Thinking It Through

Radio Tower Berlin
László Moholy-Nagy
1928

László Moholy-Nagy
ca.1895-1946

The Moholy-Nagy Foundation

"The man who bumped up against the invisible."

saint max brod
Limited Inc

(Dearest Max, my last request: everything that can be found in my posthumous papers (thus in boxes, cupboards, desks, at home and in the offie, or wherever else they may be that you come upon them) of diaries, manuscripts, letters, my own and those written to me, sketches and so on, should be burned unread and without remnant, even all the written or drawn things that you or others have, that you might have asked for in my name. If there are letters that people will not turn over to you, at least they should promise to burn them themselves.”)
- Kafka, letter

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"I love the world; I want more than the world,
Or after-image of the inner eye."
- Theodore Roethke, "The Dying Man, Part 4, The Exalting"

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The Consolations of Pessimism
Alain de Botton

It's time to recognize how odd and counterproductive is the optimism on which we have grown up.

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- wood s lot

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"True listening, total concentration on the other, is always a manifestation of love. An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as afar as possible the speaker's world from the inside, stepping inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually an extension and enlargement of ourself, and new knowledge is always gained from this. Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate ach other more and more, and the duet dance of love is again begun. The energy required for the discipline of bracketing and the focusing of total attention is so great that it can be accomplished only by love, by the will to extend oneself for mututal growth.

--M. Scott Peck

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Daily Dish:

How A Bad Dancer Becomes Many Bad Dancers

This video is great, though the cameraman could use a tripod. It reminds Jonah Lehrer of a study:

In this study, Milgram had "confederates" stop on a busy city street and look upwards at the sky. He demonstrated that when one person was looking up, 40 percent of passerby also looked up, just in case something interesting was happening. (There was nothing to look at, just sky and buildings.) When two people were looking up, 60 of passerby looked up. When there were three people, the percentage jumped to 65 percent, and when there were four people nearly 80 of strangers stopped and stared upwards.

Seth Godin remarks:

My favorite part happens just before the first minute mark. That's when guy #3 joins the group. Before him, it was just a crazy dancing guy and then maybe one other crazy guy. But it's guy #3 who made it a movement.

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