From Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, published just over a century ago. Our bad relationship with information and disinformation didn’t start with cable news or Twitter: … Man does not speak to man; the press and its associate, the electrical news-service, keep the waking-consciousness of whole peoples and continents under a deafening drum-fire of…
Tag: Education
Angela Merici & the Education of Women & Girls in the early 1500s
from Thomas Cahill: They were a group of well-born Lombardian ladies, led by Angela Merici, who came together to educate poor girls in the northern Italian city of Brescia. So far as I can ascertain, no one had ever thought to do this before them. In the same period, Anabaptist communities in Germany, Switzerland, and…
Eleanor Roosevelt Finds Herself
From Geoffrey Ward’s biography of the Roosevelts comes this moving account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Dickensian childhood, complete with neglectful mother and alcoholic father. Following the early death of both parents, the intervention of an aunt changes her life: …[Eleanor’s father] Elliott was delighted at her birth, and called her “Little Nell” after the relentlessly…
Tao Te Ching #81: “True words are not beautiful, beautiful words are not true”
True words are not beautiful, beautiful words are not true. The good are not argumentative, the argumentative are not good. Knowers do not generalize, generalists do not know. Sages do not accumulate anything but give everything to others, having more the more they give. The Way of heaven helps and does not harm. The Way…
Tao Te Ching #80: “the people go back to simple techniques”
A small state has few people. It has the people keep arms but not use them. It has them regard death gravely and not go on distant campaigns. Even if they have vehicles, they have nowhere to drive them. Even if they have weapons, they have nowhere to use them. It has the people go…
Tao Te Ching #79: “Therefore sages keep their faith and do not pressure others”
When you harmonize bitter enemies, yet resentment is sure to linger, how can this be called good? Therefore sages keep their faith and do not pressure others. So the virtuous see to their promises, while the virtueless look after precedents. The Way of heaven is impersonal it is always with good people. – Thomas Cleary…
Tao Te Ching #78: “So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful”
Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it. This is why…
Tao Te Ching #77: “The Way of heaven reduces excess and fills need, but the way of humans is not so”
The Way of heaven is like drawing a bow: the high is lowered, the low is raised; excess is reduced, need is fulfilled. The Way of heaven reduces excess and fills need, but the way of humans is not so: they strip the needy to serve those who have too much. – Thomas Cleary …
Tao Te Ching #76: “Let strength and might be put below, and tender, gentle in control”
When people are born they are supple, and when they die they are stiff. When trees are born they are tender, and when they die they are brittle. Stiffness is thus a companion of death, flexibility a companion of life. So when an army is strong, it does not prevail. When a tree is strong,…
Tao Te Ching #75: “Only those who do not contrive to live are wise in valuing life”
When people are starving, it is because their governments take too much, causing them to starve. When people are hard to control, it is because of the contrivances of their governments, which make them hard to control. When people slight death, it is because of the earnestness with which they seek life; that makes them…