Friday Filosophy v.12.02.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.12.02.2022

Friday Filosophy v.12.02.2022 brings quotes and words of wisdom from Charlie Munger. 

Charlie Munger was born in Omaha, Nebraska. As a teenager, he worked at Buffett & Son, a grocery store owned by Warren Buffett‘s grandfather. His father, Alfred Case Munger, was a lawyer. His grandfather was Thomas Charles Munger, a U.S. district court judge and state representative. 

He enrolled in the University of Michigan, where he studied mathematics. During his time in college, he joined the fraternity Sigma Phi Society. In early 1943, a few days after his 19th birthday, he dropped out of college to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps, where he became a second lieutenant. After receiving a high score on the Army General Classification Test, he was ordered to study meteorology at Caltech in Pasadena, California, the town he was to make his home. 

Through the GI Bill Munger took a number of advanced courses through several universities. When he applied to his father’s alma mater, Harvard Law School, the dean of admissions rejected him because Munger had not completed an undergraduate degree. However, the dean relented after a call from Roscoe Pound, the former dean of Harvard Law and a Munger family friend. Munger excelled in law school, graduating magna cum laude with a J.D. in 1948. At Harvard, he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. 

In college and the Army, he developed “an important skill”: card playing. He used this in his approach to business. “What you have to learn is to fold early when the odds are against you, or if you have a big edge, back it heavily because you don’t get a big edge often. Opportunity comes, but it doesn’t come often, so seize it when it does come.” He also used a card analogy to explain an approach to stock trading. He maintained that treating the shares of a company like baseball cards is a losing strategy because it requires one to predict the behavior of often irrational and emotional human beings.

  • Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant
    • Most people spend their time wrestling with the consequences of poor decisions. Both the truth is it’s much easier to avoid stupidity then try to be smart.
    • Admit you know nothing. Remove ego from the equation
  • A majority of life’s errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do
    • We set goals, pursue them, then get distracted
    • To achieve something meaningful, you need to constantly correct course
    • Set a North Star and keep it front of mind
  • Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean
    • If you do the same thing as everyone else, you’ll get the same results
    • But most people are: 
      • Unhappy
      • Unfulfilled
      • Unmotivated
    • Following society’s standards traps you in them
    • Be bold. Go against the grain.
  • To get what you want you have to deserve what you want
    • Naval once said the world is an efficient place
    • You can’t control results, but you can control your”
      • Character
      • Work Ethic
      • Willingness to learn
    • Earn what you want
  • The fundamental algorithm of life – repeat what works.
    • It’s easy to overcomplicate success
    • Both the truth is everything you do creates feedback. Smart people listen
    • When something goes poorly do less of it
    • When something goes well, do it much more
  • Those who keep learning will keep rising.
    • Most people stop learning at 18. Munger is still going at 98
    • Knowledge is an asset that compounds over time
    • The more you know, the better you think. Better choices, great consequences
    • Schedule time to study
  • You don’t have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long time.
    • Berkshire Hathaway is valued at $991.89 Billion
    • Buffet and Munger’s approach?
    • Rationality and Patience
    • It isn’t a sexy approach, but the results sure as hell are
  • The best thing a human being can do is help another human being know more
    • The best way to live your life is in service to other people. Especially now with the online opportunities
    • Be generous with your ideas. Share what you know and helps others win
  • We insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think
    • We live at a time of constant input. Everyone wants to maximize every moment for productivity.
    • But life is a cause and effect
    • Decisions are the key to success. Time to think is the priority
  • You must know the big ideas in the big disciplines and use them routinely
    • Principles from:
      • Mathematics
      • Physics
      • Biology
      • Philosophy
      • Engineering
    • All have a profound impact on life
    • Study mental models. Build a toolkit. Treat your mind like your greatest asset.

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.11.25.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.11.25.2022

In Friday Filosophy v.11.25.2022, our founder Ron Slee shares quotes and words of wisdom from Mohandas Gandhi.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India’s independence from British rule, and to later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma (Sanskrit: “great-souled”, “venerable”), first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, is now used throughout the world. 

Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, Gandhi trained in the law at the Inner Temple, London, and was called to the bar at age 22 in June 1891. After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to live in South Africa for 21 years. It was here that Gandhi raised a family and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India and soon set about organizing peasants, farmers, and urban laborers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination.

Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women’s rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and, above all, achieving swaraj or self-rule. Gandhi adopted the short dhoti woven with hand-spun yarn as a mark of identification with India’s rural poor. He began to live in a self-sufficient residential community, to eat simple food, and undertake long fasts as a means of both introspection and political protest. Bringing anti-colonial nationalism to the common Indians, Gandhi led them in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930 and in calling for the British to quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned many times and for many years in both South Africa and India.

Gandhi’s vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early 1940s by a Muslim nationalism which demanded a separate homeland for Muslims within British India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Abstaining from the official celebration of independence, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to alleviate distress. In the months following, he undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence. The last of these, begun in Delhi on 12 January 1948 when he was 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan. Although the Government of India relented, as did the religious rioters, the belief that Gandhi had been too resolute in his defense of both Pakistan and Indian Muslims, especially those besieged in Delhi, spread among some Hindus in India. Among these was Nathuram Godse, a militant Hindu nationalist from western India, who assassinated Gandhi by firing three bullets into his chest at an interfaith prayer meeting in Delhi on 30 January 1948. 

Gandhi’s birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence. Gandhi is commonly, though not formally, considered the Father of the Nation in India and was commonly called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for father, papa).

  • Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
  • You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
  • Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
  • Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
  • The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
  • You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
  • A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
  • A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
  • There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.
  • I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.
  • You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.
  • Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?
  • Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.
  • There is more to life than increasing its speed.
  • Man’s nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.
  • All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.
  • Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

 

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.11.18.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.11.18.2022

Friday Filosophy v.11.18.2022 offers quotes and words of wisdom from the Dalai Lama.

Dalai Lama is a title given by the Tibetan people to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or “Yellow Hat” school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and current Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso, who lives as a refugee in India. The Dalai Lama is also considered to be the successor in a line of tulkus who are believed to be incarnations of Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. 

Since the time of the 5th Dalai Lama in the 17th century, his personage has always been a symbol of unification of the state of Tibet, where he has represented Buddhist values and traditions. The Dalai Lama was an important figure of the Geluk tradition, which was politically and numerically dominant in Central Tibet, but his religious authority went beyond sectarian boundaries. While he had no formal or institutional role in any of the religious traditions, which were headed by their own high lamas, he was a unifying symbol of the Tibetan state, representing Buddhist values and traditions above any specific school. The traditional function of the Dalai Lama as an ecumenical figure, holding together disparate religious and regional groups, has been taken up by the fourteenth Dalai Lama. He has worked to overcome sectarian and other divisions in the exiled community and has become a symbol of Tibetan nationhood for Tibetans both in Tibet and in exile. 

From 1642 until 1705 and from 1750 to the 1950s, the Dalai Lamas or their regents headed the Tibetan government (or Ganden Phodrang) in Lhasa, which governed all or most of the Tibetan Plateau with varying degrees of autonomy. This Tibetan government enjoyed the patronage and protection of firstly Mongol kings of the Khoshut and Dzungar Khanates (1642–1720) and then of the emperors of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1720–1912). In 1913, several Tibetan representatives including Agvan Dorzhiev signed a treaty between Tibet and Mongolia, proclaiming mutual recognition and their independence from China, however the legitimacy of the treaty and declared independence of Tibet was rejected by both the Republic of China and the current People’s Republic of China. The Dalai Lamas headed the Tibetan government afterwards despite that, until 1951. 

The name “Dalai Lama” is a combination of the Mongolic word dalai meaning “ocean” or “big” (coming from Mongolian title Dalaiyin qan or Dalaiin khan, translated as Gyatso  and the Tibetan word (bla-ma) meaning “master, guru”.[15]

The Dalai Lama is also known in Tibetan as the Rgyal-ba Rin-po-che (“Precious Conqueror”) or simply as the Rgyal-ba. 

In Central Asian Buddhist countries, it has been widely believed for the last millennium that Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, has a special relationship with the people of Tibet and intervenes in their fate by incarnating as benevolent rulers and teachers such as the Dalai Lamas. This is according to The Book of Kadam, the main text of the Kadampa school, to which the 1st Dalai Lama, Gendun Drup, first belonged. In fact, this text is said to have laid the foundation for the Tibetans’ later identification of the Dalai Lamas as incarnations of Avalokiteśvara. 

It traces the legend of the bodhisattva’s incarnations as early Tibetan kings and emperors such as Songtsen Gampo and later as Dromtönpa (1004–1064). 

This lineage has been extrapolated by Tibetans up to and including the Dalai Lamas. 

Thus, according to such sources, an informal line of succession of the present Dalai Lamas as incarnations of Avalokiteśvara stretches back much further than Gendun Drub. The Book of Kadam, the compilation of Kadampa teachings largely composed around discussions between the Indian sage Atiśa (980–1054) and his Tibetan host and chief disciple Dromtönpa and Tales of the Previous Incarnations of Arya Avalokiteśvara, nominate as many as sixty persons prior to Gendun Drub who are enumerated as earlier incarnations of Avalokiteśvara and predecessors in the same lineage leading up to him. In brief, these include a mythology of 36 Indian personalities plus 10 early Tibetan kings and emperors, all said to be previous incarnations of Dromtönpa, and fourteen further Nepalese and Tibetan yogis and sages in between him and the 1st Dalai Lama. In fact, according to the “Birth to Exile” article on the 14th Dalai Lama’s website, he is “the seventy-fourth in a lineage that can be traced back to a Brahmin boy who lived in the time of Buddha Shakyamuni.” 

  • Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.
  • Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.
  • Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
  • Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.
  • My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.
  • We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.
  • Sleep is the best meditation.
  • Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.
  • It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.
  • Home is where you feel at home and are treated well.
  • With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.
  • The basic Buddhist stand on the question of equality between the genders is age-old. At the highest tantric levels, at the highest esoteric level, you must respect women: every woman.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.11.11.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.11.11.2022

In Friday Filosophy v.11.11.2022, our Founder, Ron Slee, shares quotes and words of wisdom from the Buddha.

Gautama Buddha (also Siddhartha Gautama, Siddhartha Gotama; Shakyamuni, Sakkamuni; and The Buddha) was an ascetic and spiritual teacher of South Asia who lived during the 6th or 5th century BCE. He was the founder of Buddhism and is revered by Buddhists as a fully enlightened being who taught a path to Nirvana, freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth and suffering.

According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha was born in Lumbini in what is now Nepal, to highborn parents of the Shakya clan, but abandoned his family to live as a wandering ascetic. Leading a life of begging, asceticism, and meditation, he attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya. The Buddha thereafter wandered through the lower Gangetic plain, teaching and building a monastic order. He taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, a training of the mind that included ethical training and meditative practices such as effort, mindfulness, and jhana. He died in Kushinagar, attaining Para nirvana. The Buddha has since been venerated by numerous religions and communities across Asia.

Several centuries after the Buddha’s death, his teachings were compiled by the Buddhist community in the Vinaya, his codes for monastic practice, and the Suttas, texts based on his discourses. These were passed down in Middle Indo-Aryan dialects through an oral tradition. Later generations composed additional texts, such as systematic treatises known as Abhidharma, biographies of the Buddha, collections of stories about his past lives known as Jataka tales, and additional discourses, i.e. the Mahayana sutras. 

Most of them accept that the Buddha lived, taught, and founded a monastic order during the Mahajan pada era and during the reign of Bimbi Sara (c. 558 – c. 491 BCE, or c. 400 BCE), the ruler of the Magadha empire, and died during the early years of the reign of Ajatashatru, who was the successor of Bimbi Sara, thus making him a younger contemporary of Mahavira, the Jain tirthankara. There is less consensus on the veracity of many details contained in traditional biographies, as ” “Buddhist scholars […] have mostly given up trying to understand the historical person.” 

The dates of Gautama’s birth and death are uncertain. Most historians in the early 20th century dated his lifetime as c. 563 BCE to 483 BCE. Within the Eastern Buddhist tradition of China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan, the traditional date for the death of the Buddha was 949 BCE. According to the Ka-tan system of time calculation in the Kalachakra tradition, Buddha is believed to have died about 833 BCE.[31] More recently his death is dated later, between 411 and 400 BCE, while at a symposium on this question held in 1988, the majority of those who presented definite opinions gave dates within 20 years either side of 400 BCE for the Buddha’s death. These alternative chronologies, however, have not been accepted by all historians. 

  • Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
  • Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
  • Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
  • We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.
  • Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
  • It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.
  • You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
  • With fools, there is no companionship. Rather than to live with men who are selfish, vain, quarrelsome, and obstinate, let a man walk alone.
  • Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
  • Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.
  • A woman of the world is anxious to exhibit her form and shape, whether walking, standing, sitting, or sleeping. Even when represented as a picture, she desires to captivate with the charms of her beauty and, thus, to rob men of their steadfast heart.
  • However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?
  • I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.
  • Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.11.04.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.11.04.2022

Friday Filosophy v.11.04.2022 brings quotes and words of wisdom from the Chinese philosopher and poet, Lao Tzu.

Lao Tzu was an ancient Chinese philosopher and poet, well-known for penning the book Tao Te Ching. He was the founder of philosophy of Taoism, a religious and ethical custom of ancient China. He is largely respected as a religious deity in various traditional Chinese religious schools of thought. He is also believed by some to be an older contemporary of the famous philosopher Confucius.

Lao Tzu’s journey began as he set foot towards the western border of China, currently Tibet. He was saddened by what he saw around him: men being diverted away from nature and the goodness it brings. A guard he met on the border asked Lao to write down his teachings as he went. This is when he wrote the famous Tao Te Ching, a 5,000-character account of his thoughts and philosophical ideas.

Like various ancient Chinese philosophers, Lao Tzu made use of rhyme and rhythm, paradoxes and interesting analogies to get his point across in Tao Te Ching. In reality, the entire book can be considered as one great analogy.

The ‘Tao Te Ching’, literally meaning ‘The Way and Its Power’ presents the idea of ‘Tao’ as being the end all and be all of existence. It is extremely powerful, yet down to earth. It is the source of all being in the world. The book intends to guide people on how to return to the laws and ways of nature to maintain the balance of the Tao.

Tzu is also the father of the Taoist philosophy. Taoism, along with Buddhism and Confucianism, is the pillar of ancient Chinese thought. It is not only a customary philosophy, but it has also taken the shape of a properly organized religion. Though the two elements of religion and philosophy are separate, they are profoundly connected. Lao Tzu’s teachings have encompassed the depths of both.

Taoism focuses on leading life according to ‘Tao’ or ‘the path’. It encapsulates moral, ethical and religious Chinese customs. Tao is a concept not exclusive to Taoism; it is also found in various other Chinese philosophies. In Taoism however, it plays a major role. As per Taoism, Tao is deep and overwhelming; it is the all-encompassing. It is both the cause and the effect of every existing thing in the world.

Lao Tzu’s philosophy was a simple one. He was against putting effort and striving, as he thought struggle is not only futile but also hinders productivity. In his theory of ‘wu-wei’, he advises to simply do nothing. By this he means not to go against the forces of nature, wait for the gush of events nature brings to you and dive right in. He advised not to struggle to change the natural order of things, but to bring spontaneity to one’s actions as one holds on to the nature’s way of life. Followers of Taoism believe that striving for nothing will never lead them to failure. The one who has never failed is always successful, thus becoming powerful.

By understanding this principle, Taoist debates against Confucianism and its endeavors at domination and standardization of all aspects of life, and strives for a lone, deep meditation among nature. Taoists believed that through contemplation, nature will grant them the keys unlocking the powers of the universe. The logic of ‘doing nothing and achieving everything’ reached the rulers and affected the way the kings treated the masses. Thus, in a subtle way, Taoism took shape of a political philosophy.

Lao Tzu’s works have continued to influence individuals and anti-authoritarian campaigns around the world. Belonging to the sixth century, Lao Tzu, a title given to the great philosopher meaning ‘Old Teacher’, taught the world the importance of the ways of nature and how embracing the principle of doing nothing can help achieve everything.

  • A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.
  • Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
  • Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
  • To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.
  • Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
  • Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
  • Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.
  • When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
  • When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
  • He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.
  • Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.
  • I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
  • Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.
  • In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.
  • At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.10.28.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.10.28.2022

In Friday Filosophy v.10.28.2022, our Founder Ron Slee shares quotes and words of wisdom from the economist Edmund Burke.

Edmund Burke; 12 January 1729 – 9 July 1797 was an Irish–British statesman, economist, and philosopher. Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of Parliament (MP) between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party.

Burke was a proponent of underpinning virtues with manners in society and of the importance of religious institutions for the moral stability and good of the state. These views were expressed in his A Vindication of Natural Society. He criticized the actions of the British government towards the American colonies, including its taxation policies. Burke also supported the rights of the colonists to resist metropolitan authority, although he opposed the attempt to achieve independence. He is remembered for his support for Catholic emancipation, the impeachment of Warren Hastings from the East India Company, and his staunch opposition to the French Revolution.

In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke asserted that the revolution was destroying the fabric of good society and traditional institutions of state and society and condemned the persecution of the Catholic Church that resulted from it. This led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig Party which he dubbed the Old Whigs as opposed to the pro–French Revolution New Whigs led by Charles James Fox. 

In the 19th century, Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals. Subsequently, in the 20th century, he became widely regarded, especially in the United States, as the philosophical founder of conservatism.  

In 1744, Burke started at Trinity College Dublin, a Protestant establishment which up until 1793 did not permit Catholics to take degrees. In 1747, he set up a debating society Edmund Burke’s Club which in 1770 merged with TCD’s Historical Club to form the College Historical Society, the oldest undergraduate society in the world. The minutes of the meetings of Burke’s Club remain in the collection of the Historical Society. Burke graduated from Trinity in 1748. Burke’s father wanted him to read Law and with this in mind he went to London in 1750, where he entered the Middle Temple, before soon giving up legal study to travel in Continental Europe. After eschewing the Law, he pursued a livelihood through writing. 

In 1757, Burke published a treatise on aesthetics titled A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful that attracted the attention of prominent Continental thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant. It was his only purely philosophical work and when asked by Sir Joshua Reynolds and French Laurence to expand it thirty years later, Burke replied that he was no longer fit for abstract speculation (Burke had written it before he was nineteen years of age). 

On 12 March 1757, Burke married Jane Mary Nugent (1734–1812), daughter of Dr. Christopher Nugent, a Catholic physician who had provided him with medical treatment at Bath. Their son Richard was born on 9 February 1758 while an elder son, Christopher, died in infancy. Burke also helped raise a ward, Edmund Nagle (later Admiral Sir Edmund Nagle), the son of a maternal cousin orphaned in 1763. 

At about this same time, Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton (known as “Single-speech Hamilton”). When Hamilton was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, Burke accompanied him to Dublin as his private secretary, a position he held for three years. In 1765, Burke became private secretary to the liberal Whig politician Charles, Marquess of Rockingham, then Prime Minister of Great Britain, who remained Burke’s close friend and associate until his untimely death in 1782.

  • Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
  • The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
  • When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
  • The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
  • All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
  • The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
  • Beauty is the promise of happiness.
  • To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
  • Good order is the foundation of all things.
  • People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
  • To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
  • No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
  • The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
  • Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
  • He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
  • We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
  • But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
  • Whatever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.
  • When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
  • Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
  • It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.
  • Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
  • Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.10.21.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.10.21.2022

In Friday Filosophy v.10.21.2022, Founder Ron Slee shares quotes and words of wisdom from the economist Ken Galbraith.

John Kenneth Galbraith OC (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006), also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official, and intellectual. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s. As an economist, he leaned toward post-Keynesian economics from an institutionalist perspective. 

Galbraith was a long-time Harvard faculty member and stayed with Harvard University for half a century as a professor of economics. He was a prolific author and wrote four dozen books, including several novels, and published more than a thousand articles and essays on various subjects. Among his works was a trilogy on economics, American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), and The New Industrial State (1967). Some of his work has been criticized by economists Milton Friedman, Paul Krugman, Robert Solow, and Thomas Sowell.

Galbraith was active in Democratic Party politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. He served as United States Ambassador to India under the Kennedy administration. His political activism, literary output and outspokenness brought him wide fame during his lifetime. Galbraith was one of the few to receive both the World War II Medal of Freedom (1946) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2000) for his public service and contributions to science. The government of France made him a Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur.

In autumn 1972, Galbraith was an adviser and assistant to Nixon’s rival candidate, Senator George McGovern, in the election campaign for the American presidency. During this time (September 1972) he travelled to China in his role as president of the American Economic Association (AEA) at the invitation of Mao Zedong‘s communist government, together with fellow economists Wassily Leontief and James Tobin. In 1973, Galbraith published an account of his experiences in A China Passage, writing that there was “no serious doubt that China is devising a highly effective economic system,” “dissidents are brought firmly into line in China, but, one suspects, with great politeness,” and “Greater Shanghai … has a better medical service than New York,”. He considered it not implausible that Chinese industrial and agricultural output was expanding annually at a rate of 10 to 11%.

In 1972 he served as president of the American Economic Association. The Journal of Post Keynesian Economics benefited from Galbraith’s support and he served as the chairman of its board from its beginning. 

During the shooting of The World at War, a British television documentary series (1973–74), Galbraith described his experiences in the Roosevelt war administration. Among other things, he spoke about the initial confusion during the first meeting of the major departmental leaders about kapok and its use. Galbraith also talked about rationing and especially about trickery during fuel allocation.

In December 1977, he met the Palauan senator Roman Tmetuchl and eventually became an unpaid adviser to the Palau Political Status Commission. He advocated for minimal financial requirement and infrastructure projects. In 1979 he addressed Palau’s legislature and participated in a seminar for the delegates to the Palau Constitutional Convention. He became the first person to earn honorary citizenship of Palau. 

In 1984, he visited the USSR, writing that the Soviet economy had made “great material progress” as, “in contrast to Western industrial economy,” the USSR “makes full use of its manpower.” 

In 1985, the American Humanist Association named him the Humanist of the Year. The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) conferred its 1987 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies. 

In 1997 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2000 he was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. He also was awarded an honorary doctorate from Memorial University of Newfoundland at the fall convocation of 1999, another contribution to the impressive collection of approximately fifty academic honorary degrees bestowed upon Galbraith. In 2000, he was awarded the Leontief Prize for his outstanding contribution to economic theory by the Global Development and Environment Institute. The library in his hometown of Dutton, Ontario was renamed the John Kenneth Galbraith Reference Library in honor of his attachment to the library and his contributions to the new building.

On April 29, 2006, Galbraith died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of natural causes at the age of 97, after a two-week stay in a hospital. He is interred at Indian Hill Cemetery in Middletown, Connecticut.

  • Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.
  • The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
  • In economics, the majority is always wrong.
  • The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
  • Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
  • All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
  • The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
  • Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.
  • We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
  • Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
  • We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.
  • Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.
  • Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.10.14.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.10.14.2022

Milton Friedman; (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. With George Stigler and others, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the mid-1970s, when it turned to new classical macroeconomics  heavily based on the concept of rational expectations. Several students, young professors and academics who were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists, including Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, Thomas Sowell and Robert Lucas Jr.

Friedman’s challenges to what he later called “naive Keynesian theory” began with his interpretation of consumption, which tracks how consumers spend. He introduced a theory which would later become part of the mainstream and among the first to propagate the theory of consumption smoothing. During the 1960s, he became the main advocate opposing Keynesian government policies, and described his approach (along with mainstream economics) as using “Keynesian language and apparatus” yet rejecting its initial conclusions. He theorized that there existed a natural rate of unemployment and argued that unemployment below this rate would cause inflation to accelerate. He argued that the Phillips curve was in the long run vertical at the “natural rate” and predicted what would come to be known as stagflation. Friedman promoted a macroeconomic viewpoint known as Monetarism and argued that a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the preferred policy, as compared to rapid, and unexpected changes. 

His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s. His monetary theory influenced the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy in response to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008.

After retiring from the University of Chicago in 1977, and becoming Emeritus professor in economics in 1983, Friedman was an advisor to Republican President Ronald Reagan and Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. His political philosophy extolled the virtues of a free market economic system with minimal government intervention in social matters. He once stated that his role in eliminating conscription in the United States was his proudest achievement. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated policies such as a volunteer military, freely floating exchange rates, abolition of medical licenses, a negative income tax, and school vouchers and opposition to the war on drugs and support for drug liberalization policies. His support for school choice led him to found the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, later renamed EdChoice.

Friedman’s works cover a broad range of economic topics and public policy issues. His books and essays have had global influence, including in former communist states. A 2011 survey of economists commissioned by the EJW ranked Friedman as the second-most popular economist of the 20th century, following only John Maynard Keynes. Upon his death, The Economist described him as “the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century … possibly of all of it”.

  • If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.
  • Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
  • When government – in pursuit of good intentions – tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.
  • I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The one thing that’s missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash – a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B without A knowing B or B knowing A.
  • The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties’ benefit.
  • Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property.
  • The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
  • So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
  • Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it… gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
  • Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
  • And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you’ll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.10.07.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.10.07.2022

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, CB, FBA; (5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946) was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in mathematics, he built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles. One of the most influential economists of the 20th century, he produced writings that are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots. His ideas, reformulated as New Keynesianism, are fundamental to mainstream macroeconomics.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking, challenging the ideas of neoclassical economics that held that free markets would, in the short to medium term, automatically provide full employment, as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands. He argued that aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) determined the overall level of economic activity, and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment, and since wages and labor costs are rigid downwards the economy will not automatically rebound to full employment. Keynes advocated the use of fiscal and monetary policies to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. He detailed these ideas in his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in late 1936. By the late 1930s, leading Western economies had begun adopting Keynes’s policy recommendations. Almost all capitalist governments had done so by the end of the two decades following Keynes’s death in 1946. As a leader of the British delegation, Keynes participated in the design of the international economic institutions established after the end of World War II but was overruled by the American delegation on several aspects.

Keynes’s influence started to wane in the 1970s, partly as a result of the stagflation that plagued the Anglo–American economies during that decade, and partly because of criticism of Keynesian policies by Milton Friedman and other monetarists, who disputed the ability of government to favorably regulate the business cycle with fiscal policy. However, the advent of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 sparked a resurgence in Keynesian thought. Keynesian economics provided the theoretical underpinning for economic policies undertaken in response to the financial crisis of 2007–2008 by President Barack Obama of the United States, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom, and other heads of governments. 

When Time magazine included Keynes among its Most Important People of the Century in 1999, it stated that “his radical idea that governments should spend money they don’t have may have saved capitalism.” The Economist has described Keynes as “Britain’s most famous 20th-century economist.” In addition to being an economist, Keynes was also a civil servant, a director of the Bank of England, and a part of the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. 

  • The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
  • Ideas shape the course of history.
  • Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.
  • Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
  • By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
  • The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
  • Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.
  • The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.
  • There is no harm in being sometimes wrong – especially if one is promptly found out.
  • Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
  • For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
  • If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.
  • Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
  • The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn’t deliver the goods.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.09.30.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.09.30.2022

David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British politician and lobbyist who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Witney from 2001 to 2016 and leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He identifies as a one-nation conservative, and has been associated with both economically liberal and socially liberal policies.

Born in London to an upper-middle-class family, Cameron was educated at Heatherdown School, Eton College, and Brasenose College, Oxford. From 1988 to 1993 he worked at the Conservative Research Department, latterly assisting the Conservative Prime Minister John Major, before leaving politics to work for Carlton Communications in 1994. Becoming an MP in 2001, he served in the opposition shadow cabinet under Conservative leader Michael Howard, and succeeded Howard in 2005. Cameron sought to rebrand the Conservatives, embracing an increasingly socially liberal position, and introducing the “A-List” to increase the number of female and minority ethnic Conservative MPs. Following the 2010 general election, negotiations led to Cameron becoming prime minister as the head of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats – the youngest holder of the office since the 1810s. His premiership was marked by the ongoing effects of the late-2000s financial crisis; these involved a large deficit in government finances that his government sought to reduce through austerity measures. His administration passed the Health and Social Care Act and the Welfare Reform Act, which introduced large-scale changes to healthcare and welfare. It also enforced stricter immigration policies, introduced reforms to education and oversaw the 2012 London Olympics. It privatized the Royal Mail and some other state assets, and legalized same-sex marriage in England and Wales.

Internationally, Cameron’s government intervened militarily in the First Libyan Civil War and authorized the bombing of the Islamic State. Domestically, his government oversaw the referendum on voting reform and Scottish independence referendum, both of which confirmed Cameron’s favored outcome. When the Conservatives secured an unexpected majority in the 2015 general election, he remained as prime minister, this time leading a Conservative-only government. To fulfil a manifesto pledge, he introduced a referendum on the UK’s continuing membership of the EU. Cameron supported continued membership; following the success of the Leave vote, he resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Theresa May. Cameron has been the president of Alzheimer’s Research UK since 2017. 

Cameron has been praised for modernizing the Conservative Party and for decreasing the United Kingdom’s national deficit. However, he has been criticized for his decision to hold the referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, which led to political instability in the UK during the late 2010s. He has also been accused of elitism and political opportunism. After leaving office, he was implicated in the Greensill scandal after lobbying government ministers and civil servants on behalf of Greensill Capital.

  • I believe that in life, you have to give things your best shot, do your best. You have to focus on what needs to be done, do the right thing, not the popular thing.
  • The economy is the start and end of everything. You can’t have successful education reform or any other reform if you don’t have a strong economy.
  • Today, hundreds of millions dwell in freedom, from the Baltic to the Adriatic, from the Western Approaches to the Aegean. And while we must never take this for granted, the first purpose of the European Union – to secure peace – has been achieved and we should pay tribute to all those in the EU, alongside NATO, who made that happen.
  • Christmas gives us the opportunity to pause and reflect on the important things around us – a time when we can look back on the year that has passed and prepare for the year ahead.
  • My view is, the most important thing as prime minister is trying to make the right judgments. In order to make good judgments, you need good advice; you need good principles, and you need a clear head, and you need to have a sense of equilibrium.
  • The political system is broken, the economy is broken and so is society. That is why people are so depressed about the state of our country.
  • After the Berlin Wall came down, I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.
  • If you lose control of your debt and deficit, you get massive cuts in things such as health and education. You get appalling insecurity, jobs lost, firms going overseas.
  • I was the future once.
  • I don’t just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too. So, I speak as British prime minister with a positive vision for the future of the European Union. A future in which Britain wants, and should want, to play a committed and active part.
  • From Caesar’s legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of Nazism. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours.
  • But we will say something else. That for far too long in this country, people who can work, people who are able to work, and people who choose not to work: you cannot go on claiming welfare like you are now.
  • Let me completely condemn these sickening scenes; scenes of looting, scenes of vandalism, scenes of thieving, scenes of people attacking police, of people even attacking firefighters. This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted.
  • The best route out of poverty, to avoid food bank usage, is to make sure more people get a job.
  • You don’t have to be a brilliant historian to know that in Europe, messing with countries’ borders, messing with their self-determination, their ability to choose their own futures, this is extremely dangerous, and that’s why I think it is important to stand up to Putin.

The Time is Now.

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