Reflections and wandering thoughts
“I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good.”
— Roald Dahl
The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
— Daniel Boorstin
A popular parlour game among historians is debating when the modern world began. Was it when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, in 1440? Or when Christopher Columbus discovered America, in 1492? Or when Martin Luther published his 95 theses, in 1517? All popular choices. But there is a strong case to be made for a less conventional answer: the modern world began on a freezing New Year’s Eve, in 1600, when Elizabeth I granted a company of 218 merchants a monopoly of trade to the east of the Cape of Good Hope.
— The Economist on the British East India Company
Simple solutions are easy mistakes.
— Me (?)
Nietzsche claimed God dead. He justified it by reasoning that thought and culture had effectively reached a point where they could no longer rest on the unproven ideas, beliefs and assumptions of religion. I think Nietzsche was a bit short sighted both in his vision and timescales at which the concept of God develops. Then and there.
The biggest problem, Salah thought, was how one went about killing a god. You could burn its scriptures, wipe out its worshipers, kill its avatars, but that would only ever delay it. Eventually it would come back, whispering, and the whole cycle would begin again. It could wait forever.