It’s a horror story featuring the "undefeatable monster" trope, but the monster this time is an undocumented species of giant human-eating snail. I guess Highsmith loved snails so much she had to have nightmares about them.
I'm honestly not sure where to start with this review. It feels a bit embarrassing to admit that I even spent time reading this book. There’s a cliché in it that you should "spend money and time on things that maximize your experience," and let’s just say reading this book did not hit that mark. But here we are—I’m a sucker for bestsellers, especially self-help ones.
The main takeaway from the book is this:
"For every additional day you spend working, you sacrifice an equivalent amount of free time, and during that time your health gradually declines."
The author pushes the idea of maximizing your life by spending all your money before you die—and timing it so you can actually enjoy what you buy. He defines 'life experience' as everything you do—daily, weekly, monthly, and those once-in-a-lifetime events—summing up to who you are.
He suggests that most of us would prefer doing anything but work if money wasn’t a worry—which probably rings true for many. But, ingrained work ethics from capitalism teach us to save and invest for a comfy retirement. The author views any money left unspent at death as a wasted life, pointing out all the missed opportunities for buying things or traveling the world. Instead, you end up too old to enjoy them or, dead.
This perspective makes me question, do I really have the privilege to think like this? Why should I let a well-off American dictate how I should live? This guy knows how to enjoy his life so well that he didn’t even write his own book—he hired someone, living out his preachings, to avoid the drudgery of work.
Despite how much I disliked this book, it ended with an unexpected twist of social commentary:
"Our culture's focus on work is like a seductive drug. It takes all your yearning for discovery and wonder and experiences, promising to give you the means (money) to get all those things—but the focus on the work and money becomes so single-minded and automatic that you forget what you were yearning for in the first place. The poison becomes the medicine—that’s nuts!"
Turns out, this book falls into the same category as "We Have Never Been Middle Class."
I'll concede that the book had some intriguing ideas, but they were presented in the wrong way, with a questionable tone, and felt too shallow. The ideas themselves aren't the problem—it’s fine to want to spend your money to maximize life experiences. The real issue is the numerous flaws in our capitalist society, which leaves us alone to face the consequences of our spending. Perhaps a truly supportive society would ensure that we can all aim to die with zero.
The early Buddhist path of practice has right view as its forerunner. Whereas right view does not necessarily require accepting rebirth on mere faith, it does require maintaining an open attitude to what is beyond the sphere of one’s direct verification and avoiding the adoption of a firm position that flatly denies rebirth.
The doctrine of rebirth is an integral and essential component of early Buddhist thought and cannot be reduced to a talking over of popular notions from the ancient Indian background. Tradition considers rebirth and its working mechanics to have been verified by the Buddha himself on the night of his awakening. Rebirth is also intrinsically intertwined with the different levels of awakening recognized in early Buddhist thought.
... only by way of desire, effort, and personal commitment can desirelessness be realised. Effort, as an expression of wholesome desire, leads along the path until with full realisation all desire will be abandoned.
The most ironic aspect of reading this book is that, despite the author's aim to dispel the fantasy of investing in all forms within the game of capitalism, I ended up starting more investments. And I actually want to reread it immediately.
I tried to watch the video, but gave up after just a few minutes, partly due to Goenka's accent and partly because I knew I would watch it later in the course. Then I learned about this book, so I read that instead. Intellectually, I knew most of the material, but it's good to be reminded of some concepts again and again. Still, I find reading Analayo's translation and explanation of Satipatthana more resonating.
I am reading the sort-of annotated version by Charles Severance, which is quite amazing. What's crazier is that Severance recorded the audio version of the book as podcast, even the code!
Previously, I said this book read like a transcript from the School of Life YouTube videos. I was wrong. I need to correct this statement: this book reads like a transcript from the School of Life TikTok videos. Disclaimer: I actually no longer subscribed to the former, and never watch any of the latter.
Going to Belgium next month to attend this 10-days mediation retreat! Should or shouldn't I read this book beforehand?
「国境の南（South of the Border）」も彼の歌で聴いた覚えがあって、その記憶をもとに『国境の南、太陽の西』という小説を書いたのだけれど、あとになってナット・キング・コールは「国境の南」を歌っていない（少なくともレコード録音はしていない）という指摘を受けた。「まさか」と思ってディスコグラフィーを調べてみたのだが、驚いたことにほんとうに歌っていない。ラテン・アルバムを何枚も出しているにもかかわらず、なぜか「国境の南」だけは洩もれているのだ。
そうなのか！……
To me, this is the most important message of Story of Your Life. Sadly, the movie adaptation chose to ignore it and created an unacceptable ending scene.
At the end I didn't read it. And now it's gone. :D
via hanki.dev
In Julia, you can write 3x+2y instead of 3*x+2*y. It's very nice to be able to write code that closely resembles the equation.
In the patriarchal traditions of Genesis, the deity is six times called El Shaddai (Gen 17:1, 28:3, 43:14, 48:3, 49:25, Ex 6:3). Other names are El Elyon (Gen 14:18-22, Ps 78:35), El Olam (Gen 21:33), El Roi (Gen 16:13), and El Bethel (Gen 31:13, 35:7). The common denominator in all of these is "El". El is the proper name of the head of the Canaanite pantheon, as revealed in literary works discovered in 1928 by a peasant at Ras Shamar (ancient Ugarit) in Syria.
Only in the Jewish Study Bible the Hebrew name El Shaddai is kept. In the Protestant bibles this name is rendered as God Almighty. Other names are generally rendered as God Most High, the Everlasting God, or something else. It’s hard to notice the names are different if one can’t read Hebrew and rely on translations.
I finished reading the book last night, slept on it, yet still can't shake off the feeling that ACT is simply a rebranding of Stoicism and Buddhism.
Reading "Rework" (again after many years, perhaps 10) right after "Getting Real" is not a good idea. There are simply too many overlaps. Some passages are even identical. I was hoping it would provide me with a framework to discuss our site as I read along, but it didn't.
Netanyahu: “You must remember what Amalek did to you,” says our Holy Bible.
Source: NBC news
This statement rekindles my interest in reading the Bible from a Jewish perspective. What does the scripture really say about Amalek? The fact that the Jewish Study Bible doesn't index the word "Amalek" is noteworthy (though it does index "Amalekites").
The quote above might have been taken from Deuteronomy 25:17-19:
Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey after you left Egypt. He showed no fear of God, surprised you on the march when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the LORD your God gives you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.
I found this funny that on one hand you are "blotting out the memory" of something yet on the other hand you "do not forget" about it. But it's actually not unfamiliar, especially for Chinese, as we blotted out the memory of June 4th, 1989 from the national narrative but also never forget it (see: Jiaqi Li's Tank Cake). That is, to forget but never forget why we forget. But I digress.
A less direct source of the quote, or the sentiments Netanyahu sought to evoke, might be from 1 Samuel 15:3:
Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one; kill men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses alike!
There's an annotation for the word "proscribe":
Proscription, practiced by Israel and other peoples in the ancient Near East, was a way of consecrating the fruits of victory to the deity; it meant exterminating all the people and all their belongings, as emphasised in the present v.
The translation the New Oxford Annotated Bible (New Revised Standard Version; NRSV) used rendered this verse slightly differently:
Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.
The annotation added (which is not in the Jewish interpretation):
The instructions are given explicitly here in anticipation of Saul's disobedience.
I am pretty sure that Netanyahu won't agree with this Protestant interpretation.
