness, you can do the following:
“Close your eyes for a moment, focus your attention entirely on your breath, on how your chest rises and falls, on how the air enters and leaves your nostrils, mouth, and lungs, and on the many sensations that breathing evokes in different parts of your body....”
Prayer, as is practiced, for example, in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, has also been found to increase self-control, due to the feelings of “inner strength, rest, and relief.” Like mindfulness, prayer, if practiced habitually over a prolonged period of time, can increase self-control.
For more content like this, seeThe Ambition Handbook: A Guide for Ambitious Persons.
Book Quotes:
But the awakened one, the knowing one, says: "Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something about the body." (p. 32)
Brave, unconcerned, mocking, violent --thus wisdom wants us: she is a woman and always loves only a warrior. (p. 37)
Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a small kindness is not forgotten, it becomes a gnawing worm. (p. 78)
Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! (p. 88)
This long lane backwards: it continues for an eternity. And that long lane forward—that is another eternity. They are opposed to one another, these roads; they offend each other face to face—and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together. The name of the gateway is inscribed above: "Moment." (p. 135)
O my soul, I took all obeying and knee-bending and obsequiousness from you; I myself gave you the names, "cessation of need" and "destiny." (p. 191)
You can find the full book here.
A Song I Love:
Thanks 4 Nothing by Nilufer Yanya
I discovered this song at an apt time in my life: at the end of a relationship. There is something of restrained sadness in the composition. It has that feel of finality that marks the final stage of a relationship. In many a tumultuous relationship there is a series of false ends; they’re usually emotional and reactionary. But it’s not when they shout “it’s over” with tears in their eyes, but when it’s calm, resolved, and shows all the signs of a sturdily held belief that you know it’s really over. The lyrics in the chorus
This is the end
Don’t think we can be friends
Just being honest
‘Cause I don’t want to make things better
Thanks for nothin’, lasts forever
do a great job of capturing that feeling of utter desolation that accompanies an irreparable schism in the connection two people share. It’s as if you spent all this time building something — you have this palace of memories in your head (as Sam Smith described it) — and now you just have to watch it painfully crumble. “Thanks for nothin’, lasts forever”
Listen to it here.
A Tiny Thought:
Genius is less contingent on intellect than it is on faith in one’s intellect.
Until next week,
Martin Vidal
Author of The Ambition Handbook and Flower Garden
Website: www.martinvidal.co