A (Rough) Manifesto: Part III of III

See parts I and II here and here. For the third and final stage of my manifesto I decided to adopt the "This I Believe" model: 

• I believe that my well-being depends largely not on what happens to me, but how I respond to my circumstances.
• I believe that living well takes practice. Consciously placing myself around people who do it well makes a big difference. It’s easier to change my environment than my insides.
• With practice, though, you can change your insides. (We are, after all, just genes and habits – and our actions can influence the latter).
• Practice includes reflection, exposure to novels and movies, experimentation, and spending some time alone to contemplate, evaluate, and self-correct accordingly.  
• Having cultivated a love of language and improvisation, I believe in the power of the written and spoken word. 
• I believe in living deliberately. I believe people can improve their circumstances. (though it may be easier for me (white, well-off, and male) to say). I don’t believe in fate, external karma, destiny, (most) imposed responsibilities, or God as described by religion.
• I do, however, believe in giving thanks and slowing my breathing before every meal.
• I believe that we are amazing at self-deception and rationalization. We’re players in a larger game that we don’t understand
• I believe in listening to your intuition, with people, with projects. Somehow, it just knows, Steve Jobs said. But what if it “knows” and “feels” things that contradict each other? One day you may feel it’s a Yes and the next day a definite No. That’s why I believe in a Sabbath: Taking time alone silences external opinions, awakens your inner voice, and allows you to see and rewire what you believe and really want.
• I believe in taking time weekly to reflect on the past week and visualize the one looking forward.
• I believe in the importance of designing institutions and traditions that encourage us to live more fulfilling lives. (Which is why it’s ever important we define what that means). I’m a nudger
• I believe we are the average of the 5 people we spend our most time with.
• I believe a hero is in touch with himself but not preoccupied with himself. (I tend to be a bit of the latter at the moment, though I’d like to reverse that as I grow older.)
• I believe one of the best ways to influence people is by your example.
• I believe change happens with individuals working together on a micro level, and less in sweeping political decisions. “The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.” – Robert Pirsig.
• I believe we try too hard to fit in. Short form technology makes life too random; we don’t make commitments, we don’t feel fulfilled.
• I believe we have cultural issues, and this seems to be only getting worse. There’s a lot of depression, hubris, jealousy, alienation. We have a shortage of people who listen, who affirm, and who love unconditionally. 
• I believe in something close to a rule-based utilitarianism. (Though I think some rules should be definite, we should have the ability to calibrate other rules as issues arise).
• Although I believe that, as Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov claims, “everything is permitted”, I also believe (hesitantly) in a universal system of morals, in some universal truths, not in right or wrong but in better and worse. (This has been taken from Pirsig’s idea of Quality)
• Random: I don’t believe in (most) wars. I fear the consequences of overpopulation. I believe kindness is contagious. I believe people rarely change. Rousseau thinks humans are naturally good and culture corrupts. I think it’s more complicated than that. If I was held at gunpoint, I would say that nature and nurture contribute more or less equally to who we are.
• I believe in journals, books, friends, ideas, basketballs, rhymes, plans, teachers, and heroes
• Note: Some of these beliefs are subject to change.

Here are some quotes I believe in, below the fold:

"We need to set our affections on some good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what we were doing. "Happy is the man who improves other people not merely when he is in their presecen but even when he is in their thoughts."

"But the right thing is to shun both courses: you should neither become like the bad because they are many, nor be an enemy of the many because they are unlike you. Retire into yourself as much as you can. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. the process is a mutual one: men learn as they teach. And there is no reason why any pride in advertising your talents abroad should lure you forward into the public eye, inducing you to give readings of your works or deliver lectures."

"Lay these up in your heart, my dear Lucilius, that you may scorn the pleasure that comes from the majority's approval. The many speak hihgly of you, but have you really any grounds for satisfaction with yourself if you are the kind of person the many understand? Your merits should not be outward facing."

"Where you arrive does not matter as much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there." 

"Not he is great who can alter matter, but he is great who can alter minds."

"We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which he fear in ourselves."

"There is a gap between stimulus and response, and that key to both our growth and happiness is how we use that space."

"Who, then, shall conduct education so that humanity may improve? we must depend upon the efforts of enlightened men in their private capacity. all culture begins with private men and spreads outward from them. Simply through the efforts of persons of enlarged inclinations, who are capable of grasping the ideal of a future better condition, is the gradual approximation of huamn nature to its end possible. Rulers are simply interested in such training as will make their subjects better tools for their own intentions."

"So, what are your core values? What are those things that are *so* important to you, that another person would have to share them in order for you to be friends 30 years down the road?

"it is harder you will always find people who think they know what is your duty better than you know it."

"I want what all people want: Undying love and nice boobies."