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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 111 (Jul 24, 2022) — Art of War, Myth of Responsibility, Nonduality Gone Wrong, & More
Happy Sunday!
Here’s the latest from Sloww along with the most interesting things I discovered last week.
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🌀 Sloww Stuff
🆕 Book Summary: “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu (Michael Nylan Translation)
This military classic is still useful in the modern world. Why? Because we should all understand it to protect ourselves (and others) from information warfare, psychological warfare, and various other forms of irregular warfare. If you better understand how your mind can be used against you, you can better immunize your mind. The book summary is linked above, and top quotes in this Twitter thread.
“Perhaps the most profound message derived from ‘The Art of War’ (one of immense relevance today) is that any victory depends upon knowing oneself at least as well as the other party cast as the obstruction.” — Michael Nylan
📚 Reading List Update (Google Sheet)
I recently made some major updates to my full reading list:
- Reorganized to match Sloww Stages
- Amazon ratings/reviews updated
- New column for “Category”
I’ve also added a book tracker near the legend:
- I’ve read 82 of 348 books (see book summaries)
- I recommend 44 of the 82 I’ve read (see book recos)
“Sit in a room and read—and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.” — Joseph Campbell
🧠 Modern Knowledge
Is Responsibility a Myth?
7 mins | RSA (YouTube)
I’ve been non-stop learning for ~7 years now and still haven’t found anything more universal, important, or urgent than this. I’m revisiting talks from Raoul Martinez who has the most compelling content on the lottery of birth I’ve come across to date. The link above is a short video segment from a full podcast. Also, don’t forget to check out Raoul’s TED Talk.
Speech Highlights:
· On brains: “The machinery with which we make our decisions has been constructed by a process far beyond our control. This process determines the architecture of our neural circuitry—the way our brains are wired. It determines everything about us. If we don’t create our own brain, we can’t truly be responsible for the choices that follow from it. The idea that we can be, I like to call the ‘myth of responsibility.'”
· On choices: “Yes, we make choices, but we do so with a brain that we didn’t choose, in circumstances not of our making. And, by the time we have the critical faculties to question our identity, we’re very much in possession of one. Of course we can decide to change aspects of who we are and the way that we live our life, but the way in which we want to change, and our success in doing so, will be determined by how we already are as a result of genes and experience. In the end, luck is what separates us.”
· On blame: “Notions of credit, blame, punishment, and responsibility cease to make much sense. In other words, no one is more deserving of happiness or suffering than anyone else … If ultimate responsibility is a myth, it follows that no one is truly blameworthy.”
· On implications: “Of course this doesn’t mean we should let violent criminals or corrupt bankers walk free. We still have a right to defend society from those who pose a dangerous threat, and it’s still important to establish incentives for socially-beneficial behavior. But, even with incentives, we have to be careful because they often don’t work as we might think.”
· So what?: “When we diminish the liberty of an individual to protect society, we have an obligation to reduce their suffering, not increase it—and where possible, to rehabilitate them. Like someone afflicted with a contagious disease, the threat they pose is not of their own making. With identical genes and experiences, anyone in this room would pose precisely the same threat. The trouble is the more we pretend that a lawbreaker is truly responsible for their actions, the more we blind ourselves to the deeper causes of their behavior. And, this just increases our chances of reproducing the conditions that enabled that behavior to occur, and perpetuating these conditions—poverty, inequality, corruption—is always the deeper crime.”
“The path to freedom is paved with understanding, not ignorance. In this instance, understanding that the way we are is ultimately down to luck. To transcend notions of blame and responsibility is to foster empathy and compassion. When you realize that had you lived someone else’s life you’d be doing exactly what they’re doing, a profound equality emerges—one that prevents us from putting ourselves in any deep sense above or below anyone else. This kind of empathy can be a revolutionary force for good. I’m talking about unbounded empathy which flies high above the borders we impose in the world—which transcends the attributes of race, gender, religion, class, and nationality—and when multiplied across society is a powerful liberating force which in this time of turmoil and crisis is our best chance of turning conflict into peace, division into unity, and hate into compassion.” — Raoul Martinez
☯️ Timeless Wisdom
What’s Wrong with Nondual Spirituality?
80 mins | Tim Freke (YouTube)
I’ve read quite a bit of nondual spirituality lately: Ramana Maharshi to Rupert Spira to Jed McKenna. The title of the video linked above piqued my interest so I decided to check it out. The conversation features Tim Freke and Jessica Nathanson (note: it’s Part 1 in a series including Part 2 and a Q&A). I’ll be discussing the series in more depth in the 🔒Sloww Society community.
“I had a daughter. Holding this little baby in my arms, the idea that there was no individuality, and no self, and life was a meaningless illusion that I should recover from, was like ‘no, that’s not right.’ That moment brought into focus something which has always been there which was, how does our individuality and the experience that everything is one sit together?” — Tim Freke
🤯 Mind Expanding
Only You Exist (Philosophy of Solipsism)
13 mins | Einzelgänger (YouTube)
Solipsism (Wikipedia) is the philosophical idea that only one’s mind is sure to exist. Knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds (aka the “problem of other minds“) cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. At a minimum, solipsism is a truly mind-expanding thought experiment.
💭 Deep Thought
Are you a human being or a spiritual being?
How about both/and (polarity thinking)?
💬 Wise Words
Wisdom sees that the Many is One. Compassion sees that the One is the Many.
— Ken Wilber
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Have an alive week!
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
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