The winter begins!
A Time of Leisure and Freedom
Friday, November 29, 2024
“I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.” Oliver Sacks, Gratitude
“The arts can turn a piece of banal knowledge into a truth that has the power to move us, when a hundred propositions leave us cold.”
Susan Neiman, The Left Is Not Woke
“Although Goethe was intimately connected to the social and cultural life of his time, he also knew how to maintain his individuality. His principle was to take in only as much of the world as he could process. Whatever he could not respond to in a productive way he chose to disregard. In other words, he was an expert at ignoring things.”
RUDIGER SAFRANSKI Goethe: Life as a Work of Art
A lot of wisdom packed into four sentences.
“Resistance is first of all a matter of principle and a way to live, to make yourself one small republic of unconquered spirit.”
Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
Charm vs Charisma
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Ian Leslie, on his Substack site The Ruffian, wrote an interesting article entitled “Are You Charismatic or Charming?". It made me start considering my teaching and writing style. Leslie writes: In a new book, Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics, the sociologist Julia Sonnevend argues that charm has superseded charisma to become the dominant political style of the twenty-first century. Charm thrives on proximity; on a sense that the politician would be at ease with the voter in person.