"The Second Mountain" 节选 / 分类： 人生哲学

[Excalibur]

      我们组员Puming在摘抄的google doc上非常的活跃。他最近分享的很多一本人生哲学的书“The Second Mountain”的书。我觉得其中不少内容说的很精辟。所以我从他的摘抄中选取了一些个人觉得很有意思的分享给大家。有兴趣的小伙伴可以在google doc上看到更完整的内容，或者自行阅读原著。

1.Furthermore, workaholism is a surprisingly effective distraction from emotional and spiritual problems. It’s surprisingly easy to become emotionally avoidant and morally decoupled, to be less close to and vulnerable with those around you, to wall off the dark jungle deep inside you, to gradually tamp down the highs and lows and simply live in neutral. Have you noticed how many people are more boring and half-hearted at age thirty-five than they were at twenty?

2.In The Age of Anxiety, W. H. Auden wrote,

We would rather be ruined than changed

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

And let our illusions die.

3.There’s nothing intrinsically noble about suffering. Sometimes grief is just grief, to be gotten through. Many bad things happen in life, and it’s a mistake to try to sentimentalize these moments away by saying that they must be happening to serve some higher good. But sometimes, when suffering can be connected to a larger narrative of change and redemption, we can suffer our way to wisdom. This is the kind of wisdom you can’t learn from books; you have to experience it yourself. Sometimes you experience your first taste of nobility in the way you respond to suffering.

4. As the Augustinian scholar James K. A. Smith writes, “To be human is to be on the move, pursuing something, after something. We are like existential sharks: we have to move to live.” There is some deep part of ourselves from where desires flow. We’re defined by what we desire, not what we know.

5. Our natural enthusiasm trains us to be people pleasers, to say yes to other people. But if you aren’t saying a permanent no to anything, giving anything up, then you probably aren’t diving into anything fully. A life of commitment means saying a thousand noes for the sake of a few precious yeses.

6. A textbook can teach you the principles of biology, but a mentor shows you how to think like a biologist. This kind of habitual practice rewires who you are inside. “The great thing in all education,” William James wrote, “is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.”

7. Finally, intuition is reliable only in certain sorts of decisions. “Intuition” is a fancy word for pattern recognition. It can be trusted only in domains in which you have a lot of experience, in which the mind has time to master the various patterns. But when you are making a transformational choice, you are leaping into an unknown territory. You don’t know the patterns there. Intuition can’t tell you. It’s just guessing.

8. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

9. Love starts as a focusing of attention. The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.

10. The only way to thrive in marriage is to become a better person—more patient, wise, compassionate, persevering, communicative, and humble. When we make a commitment, we put ourselves into a pickle that we have to be more selfless to get out of. Marriage educates by throwing a series of difficult tasks in your path.

[swortal]

感谢分享，学了很多生词lol

We’re defined by what we desire, not what we know.

 这让我想到我去年考虑过的一个问题，如果能设计出一个具有复杂欲望的ai，能不能说它是生命呢？>^.^<

[CY]

我也学到了新词哈哈哈

思考过类似的问题 因为很喜欢blade runner 2049/Ghost in the shell/Her/别让我走这些科幻电影/剧 他们探讨过生命/存在/虚拟/现实/爱情/更复杂的感情 我的理解是 假定人的感情不是在基因决定的情况下 那么有欲望就算是“人”了 假如人的感情其实是被基因决定 那么能创造新的东西就算是“人”了。打引号是因为 到那种情况下 也许不是“人” 我们可能更在意另一种全新的定义了～