Face to Face with Bertrand Russell: ‘Love is Wise, Hatred is Foolish’ Russell, of course, distinguished himself in that rarified world as one of the founders of analytic philosophy and a co-author of Principia Mathematica, a landmark work that sought to derive all of mathematics from a set of logical axioms.
Although the Principia fell short of its goal, it made an enormous mark on the course of 20th century thought. When World War I came along, though, Russell felt it was time to come down from the ivory tower of abstract thinking. "This world is too bad," Russell told Freeman. "We must notice it. " The half-hour conversation, shown above in its entirety, is of a quality rarely seen on television today.
I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral: The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple. Related content: Take Ownership of Your Actions by Taking Responsibility - John Coleman. By John Coleman | 7:00 AM August 30, 2012 Are you stalled in a project at work, waiting on someone else to take initiative to get things moving?
Are you in a broken professional relationship — with a manager, coworker, or employee — hoping the other person assumes blame and fixes the issue? Are you looking for an easy way to get focused or improve your productivity — a silver bullet from an unexpected source? One of the most common momentum killers I’ve seen in my professional life is our propensity to wait for someone else to act, take initiative, assume blame, or take charge. But very often, no help comes. One year ago, I heard Tal Ben-Shahar speak about this concept; he learned it from Nathaniel Branden, the father of the self-esteem movement. It’s a liberating concept. This may be particularly important for young leaders, often characterized as a coddled generation. But leaders of all ages could afford to act as if help is not coming more often. A Liberal Decalogue: Bertrand Russell's 10 Commandments of Teaching.
Happy Birthday, Milton Glaser: The Greatest Graphic Designer Alive on Art, Purpose, and the Capacity for Astonishment. By Maria Popova “That’s the great benefit of being in the arts, where the possibility for learning never disappears.”
Today marks the 83rd birthday of Milton Glaser, considered by many — myself included — the greatest graphic designer alive, and frequently celebrated alongside Saul Bass as the most influential graphic designer of all time. Today also marks 10 weeks since beloved Brooklyn-based designer, author, and filmmaker Hillman Curtis passed away after a fiercely fought battle with cancer. Last week, I joined much of New York’s design community in a celebration of Hillman’s films, among which is his extraordinary artist series profiling prominent creators. So, today, let’s take a bittersweet moment to celebrate a great legacy and a great life with Hillman Curtis’s beautiful and affectionate profile of Milton Glaser: Glaser adds to this omnibus of history’s finest definitions of art: If you can sustain your interest in what you’re doing, you’re an extremely fortunate person. The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning.
By Maria Popova “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
The poet John Keats once described the ideal state of the psyche as negative capability — the ability “of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” “The truth of life is its mystery,” echoed Joyce Carol Oates. This comfort with mystery and the unknown, indeed, is at the heart not only of poetic existence but also of the most rational of human intellectual endeavors, as many of history’s greatest scientific minds have attested. And yet, caught between the opinion culture we live in and our deathly fear of being wrong, we long desperately for absolutism, certitude, and perfect truth. Authors Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham describe the spirituality of imperfection as “a spirituality of not having all the answers, stories convey the mystery and the miracle — the adventure — of being alive.”