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In Defense of the Essay: Writing as Introspection

In a digital age that's diluted the essay's reputation, the craft's function is best given by a description of the essay's originator, Michel De Montaigne: “Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence...” The essay is an attempt at fleshing out this astonishment.

Imaginative Philosophy: Richard Rorty on Philosophy as Poetry

Richard Rorty’s Philosophy as Poetry envisions a philosophy concerned with human progress — rather than metaphysical unknowables — driven by imagination...

An Encounter with Annie Dillard’s Meditation

Meditation is like a new set of glasses, or rather, it’s like removing your eyeballs altogether and relearning how to navigate a dark world...This is how I feel reading Annie Dillard, happening upon unexpected fragments of the sublime...

Would Camus’ Sisyphus want Basic Income?

An essay exploring Albert Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" to make a philosophical case for Basic Income, and ultimately for the "impulse to consciousness"...

Making a Living as Making a Life: Thoreau on Work & Life’s Real Business

A lot has changed over 200 years. But perhaps even more remarkable is what’s stayed the same: we work a lot. Thoreau, Russell, Keynes, even Joe Biden weigh in on the evolving role of making a living in making our lives...

Rediscovering Progress: The Fading Philosophy of Economics

It’s the ability to choose one’s own vision, as opposed to one of necessity, that the American idea can aspire towards. The purpose of economics is to render itself irrelevant. That economic concerns will progressively cease to usurp the existential stage, making way for the creative, imaginative, or even quaintly mundane modes of existence chosen by each individual seems the backbone of any collective truly interested in liberty...

WELCOME

MusingMind is a curation of writing, reading & videos; an inventory of contemplative content at large. Grounded in philosophy, the core ethos is to inquire into and wrestle with whatever the heck is going on here, existentially.

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Once a month-ish email with new posts, curated web content, mini book-reviews, and other stuff

NOTES FROM SOME CURRENT READING

Oblivion David Foster Wallace “The conflict between the subjective centrality of our own lives versus our awareness of its objective insignificance…this was the single great informing conflict of the American psyche. The management of insignificance.”

The Crack-Up F. Scott Fitzgerald “Well, when I had reached this period of silence, I was forced into a measure that no one ever adopts voluntarily: I was impelled to think. God, was it difficult! The moving about of great secret trunks. In the first exhausted halt, I wondered whether I had ever thought.”

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THE SCOOP

A developing cross between metaphysics and journalism, MusingMind is a digital index of thoughtful, diverse, human responses to the upsettingly vast quagmires of life. Spanning my eclectic writing to collections of books and quotes, the inventory is a record of what I find interesting. Built into every nook of this site, these bites of interestingness tend to gravitate around life’s metaphysical pickles, and I’d like for the MusingMind to evolve into a feast of this variety.

I don’t have many answers, most 20-something-year-olds who think they do tend to be full of crap anyway. What I do believe is that consciousness is the architect of our perceived world, and we can nourish this mental environment by gooming – aimlessly perusing – the infinite fractals of wisdom buried all around us that I’m only beginning to discover. This is the core ethos behind The Musing Mind, seeking to unfetter and open-source this ponderous path.

My ulterior motive is to form a collective, bound by curiosity – a digital salon, of sorts – jiving off each other, enriching our myriad trips of inquisition.

Digital Brainfood

Short, stimulating videos to watch when reading a book or watching a whole documentary sounds exhausting

Alan Watts - The Real You

Alan Watts was a popularizer, which meant he was really good at communicating the ideas of Asian philosophy to the Western mentality. Start with this quick 4-minute clip, and then check out all the others of him on youtube.
Richard Davidson on the Neurology of Healthy & Meditating Minds

Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at U Wisconsin-Madison, surveys some principle findings of his work with Tibetan monks in his lab, and introduces their approach to human flourishing at the Center.
10 Lessons from Brainpickings

Maria Popova's 10 lessons from 10 years of running Brainpickings, nicely animated.
Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell

Kurzgesagt is an organization that makes short Youtube videos explaining scientific concepts in simple terms, flavored by their "optimistic nihilism". Really fun to watch, really informative.
Jason Silva - Shots of Awe

Silva's Youtube series, Shots of Awe, is a huge collection of 2-3 minute clips that he calls "philosophical espresso shots". It's an awesome experiment in digital philosophy.
Street Philosophy with Jay Shetty

Former monk turned "Motivational Philosopher" Jay Shetty creates these 3-5 minutes videos that are pretty great. Tackling themes from our cultural void of a moral compass to redefining happiness, the diversity of his background makes for an interesting, and relevant, perspective.
10 Responses to the Phrase "Man Up" - Guante

Part of the Button Poetry series, Guante kills it.
Sam Harris - Free Will

Philosopher & Neuroscientist Sam Harris' brief spiel on free will, with a fun cinematic adaptation. He argues that free will is absolutely an illusion, and that this is an empowering truth to realize.
What is Universal Basic Income

From the RSA whiteboard, a super short primer on the idea of "basic Income". A salient point mentioned is the positive effect this would have on creativity; those interested in the arts, anything from writing to carpentry, would find new life. A potential renaissance of what John Maynard Keynes called "the art of life itself".
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib - "Dig Those Sunsets, Pony"

4-minute poem: "What has the sky ever done to you that a lover has not...what is a sky if not a lovers arms...maybe I fear the alone my body will feel when the sky decides to let me go..."
Alan Watts - "Ultimate Reality"

A visual paired with a classic Alan Watts lecture clip, put together by The Mission.
So You Want to Be a Writer - Charles Bukowski

A Reading of Charles Bukowski's "So You Want to Be a Writer? By Tom O'Bedlam. .."Unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it."
What is a Good Life?

Philosophy Talk surveys Aristotle, Robert Nozick, and Camus to discuss what it means to lead a good life.
They're Made of Meat

6-minute short film featuring Tom Noonan from Synecdoche, New York. Brilliant.
Universal Basic Income Explained

Kurzgesagt's explainer video on Basic Income. Covers most talking points, well informed, and really useful to encourage the debate.
The Philosophical Feud Between Sartre & Camus

A digital Aeon essay on the public disagreement between Sartre & Camus, one of the greatest instances of when ideas carry both political weight and public interest