Minutes of a Monday #48
#minutesofamonday
Brain Food > Progress and Wisdom
“True progress begins with something no knowledge economy can produce: wisdom about what it means to live well. We have to do what great thinkers like John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes were already advocating 100 years ago: to “value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful.” We have to direct our minds to the future. To stop consuming our own discontent through polls and relentlessly bad-news media. To consider alternatives and form new collectives. To transcend this confining zeitgeist and recognise our shared idealism.
Maybe then we’ll also be able to again look beyond ourselves and out at the world. There we’ll see that good old progress is still marching on its merry way. We’ll see we live in a marvellous age, a time of diminishing hunger and war and of surging prosperity and life experiences. But we’ll also see just how much there is still left for us - the richest 10%, 5% or 1% - to do.”
Rutger Bergman from ‘Utopia for Realists’ (2018)
Soul Food
“To see far is one thing: going there is another.”
LOL
David McSavage on the seagull like sounds of Dublin:
Appendix
“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
Oscar Wilde
AOB
Next article about serendipity and working from home is out this Friday. Keep an eye on ye’re inboxes! Have a great week ya’ll - Niall.