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It is on evenings like these that I wish I hadn’t spent four years sitting inside lecture halls learning financial economics, when I could have been outside learning real economics.
the value of practical knowledge vs theoretic knowledge
Fly fishing is an art; in fact it’s more than an art. To do it well you need to become something of an ecologist. To know how to fly fish is to know your place.
great description
If it didn’t need permission to expose my mind to irresponsible, sexed-up marketing for an unhealthy, addictive product, does that mean I don’t need permission to put an axe through the advert the next time it drives by? My mind is private property too – perhaps the most private of property.
who gets to choose what we are exposed to
wanted meaning and purpose back in my life. So what did I go and do: I got a job on the assembly line of an American pharmaceutical company on an industrial estate in Galway, and went out drinking every night with the wages.
we so often want to make a difference but are paralyzed with fear or not knowing how, so we waste our time instead
Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
how we should approach life
I remember M. Scott Peck writing, at the beginning of A Road Less Travelled, that once you stop expecting life to be easy, life suddenly becomes a lot easier.
not forcing something, or being entitled
The philosopher Alain de Botton has said that ‘True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.’
one of the many dangers of our phones
It all reminds me of an old Irish proverb we’ll likely learn when it is too late: taréis a tuigtear gach beart. ‘We learn when it is too late’.
hilarious but also poignant
For as Sydney J. Harris once said, ‘the real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.’
already happening
Before I knew it I was reading books by Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Jared Diamond and Vandana Shiva. Work was no longer just work, it felt like a political act.
authors worth reading more of
As long as wages are high, desire for change is low.
this impairs us from knowing what we know too late
Thunder rumbles dramatically, and the rain comes down hard on the way home. I’m wet. I’m tired. I’m alive.
perspective. we often fear discomfort but it is often what tells us we are alive
It’s at times like these when I wish that my parents had made me push heavy wheelbarrows long distances in the rain when I was a child. That way I probably wouldn’t moan and complain about some of the unimportant, stupid stuff I moan and complain about today.
mental fortitude
On one hand they’re going to stop me from careering into an oncoming car and near-certain death; on the other hand, I’m painfully aware that they’re the fruit of a political ideology that is careering head first into a natural world it has forgotten its dependency on, and near-certain death.
analogy
I put the wheel back on, pump the tyres, oil the sprocket and clean out the dirt from the derailleur. It’s in good shape. There’s a strong argument for not using a bike, but there’s no argument for not looking after it well.
taking care of our possessions/ tools so we aren't contributing to a throw away culture
Alexander Langlands documents in his book Cræft.
book to look into
And so now the only people keeping the Great Blasket’s paths alive are tourists, like me, who gawk at the ruined remnants of a people made extinct by the homogenising, all-consuming factories of industrial civilisation. And to think that we call the people who drive such extinctions ‘innovators’.
questioning progress
Once you slow down, good hand-writing becomes easier. Once you slow down, good anything becomes easier.
is there anything this likely isn't true of?
Paul Kingsnorth’s first novel, The Wake, a post-apocalyptic story set in 1066
book to loom into
At a time when the UN is declaring that the internet is a basic human right, the most basic right of all – to build a simple shelter where you can feed yourself and your family – seems to be drifting further out of reach than ever there. And pretty much everywhere.
this seems a frightening prospect
I’m reminded of Aldo Leopold’s words: ‘In the long-run too much comfort only seems to spell
danger
not so much that we should suffer, but that there is reward in difficult things
Paul Kingsnorth captured the differences in these technologies best when, in Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist,
book to look into
If you don’t make time for health, you have to make time for illness.
this is quite fitting currently
For all of its faults, at this moment in history the written word – in lieu of a strong oral culture – still offers us an avenue to connect the present with the past, reminding us of perspectives and ways that we have forgotten.
justification for writing
The writing itself is slower, yet somehow I manage to get more done in less time. The pencil has changed how I think, slowed me down, and made my words human again.
value in time
Many years ago, I decided that instead of spending my life making a living, I wanted to make living my life.
something we should all aspire to
As David Fleming wrote in Lean Logic, ‘There is no reason why he [the hypocrite] should not argue for standards better than he manages to achieve in his own life; in fact, it would be worrying if his ideals were not better than the way he lives.’
something to consider in a world where one may feel some guilt about not living the "right" way
(Krishnamurti once remarked that ‘it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society’).
acceptance
