mink

To whom it may concern: Your situation in the future is influenced by your actions now. Your actions now are influenced by your vision for the future. So while you are here now, think big and do big. There is no other way around it. If you believe your situation in the future is influenced by random events, and if you also believe that your actions now are randomly contingent, then you cannot think big, because you do not believe you control your thinking. And you cannot do big, because you are not thinking it. "Thinking big" is an expression to refer to your ambition. The thinking does not have to indeed be "big" in the physical sense; just big in its impression on you. Carpe diem, Jack D Aside: One way to understand time is to assume it is cyclical. On a macro-scale: The state of affairs in the world today is similar to the situation at a point in time in the past. Similarly, the state of affairs is likely to arise again in the future. On a micro-sca...

One of my friends sent me this link to an essay by George Orwell from 1946. In it, Orwell critiques modern uses of English words. Particularly, he makes the argument that while words will always carry their meanings, their combination in sentances is poor and remains poor because we imitate eachother. It's worth reading the essay for yourself. So far, my favorite extract from this essay is this: In the case of a word like democracy , not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite diffe...

I was browsing an archive by UCL of George Orwell 's work today, and came across this: Ghastly feeling of impotence over the India business, Churchill’s speeches, the evident intention of the blimps to have one more try at being what they consider tough, and the impudent way in which the newspapers can misrepresent the whole issue, well knowing that the public will never know enough or take enough interest to verify the facts. This last is the worst symptom of all – though actually our own apathy about India is not worse than the non-interest of Indian intellectuals in the struggle against Fascism in Europe. The exact writing can be found on Folio 85 in this political diary . Another archive is Orwell Diaries 1938 - 1942 . The mentions of airpower and propaganda is particularly intriguing, considering the current state of affairs in the world today.