Reminder: Share Links to Dangerous Intersection Articles with Others Who Might be Interested

I've written at Dangerous Intersection since 2006 and I try to write on topics that don't seem to be getting much attention elsewhere. I try to be factual and non-confrontational in my writing. If you are a subscriber, thank you for being part of this endeavor! If you are not a subscriber, it's easy to subscribe using the top widget on the right. I promise to keep this website uncluttered and ad-free. The only thing you'll find at this site are articles. I work hard to include relevant links in the article so that you don't need to trust me for this information--just follow the links!

I encourage you to share anything I write with anyone you know who might also be interested. The easiest way it to text or email the URL of the article. You'll also find a "Share/Save" button at the bottom of every article (You won't see this button on the Homepage, but only after you click on the title to the article).

I write at this site for two reasons. I use this website as my personal scrapbook in order to post information that I might need to locate in the future. If you would ever like to locate anything in my archives, use the search box on the right (the one with the red "Search" button). Immediately below it is a Google search function.

Again, thank you for visiting. This is mostly a reminder that if you know others who would be interested, feel free to share these articles with them as well.

Erich

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How to Be a Human Animal, Chapter 21: Listen to the Sage Advice of the Stoics

I hope I haven't been away for too long!  Even though you are a hypothetical baby my absence might have caused you to get hungry for another lesson! What I'm trying to do here is to help you navigate this convoluted world.  I'm trying to teach you things that I did not know while I was growing up. I learned these lessons the hard way. You can find links to all of these (soon to be 100) lessons in one convenient place: Here.

Here's a couple mini-lessons. First of all, if someone wants you to offer some good advice but you can't think of anything, just offer them some of the wisdom of the Stoics of ancient Rome. Your audience won't even know that these writings are ancient. Here's another cool thing: Even though this is "philosophy," it is practical advice to help you in your daily life. This is the opposite of academic philosophy. 

Check this out. One of the key tenets of the Stoics is essentially the Serenity Prayer. Epictetus writes:

The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.

— Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5

Compare to the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Here is another Stoic version of this same idea:

“Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.”

— Epictetus, Discourses , 1.18.21

Why is this lesson so valuable? Because human animals screw this up so often! They need to hear this advice over and over, because we are wired to obsess and fret over things we cannot change. But here's a caveat: you shouldn't make excuses when you could change something but you are too lazy to put in the effort. You need to be honest with yourself about what you can change.  Then get to work on something you can handle. Don't waste your life away by fretting and obsessing. Many things have changed over the past 2,000 years, but the wisdom of the Stoics is as relevant as ever. Here's my favorite Stoic quote: “The Obstacle Is the Way.” Marcus Aurelius Is it possible to fit more wisdom into such a short quote?

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About Doing the Next Right Thing.

"Do the Next Right Thing" is a phrase that has often focused me.  Where did this phrase originate?  The Marginalian explains that on December 15, 1933, Carl Jung responded to a woman who had asked his guidance on how to live. Jung wrote:

Dear Frau V.,

Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits in with the average way of mankind in general. But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious. Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how you ought to live. And then you know, too, that you cannot know it, but quietly do the next and most necessary thing. So long as you think you don’t yet know what this is, you still have too much money to spend in useless speculation. But if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate. With kind regards and wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung

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John McWhorter Discusses his New Book, Woke Racism

John McWhorter discusses his new book, Woke Racism, with Nick Gillespie of Reason. How did we get to the Woke Present? This is an hour-long discussion that draws repeatedly on history, connecting the dots from approximately the 1950s to the present.

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