I think it’s very important to re-read books. I think it’s very difficult if not impossible for anybody to distill the entire value (if there is such a thing as that) of a book in one sitting. We forget bits and pieces, and the things that we remember tend to be simplistic and superficial. Whether it’s a epic work of fiction like the Iliad, run-of-the-mill chick-lit or some self-help book or something in between; there is always additional value to be gleaned from a second read- from a different perspective, in a different time, different sitting, different frame of mind. The same applies to music, and to art, and to any form of expression, and to any idea.

Repetition

It’s practically impossible to do anything complex exactly the same way twice- every single time you hit a series of notes on the piano, it will be slightly different (unless of course you’re focusing your entire core and being into ensuring that you sound like a robot).

Mindful repetition allows you to discover nuance– subtle differences that you didn’t notice before. Once you are aware of nuance, you’ll be able to trial-and-error your way into learning how to express yourself more precisely.

What is philosophy?

I think it was Wittgenstein who suggested that everybody has to figure it out for themselves. I think there are two main parts to philsophy:

The knowledge element, which includes everything from what we know to how we know it

The action element, which I would loosely describe as “life strategy”- meaning how we live our lives, how life is to be lived, what we ought to do, how we ought to act.

The two influence each other in a yin-yang fashion. Knowledge helps us act. Action yields information that can be processed into knowledge.

Philosophy literally means “the love of wisdom”, and I would define the purpose of philosophy as “to aid decision-making.” If you’re not doing something to get more out your life, why bother?

The interesting thing I’m starting to discover is that a lot of things that don’t seem to have anything to do with conventional or traditional philosophy actually have quite profound implications. Physics, biology, architecture, city planning, economics, mathematics… almost everything we see and do and get involved in can have philosophical value. If something feels true, or real- then it almost certainly will give us something to learn from, and something that will, upon reflection, help us make better decisions.

The Evolution of Co-operation

Most recently I read a book called The Evolution Of Co-operation; and it describes how co-operation arises in many different kinds of scenarios between many different kinds of individuals- including bacteria, and soldiers from opposing factions, etc- and it studies, using mathematical notation, several strategies that aim to “win” as much as possible from co-operative games against other strategies.

It was beautiful mathematics, and statistics, and probability- and it made a compelling argument that co-operation with others is beneficial to the individual. That moved me.

On a more concrete note I also want to talk about the acquiring and assimilation of knowledge- without going into meta-analysis about what knowledge is and stuff like that- I mean generally accepted facts and figures and general know-how, information, etc. Or actually I don’t, I think I’ve sort of vaguely covered it somehow. I’ll breach it another time- I’m going to spend the rest of my time now being productive and getting stuff done!