A dear professor died yesterday. I owe him so much. I would not be in the States today if it weren’t because of him. He offered me a job that allowed me to keep a foot in school in the midst of a personal crisis —in the middle of the pandemic.

What first began as a student-professor relationship, it evolved through the brief years into a colleague relationship. He saw me as a peer, even though I was miles behind. And I am sorry to have so much unexpressed love, so many unfinished projects, so many ideas to put out there.

Death strangely always happens to someone else, even if one is aware that we are all bones waiting to happen. I have a strong sense that, because of the nature of his intellectual interests, he kept death as an old friend throughout his life, informing a sense of urgency, an ennobling of the spirit, a developing of wisdom, and strangely, a zest for life.

Mortality was his friend all along, and in befriending death, he lived a life worth living.

When the bold and irreverent Tina Brown became editor of the New Yorker, she remarked:
“our job is to make the sexy serious and the serious sexy”.

Today I had a below average day. It has been like this for the last few weeks: I have felt like I am constantly walking on thin ice, alone, with no compass or sense of where to step, a single mishap can plunge me into the unforgiving sea.

After work, I went to the gym to lift some weights and swim to try to shrug off that fragile and solitary feeling. At the swimming pool I saw someone that made me feel so much better. I felt that my sense of confidence was restored. There is nothing like the spark between two people that are happy to see each other.

It is important to pay attention to these people. They provide vitality. They restore your confidence. They infuse zest. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, these friends are the most valuable asset one can possibly ask.

“Why do you give a damn, Alfred? It is not your house.”
Alfred responds poignantly, “I give a damn because a good man once made me responsible for what was most precious to him in the whole world.”

There is a certain arrogance in thinking that, of the entire timescale of the Universe, one happens to be living at the precise point in time where one saw the rise of the personal computer. What are the odds that one happens to be born at a time when civilizations start to create simulations of reality: videogames, virtual reality, and so on.

I’m worried that the simulation hypothesis seems to be framed by concepts provided by computer science, itself a very recent field, rather than from first principles. Has Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, or Descartes ever proposed reality as a simulation? I think part of what explains the popularity of the simulation theory is that STEM has misplaced the humanities, and so the concepts and ideas from philosophy and history are not there at all, leading to solipsistic or self-referencing questions like the simulation hypothesis.

This weekend I went to a massive book estate sale in the Rittenhouse neighborhood. A prominent lawyer who was really a polymath had passed away and an estate agency was selling his collection. His collected books reflected his interest in poetry, philosophy, ethics, political theory, classical art, history, and, perhaps more interestingly, botany, geology, the Swiss Alps, Newfoundland, cooking, and travel guides to “exotic” places.
The books I was able to recognize constituted the cannon of Western thought —Plato, Aristotles, the Scholastics, Chauncer, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Russell, and so on. So many of the classical books were translations and companions. Naturally, I defaulted to cgrabbing those of the Penguin Classics series and the Cambridge Companions, all running at $3 each!

However joyous I felt with so many of these books now as part of my library, I wonder how many of these will I actually read? How many shall I even glimpse at the table of contents? I suppose having a surplus of unread books is better than having no books at all, but I wonder if —given limited resources— it may be more intelligent to invest in a comfortable reading chair and a framed view. I really do believe activating an environment that processes or “consumes” from a collection is as important as accumulating assets —otherwise one ends up with endless acquisitions that the living person may never see.

It makes me wonder if most of these books collected by this prominent lawyer were actually read.

The more time I spend listening to people in daily life, the more I am convinced about the importance of sound logical reasoning in the general conversation. So much of our divisions would be cleared out if we were more cognizant about inductive reasoning, deductive thinking, cognitive biases, and recognizing non-sequiturs and logical fallacies. Functioning democratic societies demand clear and sharp thinking. Authoritarianism thrives in storytelling, myths, and bogus thinking fueled by emotions. The Age of Reason must be revived.

Today, after a run with Queer Run, I decided not to listen to podcasts during my morning routine. Thoughts started to appear in consciousness. I felt a sense of freedom from constantly consuming content. An idea emerged: the constant input of information of the modern digital era is very much like doing squats at a very young age. It stunts your growth.

Maybe the problems of our modern society would be solved if we all retreated into silent meditation.

As someone holding a leadership role, I am starting to recognize that calm, slow days are meant to be approached with even greater caution than regular, busy days. These days are very easy to approach as time for relaxation. Yet, it is here where the opportunity emerges to focus on preventive maintenance that prepare your team to better deal with the adversities that are to come. Those days are the calm before the storm. How are you going to use them?

There is something so electrifying of the New York City skyline at dusk. The newcomers piercing the sky, One Vanderbilt, 270 Park Avenue, and the mobsters of 57th Street, all serve as a reminder that New York is constantly evolving. Relentless. Full of energy. Delirious.