I just finished reading a book of aphorisms called The Authentic Reactionary: Selected Scholia of Nicolás Gómez Dávila. Banger after banger is found in this book. Dávila, a Colombian Catholic philosopher, was famous for writing what he called "scholia," short sentences that punch out ageless wisdom. Dávila took great care in crafting each sentence so he could be a transmitter of God's wisdom. Here are 20 of my favorites, with the bolded ones making me say "wow" while reading:
Great stuff, Peter. I am still pretty early dipping into Dávila, but also finding him so illuminating. And I love short form (flash) philosophy. A favorite banger of his I once shared in CJ:
“A man does not communicate with another man except when the one writes in his solitude and the other reads him in his. Conversations are either a diversion, a swindle, or a fencing match.”
The aphorisms are all that. And your philosophical presence is music to my ears. You may want to check out Adam Robbert's work at Other Life on askesis and perception. He is the lineage of Hadot et al but with a nice new spin on the ball.
Great stuff here, Peter. Thanks for sharing. A few of the aphorisms called to mind a Yuval Noah Harari quote that has been lingering with me for some days now (from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ord6DW-TIAc):
"Ten thousand years ago—which is nothing, in evolutionary terms—life is almost four billion years old, so 10,000 years is nothing. Ten thousand years ago, our ancestors numbered maybe 10 million people all over the world. And their best technologies were flint knives and spears. Now, we have almost 10 billion people, and we have nuclear missiles and spaceships and supercomputers and so forth. We are thousands of times more powerful. It should be said, though, that we are not significantly happier. And that's a very important thing to realize about history and about life in general. That power and happiness don't always go together. Humans are extremely good at acquiring more power, but we are not good at all in translating power into happiness. So, we are thousands of times more powerful than our ancestors in the Stone Age, but we are not thousands of times more happy. And as we look to the future, I think it's likely that we will become even more powerful in the future. We will be like gods in terms of the power we have. But we will probably be dissatisfied gods, miserable gods."
“Modern history is the dialogue between two men: one who believes in God, the other who believes he is god.” - this could have been the opening quote of my post today. And, lol.
"Instead of humanizing technology, the modern prefers to technify humanity."
Love this! This reminds me of the way bureaucracies tend to push people to conform - variance leads requires more energy to process, leading to organizational "gravity" towards unifying "inputs" i.e. human beings.
Dimension-reducing people and fitting them to molds is a ubiquitous issue
Great stuff, Peter. I am still pretty early dipping into Dávila, but also finding him so illuminating. And I love short form (flash) philosophy. A favorite banger of his I once shared in CJ:
“A man does not communicate with another man except when the one writes in his solitude and the other reads him in his. Conversations are either a diversion, a swindle, or a fencing match.”
The aphorisms are all that. And your philosophical presence is music to my ears. You may want to check out Adam Robbert's work at Other Life on askesis and perception. He is the lineage of Hadot et al but with a nice new spin on the ball.
Great stuff here, Peter. Thanks for sharing. A few of the aphorisms called to mind a Yuval Noah Harari quote that has been lingering with me for some days now (from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ord6DW-TIAc):
"Ten thousand years ago—which is nothing, in evolutionary terms—life is almost four billion years old, so 10,000 years is nothing. Ten thousand years ago, our ancestors numbered maybe 10 million people all over the world. And their best technologies were flint knives and spears. Now, we have almost 10 billion people, and we have nuclear missiles and spaceships and supercomputers and so forth. We are thousands of times more powerful. It should be said, though, that we are not significantly happier. And that's a very important thing to realize about history and about life in general. That power and happiness don't always go together. Humans are extremely good at acquiring more power, but we are not good at all in translating power into happiness. So, we are thousands of times more powerful than our ancestors in the Stone Age, but we are not thousands of times more happy. And as we look to the future, I think it's likely that we will become even more powerful in the future. We will be like gods in terms of the power we have. But we will probably be dissatisfied gods, miserable gods."
Absolute fire! Thanks for the intro to Dávila with this.
Loved this piece! Thank you for writing philosophy that is practical and no bullshit
“Modern history is the dialogue between two men: one who believes in God, the other who believes he is god.” - this could have been the opening quote of my post today. And, lol.
"Instead of humanizing technology, the modern prefers to technify humanity."
Love this! This reminds me of the way bureaucracies tend to push people to conform - variance leads requires more energy to process, leading to organizational "gravity" towards unifying "inputs" i.e. human beings.
Dimension-reducing people and fitting them to molds is a ubiquitous issue
Yes, I realized belatedly that I had gotten to your work via Adam. Anyway, well met.