Ruggets #45
Excellent Advice, What is Life?, 150 Mind-fuck Movies, Stoic Lesson 4 and Ruggets Questions
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Hey guys, your stoic-existentialist-impressionist random guy here and it feels great to be back. This newsletter will hit your inbox whenever I feel it is worthy of your attention. So there is no schedule, I am always on my watch to collect remarkable things around.
Without further ado, let’s dive in.
🧠 Nugget of the Week
We can only stare at beauty and nothing else. Then it slips away. We cannot take with us re-create the same awe that we felt when we first saw it.
Everything is for once only, only for once.
Remember to be fully-focused, at least force yourself to be completely aware right here right now.
Attention is everything.
🔗 Link Bundle
1️⃣ Illeism might help you solve your problems easier.
Put simply, illeism is the practice of talking about oneself in the third person, rather than the first person. The rhetorical device is often used by politicians to try to give their words an air of objectivity.
According to the research, people employing illeism to talk about their problems showed greater intellectual humility, capacity to recognise others’ perspectives, and willingness to reach compromise – increasing their overall wise reasoning scores.
2️⃣ Open up your bottle of wine and watch through this great doc.
3️⃣ Does this seem familiar to you?
This sign is on the wall at U.S. Holocaust Museum, it tells you what to look for early signs of fascism.
Are you worried that your country is also sliding into fascist traps?
Powerful and continuing nationalism
Disdain for human rights
Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
Rampant sexism
Controlled mass media
Obsession with national security
Religion and government intertwined
Corporate power protected
Labor power suppressed
Disdain for intellectual and the arts
Obsession with crime and punishment
Rampant cronyism and corruption
4️⃣ Here is a great post from
My favs from the post:
Arrival Fallacy:
We didn't evolve to be happy, but to believe we'll be happy if we just accomplish the latest goal. So we seldom taste true joy, but we often pick up its scent—just enough to keep us in pursuit. Paradise is not a destination, or even a journey, but a horizon.
Russell’s Teapot:
Believing things because they haven't been disproven is madness, as it would require believing there’s a teapot orbiting the moon. Eliminate Russell’s Teapot with Hitchens’ Razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
Golden Mean:
Good character is not about maximizing virtues but moderating them: to be sensitive without being fragile, confident without being cocky, steadfast without being stubborn, driven without being reckless, focused without being obsessed.
5️⃣ I found this list of movies and it is just fabulous.
6️⃣ I have came across this excerpt from Camus it startled me again.
“Yes, I know that. But it’s no reason for giving up the struggle.”
7️⃣ We had touched upon cognitive biases from time to time. Here is a quality cheat sheet of important ones and how to counter them.
8️⃣ What is life? How do you differentiate something alive from something dead?
Principles Underlying Life:
Living things are bounded physical entities
The bounded entity is the chemical and informational machine
The informational chemical machine in a bounded entity has a hereditary system that determines how it works, a system which has variability.
The whole thing can evolve by natural selection.
Living things can acquire purpose to be better adapted in the life state they find themselves.
So it is all about, cells, DNA, evolution by natural selection and chemistry.
9️⃣ If you have never heard of this cover, thank me later. And also thank God for creating the music. Life would be so dull without it.
🔟 Here is an excellent video on the topic of recessions. I have to admit it is beyond my grab to fully understand the concept. Try for yourself, and hit me a reply if you understand it.
This video discusses the 10-year three-month spread, which is a reliable leading indicator of business cycle recessions. The spread has inverted before every recession since the late 1960s with virtually zero false signals.
On average, a recession begins about 12 months after the yield curve inverts.
To highlight distribution of outcomes, fifteen months after inversion S&P was down at most by -47% and up at best by +12%.
Uh, moms. They are the greatest.
📚 Book Summary of the Week
I have read the book Excellent Advice right after I got back from the duty in one sitting. Kevin Kelly is the person who inspired me to write my advice list. It feels good to have a handy guide when it comes to big decisions of your life.
There are tons of things I have highlighted from the book, bolds are the most important ones to me. Enjoy.
“Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.”
“Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.”
“Prototype your life. Try stuff instead of making grand plans.”
“You don’t have to attend every argument you are invited to.”
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional”
“The best way to get to yes in a negotiation is to truly understand what yes means for the other party.”
“Rule of 3 in conversation:
To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said.
Then again, and then once more.
The third time’s answer is the one closest to the truth.”
“If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.
Hang out with, and learn from people smarter than yourself.
Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.”
“Don’t be the best. Be the only”
“The more you are interested in others the more interesting they’ll find you.
“To be interesting, be interested”
“If you ask for someone’s feedback you’ll get a critic.
But if instead you ask for advice you’ll get a partner.”
“Keep showing up.
99% of success is just showing up.
In fact, most success is just persistence.”
“Be more generous than necessary.”
“No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.”
“There is no point to being the richest person in the cemetery.”
“Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be.
Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe.
And you can get better at it.
It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.”
“When you get invited to do something in the future ask yourself: Would I do this tomorrow?
Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter”
“You are what you do. Not what you say not what you believe not how you vote but what you spend your time on.”
“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
“Train employees well enough that they could get another job but treat them well enough that they never want to.”
“In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong.
A good question to ask yourself today is “What might I be wrong about?”
“A multitude of bad ideas is necessary for one good idea.”
“Most overnight successes —in fact, any significant successes—
take at least 5 years. Budget your life accordingly.”
“If you can avoid seeking the approval of others your power is limitless.”
“Recipe for success: underpromise and overdeliver.”
“Contemplating the weaknesses of others is easy; contemplating the weaknesses in yourself is hard but it pays a much higher reward.”
“You are only as young as the last time you changed your mind.”
“You can reduce the annoyance of someone’s stupid belief by increasing your understanding of why they believe it.”
“When you are stuck, sleep on it.
Give your subconscious an assignment while you sleep.
You’ll have an answer in the morning.”
“Bad things can happen fast but almost all good things happen slowly.”
“People can’t remember more than three points from a speech.”
“Cultivate an allergy to average”
“You don’t marry a person you marry a family.”
“About 99% of the time the right time is right now.”
“Cultivate 12 people who love you because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you.”
“The greatest teacher is called “doing.”
“Whenever there is an argument between two sides find the third side.”
“The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work)
is more important than the quantity.
Nothing beats small things done every day which is way more important than what you do occasionally.”
“When you lead your real job is to create more leaders not more followers.”
“Efficiency is highly overrated; goofing off is highly underrated.
Regularly scheduled sabbaths, sabbaticals vacations, breaks, aimless walks and time off are essential for top performance of any kind.
The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic.”
“Criticize in private, praise in public”
“Your growth as a mature being is measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have.”
“You see only 2% of another person and they see only 2% of you.
Attune yourself to the hidden 98%.”
“The most effective remedy for anger is delay.
“It doesn’t matter how many people don’t appreciate you or your work.
The only thing that counts is how many do.”
“Your golden ticket is being able to see things from other people’s point of view.
This shift enables heartfelt empathy.
It also allows you to persuade others and it is the key to great design.
Mastering the view through the eyes of others will unlock so many doors.”
🦉 Stoic Lesson of the Week #4
“Under no circumstances ever say ‘I have lost something,’ only ‘I returned it.’ Did a child of yours die? No, it was returned. Your wife died? No, she was returned. ‘My land has been taken from me.’ No, it too was returned. ‘But the person who took it was a thief.’ Why concern yourself with the means by which the original giver affects its return? As long as he entrusts it to you, look after it as something yours to enjoy only for a time – the way a traveler regards a hotel.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion, 11
Lesson four: Remember that everything is on loan. You assume you have things but you may lose them in an instant. Stay sharp focused on what you can control and what you can affect.
This is an issue that Epictetus touches upon at different points. It is an anti-materialist approach. From the outside it may seem very cold and inhuman. Maybe he himself wanted to create this kind of atmosphere, of course, thousands of years ago.
Actually this lesson is strongly related to the first and the second ones. Some things are in our control and some things are not. Right now you can have great wealth, and by wealth I don't necessarily mean material wealth. A partner who loves you, a job in modern conditions, work-life balance, favorite books, music and movies. In short, a pleasant and fulfilling life.
What Epictetus wants to remind us is that at this very moment the phone may ring and you may find out that you have been laid off. At this very moment your partner may come and tell you that they want to break up with you. A tree could fall on your beloved car and your savings could be destroyed along with it.
All these things are possible, says Epictetus, and he adds that nothing really belongs to you. Everything is a gift of nature. This is a way of being aware while enjoying your wealth. It's good to keep in the back of your mind how precious it is what you currently have. You will not be happy with what you have if you always look for what you have not.
Prioritize pain. Living things that cause pain and sorrow in your imagination will give you strength. Remember that life is an adventure full of suffering. You better be prepared.
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
Nietzsche
🦋 Poem of the Week
The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they govern me. I have a lord in heaven called the sun, and open for him, showing him the fire of my own heart, fire like his presence. What could such glory be if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters, were you like me once, long ago, before you were human? Did you permit yourselves to open once, who would never open again? Because in truth I am speaking now the way you do. I speak because I am shattered. Louise Glück
🧐 Ruggets Questions
I got requests from people that I use my questions on. Here are the ones I use every time I try to get to deeply know my friends and loved ones. They are like an endless-conversation openers with which you can unearth the ideas, emotions and memories and see them crystallised in the air. Save these somewhere safe, you cannot know when these will come handy.
What is your biggest fear in life?
What is one thing you never get bored of doing?
If you could get a sentence as a tattoo on your arm, what sentence would it be?
What is the thing you regret the most that you didn't do/try?
What have you changed your mind about lately?
If money wasn't a problem for you, what would you be doing?
Who would you like to have dinner with and talk about life?
What makes you come alive?
What is the accomplishment you are proud of the most up until now?
You have one wish, you can do anything, what's the first thing you'll do?
What is something that people are obsessed with but you just don’t get the point of?
What was the last gift you gave someone?
If you had the chance, what would be the city and time you like to be born and live in?
If you had to listen to 10 songs until you die, which 10 would it be?
If you can recommend only 10 books to your loved ones, which 10 would it be?
What is the one movie you keep re-watching?
What is the definition of “happiness” for you?
What do you know and want everyone else to know about life ?
What is most important childhood memory for you?
What is the most important advice given to you and by whom?
Can you describe for me your “dream day”? Who are there around with you? Where are you? What are you doing? What are you wearing?
What would you do if you know you will not end up in jail?
What is one thing you will never do again?
Who are you the most envious of?
If you could change “just” one thing about yourself, what would it be?
What is the best thing of being alive?
What is an unpopular opinion you hold?
What would you want to have invented? Telephone, internet, computer? Something else?
Which action that is currently considered sinful/illegal would you like to see legalized?
You shut your eyes and opened 20 years later. What would you like to see? What are you doing right now to accomplish that desired life?