Read a few chapters in 2025
Ch 1
“Ask whether you are happy and you cease to be so” “No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.” - J.S. Mill
Voltaire’s Candide - “cultivate our garden”
- personal responsibility, tangible work
- act of beautification > retreat
Contentment comes from:
- achieving control over instinctual drives
- substituting rewards of one’s own over societal awards
- independence from dictates of body, pain
Ch 2: Consciousness
- Consciousness is ability to control and direct course. “intentionally ordered information”
- Intentions = force that keeps information ordered in consciousness, based on desires/needs
- Listening comprehension = 40 bits of information a second
- information we allow in determines quality of life
- “Ability to focus attention at will, be oblivious to distraction, concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal”
- Attention is psychic energy
- how we invest attention → how we create self
- Psychic entropy → disorganization of self, impairng effectiveness
- Flow → information coming into awareness congruent with goals
- Differentiation (separation of self) vs integration (union of others beyond self)
- combination of both creates a complex self
Flow = confidence → repetition, growth → purpose