#simon sarris

[luxe-pauvre]

You should have a goal, in some sense, to be influenced by the works that you read. All stories influence you, regardless of how they get to you. A person who reads no great stories will be influenced by the few stories he does come across in life, for better or worse — and I think mostly worse. If you read what is excellent you will not suddenly become excellent, but a life that is sown with stories is one better positioned to think and dream. The more stories, the more likely one is to understand and identify all the influences that act upon oneself in life. He who has no poetry in himself will find poetry in nothing. A person that reads no stories is unready for life. A person that reads many stories will be open to yet more stories. The appetite grows by what it feeds on. Dine as best you can.

Simon Sarris, Reading Well

[vertov-mango]

"... for rarely today can people verbalize their values in any other terms than the economic."

In Praise of the Gods

What the Rationalistic World Forgot. the stupor of rationality • stories, building intuition • alchemy, building process • religion, buildin

[branda]

Accidentally Wes Anderson

[luxe-pauvre]

I also tend to stress fiction because I think, especially among my professional peers in the industry of software, that there is too great a fondness for non-fiction. I think this arises from a belief that superior knowledge of the world comes from non-fiction. This thought is attractive to people who build systems, but over-systematizing and seeing systems in everything can be a failure mode. Careful descriptions and summaries miss too much of the world. Hard distinctions make bad philosophy. Reading fiction helps you become an unsystematic thinker, something that is equally valuable but more elided by some engineers. It is easy to maintain an intellectual rigidity. It takes more care to maintain a loose poeticism of thought.

Simon Sarris, Reading Well

[biglisbonnews]

Dispatches from childhood Humility is the virtue of seeing each sunrise as truly new. Little children have no trouble with this perspective, they could not live any other way. Everything is visceral to them, and they carry this visceral interiority everywhere. https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/dispatches-from-childhood

[biglisbonnews]

The Oak and the Reed Dear friends, there is a tale, The oak one day said to the reed: You have good reason to curse nature — A simple sparrow for you is a heavy burden. The slightest wind that by chance Makes the face of the water ripple Forces you to lower your head. However my own forehead, Not content to stop the rays of the sun, Braves the effort of the storm. Still if you were born under the shelter of the foliage With which I cover my surroundings, You would not have to suffer so much. I would defend you from the storm. But you are most often born On the damp edges of the realms of the wind. Nature towards you seems to me very unjust. — Your compassion, replied the shrub, Part of a good nature; but leaves this worry: The winds are less formidable to me than to you. I bend, and do not break. You have hitherto Against their dreadful blows Resisted without bending your back; But let's stay: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/the-oak-and-the-reed