The Danger of Religious Certainty
Richard Holloway writes in Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt, Religions may begin as vehicles of longing for mysteries beyond description, but they end up claiming exclusive descriptive rights to them. They segue the ardour and uncertainty of seeking to the confidence and complacence of possession. They shift from poetry to packaging. Which […]
Comparing Theists, Deists, Pantheists, and Atheists
Richard Dawkins writes in his best-selling The God Delusion, Let us remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic […]
Dependency of Nature on Our Perception
Wallace Stevens, the renowned American Modernist poet, spent most of his life working as a lawyer at an insurance executive. He wrote poetry privately and suggested the dependency of nature on our perception to establish any meaning and value, as well as the imagination’s limitations. Exploring the role of a poet in tracing “the resemblances […]
Write Things Down Right Away
From The Autobiography of Charles Darwin: I think that I have become a little more skillful in guessing right explanations and in devising experimental tests; but this may probably be the result of mere practice, and of a larger store of knowledge. I have as much difficulty as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; […]
Margin of Safety
Seth Klarman’s extraordinary and mysterious book Margin of Safety, Risk Averse Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor has sold for $700 for used varieties with newer copies going for $2,500 to $4,000. His foremost investing premise is risk mitigation. He writes, It follows that value investors seek a margin of safety, allowing room for imprecision, […]
Three Early Buffett Partnership Investments
Warren Buffett in a 1993 talk to Columbia University students: When I got out of Columbia the first place I went to work was a five-person brokerage firm with operations in Omaha. It subscribed to Moody’s industrial manual, banks and finance manual and public utilities manual. I went through all those page by page. I […]
Polytheism is Inherently Open-Minded
Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari writes in his international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, The insight of polytheism is conducive to far-reaching religious tolerance. Since polytheists believe, on the one hand, in one supreme and completely disinterested power, and on the other hand in many partial and biased powers, there is no difficulty […]
Embrace Imprecision
Seth Klarman’s extraordinary and mysterious book Margin of Safety, Risk Averse Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor has sold for $700 for used varieties with newer copies going for $2,500 to $4,000. His foremost investing premise is risk mitigation. He writes, Many investors insist on affixing exact values to their investments, seeking precision in an […]
To Love at All is to Be Vulnerable
C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves summarizes four kinds of human love—affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung, and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to […]
Living by Design
Greg McKeown in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, […]