№ 436. Wyoming On My Mind

West Railroad Street, Green River, Wyoming

№ 435. God of the Gaps

Someone asked the Master if he believed in luck.

"Certainly," he replied with a twinkle in his eye.

"How else can one explain the success of people one does not like?"

--- from Awakening, Conversations with the Master, by Anthony de Mello

№ 434. 21st Century World Order

The first wave of globalization, although it wasn’t called as such, happened in the late 19th and early 20th century. At that time, technological advances in transportation via steamships and railways made it so much easier to move people and commodities across the continents, leading to a surge in cross-border trade.

The share of world trade in global GDP rose from 6 percent in 1800 to 14 percent in 1914. Foreign direct investments accounted for a full half of total investments in Britain in the early 1900s, whereas the same ratio was only 6 percent for the United States, Germany and Japan in the early 2000s.

By this measure, these economies were much less globalized than Britain was a century before. Two world wars ended that first wave, and led to economic stagnation.

№ 433. Experience, Observation and Imagination

"A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination — any two of which, at times any one of which — can supply the lack of the others."

--- William Faulkner

And everyone thinks he/she/they is/are a writer today. Imagination.

№ 432. Thirteen Life Learnings in 2019

1. Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind.

Cultivate that capacity for “negative capability.” We live in a culture where one of the greatest social disgraces is not having an opinion, so we often form our “opinions” based on superficial impressions or the borrowed ideas of others, without investing the time and thought that cultivating true conviction necessitates. We then go around asserting these donned opinions and clinging to them as anchors to our own reality. It’s enormously disorienting to simply say, “I don’t know.” But it’s infinitely more rewarding to understand than to be right — even if that means changing your mind about a topic, an ideology, or, above all, yourself.

№ 431. Black Mirror Reality

Globalization and the internet may have made the world smaller, but now we're experiencing a counterattack, the regionalization of truth.

№ 430. Reading the Signs of the Times

Technology

The question for historians is not simply how a politician should be judged and commemorated today, but also how s/he should be understood within the context of his/her time.

№ 429. Make Your Own Kind of Music