Stoicism as a Philosophy of Life. I think a lot of people who get interested in Stoicism are looking for a simple guide that tells them how to actually put it into practice in their daily lives. I’m going to try to explain in plain English how I actually make use of Stoicism myself, without any reference to Greek jargon or too many quotes from ancient texts. Stoicism is a pretty big subject. I could easily write a whole series of articles like this, focusing on different aspects of Stoic theory and practice applied to daily life. I’m going to keep this as simple as possible, though, to help you get started. If you’re completely new to this subject, all the background you need to know right now is that Stoicism is a school of Greek philosophy that was founded at the end of the fourth century BC by Zeno of Citium, and that it endured for about five centuries. The ancient Stoics who are best known today, though, lived during the time of the Roman empire: Seneca the Younger, Epictetus, and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. … (Stoicism by Don Robertson)
How a Bit of Awe Can Improve Your Health. Awe can mean many things. It can be witnessing a total solar eclipse. Or seeing your child take her first steps. Or hearing Lizzo perform live. But, while many of us know it when we feel it, awe is not easy to define. “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world,” said Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. It’s vast, yes. But awe is also simpler than we think — and accessible to everyone, he writes in his book “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.” … (The New York Times)
How to Focus Like It’s 1990. In 2004, Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, watched knowledge workers go about a typical day at the office. Using a stopwatch, she noted every time they switched tasks on their computer, moving from a spreadsheet to an email to a web page to a different web page and back to the spreadsheet. She found that people averaged just two and a half minutes on a given task before switching. When Dr. Mark repeated the experiment in 2012, the average time office workers spent on a task had dropped to 75 seconds. And it has continued to drop from there. “Our attention spans while on our computers and smartphones have become short — crazily short — as we now spend about 47 seconds on any screen on average,” Dr. Mark wrote in her new book, “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity.” … (New York Times)
Biological Naturalism and the Mind-Body Problem. [Jane Anderson writes] I am interested in how people’s minds work, and from an early age, I thought I would like to become a psychologist. After majoring in philosophy and psychology, I did an additional 1-year honours degree in psychology, intending to continue with a master’s, and register as a counselling psychologist. I took typical psychology modules such as Research Design and Data Analysis, and my research project was an investigation of the extent to which monolingual and bilingual children differed with respect to various cognitive capacities. … (New Work in Philosophy)
The Most Unbelievable Deaths of the Ancient World. A lot of things in our lives revolve around death. Paradoxically, it is one of the most important parts of life. The most powerful thing about it is the fact that it strikes everyone. It doesn’t matter how rich or handsome or intelligent you are – we are all heading towards the same destination.
Only a few of us, however, get to be laughed at by Grim Reaper from Horrible Histories. … (Classical Wisdom)
Such a nice, surprising (and relaxing!) reading potpourri on a quiet Sunday morning - thank you, Massimo!
I happened to notice the attention span thing once while watching some people at work. I originally attributed it to boredom or just being overly productive, but I was curious on whether or not MY attention span had changed. I used to focus intently on one thing, not getting easily distracted. But sure enough, while observing my own behavior, I noticed on several occasions the desire to want to switch to something else in a short amount of time. We seem to be getting more and more addicted to immediacy and instant gratification.
When writing this, it reminded me of something Marcus Aurelius wrote, (I had to look it up)
“Concentrate every minute like a Roman— like a man— on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions."