You Become Like Your Friends
“Nature gave us friendship,” Cicero wrote, “as an aid to virtue, not as a companion to vice.”What he meant was that friends are supposed to make you better, not make you worse. Friends are supposed to...
12 Nov 20181min
Get Yourself Under Control
It was Heraclitus--a favorite of Marcus Aurelius--who said that “to be self-controlled is the greatest of excellence.” Isn’t that the truth? It’s why we admire athletes and Navy SEALS and the Civil Ri...
9 Nov 20182min
We Have So Much In Common
In a very short period around 2003, the musician Rosanne Cash lost her sister, her step mother, her father , and her mother. It was a series of blows that rocked her, even as stoic and strong as she w...
8 Nov 20183min
Your Hunger For Money Is Starving You
William MacAskill is a fascinating guy. He is the youngest Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He’s one of the founders of the Effective Altruism movement. He’s written a gr...
7 Nov 20182min
Each Of Us Has A Duty
In one sense, it’s hard to argue with the statistics that any individual’s vote makes a difference. One person out of so many? When more than 50% of the population doesn’t even bother? In a country of...
6 Nov 20183min
Let Us Argue With Reality No More
So much of what we do as a society could be described as arguing with reality. Turn on cable news and you’ll find talking heads screaming at their upset viewers about how whatever has happened as part...
5 Nov 20183min
Don’t Borrow Suffering
Here’s a line from Seneca: “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Meaning, we spend so much time worried about how bad things are going to be, that we actually torture ourselves more than th...
2 Nov 20183min
Let It Go, You’re Plenty Guilty Yourself
Like you’ve never cut in line, on purpose or on accident. Like you’ve never done something selfish or spoken with an attitude. Like you’ve never been jealous or petty or mean. Of course you have. You’...
1 Nov 20182min
