How to Be Truly Free: Lessons From a Philosopher President

NYTIMES, Aug. 23, 2024

Humans can create infinite needs. The market dominates us, and it robs us of our lives. Humanity needs to work less, have more free time and be more grounded. Why so much garbage? Why do you have to change your car? Change the refrigerator? There is only one life and it ends. You have to give meaning to it. Fight for happiness, not just for wealth.

Q: Do you believe that humanity can change? 

It could change. But the market is very strong. It has generated a subliminal culture that dominates our instinct. It's subjective.  It's unconscious. It has made us voracious buyers. We live to buy. We work to buy. And we live to pay. Credit is a religion. So we're kind of screwed up. 

Q: It seems you don't have much hope. 

Biologically, I do have hope, because I believe in man. But when I think about it, I'm pessimistic.

Q: Yet your speeches often have a positive message.

Because life is beautiful. With all its ups and downs, I love life. And I'm losing it because it's my time to leave. What meaning can we give to life? Man, compared to other animals, has the ability to find a purpose. Or not. If you don't find it, the market will have you paying bills the rest of your life. If you find it, you will have something to live for. Those who investigate, those who play music, those who love sports, anything. Something that fills your life. 

…

I have one thing. The magic of the word. The book is the greatest invention of man. It's a shame that people read so little. They don't have time. Nowadays people do much of their reading on phones. Four years ago, I threw mine away. It made me crazy. All day talking nonsense. We must learn to speak with the person inside us. It was him who saved my life. Since I was alone for many years, that has stayed with me. When I'm in the field working with the tractor, sometimes I stop to see how a little bird constructs its nest. He was born with the program. He's already an architect. Nobody taught him. Do you know the hornero bird? They are perfect bricklayers. I admire nature. I almost have a sort of pantheism. You have to have the eyes to see it. The ants are one of the true communists out there. They are much older than us and they will outlive us. All colony beings are very strong.

….

Life is a chain and it is still full of mysteries.

What a complicated animal man is. He's both smart and stupid.

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science page 185, Zettel 143

To be abstracted is to be at some distance from the material world. It is a form of local exaltation but also, sometime, of disorientation, even disturbance. Art at its most powerful can induce such a state, perhaps most potently. - Nancy Princenthal, New York art critique - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science page 185, Zettel 143

The New York Times Opinion Essay, Take a Bow. Madonna - by Mary Gabriel 8/15/2023, Zettel 141

Madonna is a cultural wrecking ball who has dared to be everything - performer, songwriter, producer, actor, director, children’s book author, muse - at a time when women were encouraged to stick to one lane. She has broken through social barriers, too, using her words and her work to confront the music industry, Hollywood, the Taliban, the Putin regime and the Vatican, to name just a few of her adversaries, over sexisum, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and hypocrisy. Because she is a woman and a popstar, critics generally dismiss her political statements as opportunistic grandstanding. But young people looking toward a future that seems closed to them see past that criticism. The novelist Sonich Kamal was introduced to Madonna’s music as a child while living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She said Madonna represented “pure, unadulterated, raw, sextual liberation” and hope: “hope that sexy girls did not necessarily die bad deaths, hope that sexy girls could rule the world. And do.” - The New York Times Opinion Essay, Take a Bow. Madonna - by Mary Gabriel 8/15/2023, Zettel 141

Dr. Akira Miyawaki, New York Times, Sunday 8/27/2023, Planting Tiny Forests and Yielding Big Benefits, by Cara Buckley, Zettel 145

The forest is the root of all life, it is the womb that revives our biological instincts, that deepens our intelligence and increases our sensitivity as human beings - Dr. Akira Miyawaki, New York Times, Sunday 8/27/2023, Planting Tiny Forests and Yielding Big Benefits, by Cara Buckley, Zettel 145

New York Times Arts, July 18, 2023. For Some Films, Go Big or Go Home, Many fans will be doing whatever it takes to see ‘Oppenheimer’ projected in IMAX 70 mm, by Marc Tracy, Zettel 131

“I have to believe I wouldn’t care about as much if it didn’t have an emotional effect,” (Christopher) Nolan said. “There’s a favorite tactic of studio executives, he added, “which is to say, Well, at the end of the day, isn’t it all about story? To which you say, Well, no, otherwise we would be distributing audio books or radio plays. In the last analysis, it is not all about story. It’s about the moving image, it’s about cinematic storytelling, and the greatest movies made could only be films” - New York Times Arts, July 18, 2023. For Some Films, Go Big or Go Home, Many fans will be doing whatever it takes to see ‘Oppenheimer’ projected in IMAX 70 mm, by Marc Tracy, Zettel 131

Chaz Firestone, cognitive scientist, Johns Hopkins University. The New York Times, July 18, 2023. Silence Is a ‘Sound’ that can be heard, by Bethany Brookshire, Zettel 130

… People perceive silence as its own type of “sound”, not just as a gap between noises…”silence is the experience of time passing…an auditory experience of pure time”...”if silence is “not really a sound, and yet it turns out that we can hear it, then evidently, hearing is about more than just sounds.” - Chaz Firestone, cognitive scientist, Johns Hopkins University. The New York Times, July 18, 2023. Silence Is a ‘Sound’ that can be heard, by Bethany Brookshire, Zettel 130

Daniel Lewis, The New York Times, Thursday, July 2023 on MILAN KUNDERA, 1929 - 2023

Milan Kundera was born on April 1, 1929, in Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic, the son of Milada Janosikova and Ludvik Kundera. His father, a noted concert pianist and and musicologist, taught him piano, and he considered a career in music before his interests shifted to literature, particularly French.
“From an early age ,” he told an interviewer for the literary journal Salmagundi in 1987, “I read Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Breton, Cocteau, Bataille, Ionesco, and admired French surrealism.” - Daniel Lewis, The New York Times, Thursday, July 2023 on MILAN KUNDERA, 1929 - 2023

Daniel Lewis, The New York Times, Thursday, July 2023 on MILAN KUNDERA, 1929 - 2023

Mr. Kundera told The Paris Review in 1983: “My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with utmost lightness of form. The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas (those that occur in our beds as well as those that we play out on the great stage of History) and their awful insignificance. We experience the unbearable lightness of being. “ - Daniel Lewis, The New York Times, Thursday, July 2023 on MILAN KUNDERA, 1929 - 2023