"While you’re alive it’s shameful to worm your way into the Calendar of Saints.
Disbelief in yourself is more saintly.

…

It is indispensable to be sleeplessly delirious,
to fail, to leap into emptiness.
Probably, only in despair is it possible
to speak all the truth to this age.

It is indispensable, after throwing out dirty drafts,
to explode yourself and crawl before ridicule,
to reassemble your shattered hands
from fingers that rolled under the dresser.

…

And if from out of the dirt, you have become a prince, but without principles,
unprince yourself and consider
how much less dirt there was before,
when you were in the real, pure dirt.
Our self-esteem is such baseness…
The Creator raises to the heights
only those who, even with tiny movements,
tremble with the fear of uncertainty.

…

Blessed is the madcap artist,
who smashes his sculpture with relish –
hungry and cold – but free
from degrading belief in himself."

"I am reading about the work of the late William J. Stuntz, a law professor at Harvard, who wrote about the criminal justice system, in The Caging of America (recommended!) and Stuntz looks for the reasons why we arrived at this impasse, finding it, ultimately, in the Constitution, particularly in the Bill of Rights. And I was hard struck by how right he was in what was wrong. The problem, as he sees it, is that the Bill of Rights is about process and procedure, rather than principles. Compare, he says, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen with our Bill of Rights — Bills 4-8 establish our judicial system, and are how we end up with more black men in prison than were slaves in 1850, and more than six million people under “correctional supervision”. Gopnik writes:

[citation]

I’d always been uneasy with Constitution-worship, particularly uneasy about the Bill of Rights, and certainly the justice system, but didn’t have the least idea why. This is why."

"2. …Mimicking what we are railing against is comfortable but changes little. It simply gives us a new, safe space in which to rail and exclude.

3. The process of consensus is disabling where it is shackled to a perceived need to be productive or by self-imposed time constraints or by the fear of being bogged down in long discussions, and by the desperate, unquestioned desire to act now. However, we’ve seen the allegedly direct democratic process of consensus used in time-limited ways to marginalise or simply give voice to those more experienced in the process. In this way it is no different to standard institutionalised forms of governance. But what is worse is the subtext that it is more open and transparent, and that somehow at every point we don’t have to out power relationships. The network, for all our trite statements about newness, is neither new nor power free. It is just as hateful and disabling, or just as counter-hegemonic and different."

"Here's a curious paradox: the more you insist on sticking to a straight-&-narrow path defined by your own evolving principles, rather than the expedient one defined by current situation, the more you'll have to twist & turn in the real world. The straight path in your head turns into spaghetti in the real world.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the more your path through the real world seems like a straight road, defined by something like a "standard" career path/script, the more you'll have to twist & turn philosophically to justify your life to yourself. Every step that a true Golden Boy careerist takes, is marred by deep philosophical compromises. You sell your soul one career move at a time.<br />
<br />
If you are driven by your own principles, you'll generally search desperately for a calling, and when you find one, it will consume your life. You'll be driven to actually produce, create or destroy. You'll want to do something that brings the world more into conformity with your own principles…"

"Anarchism is not a concept that can be locked up in a word like a gravestone. It is not a political theory. It is a way of conceiving life, and life, young or old as we may be, whether we are old people or children, is not something final: it is a stake we must play day after day. When we wake up in the morning and put our feet on the ground we must have a good reason for getting up, if we don’t it makes no difference whether we are anarchists or not. We might as well stay in bed and sleep. And to have a good reason we must know what we want to do because for anarchism, for the anarchist, there is no difference between what we do and what we think, but there is a continual reversal of theory into action and action into theory. That is what makes the anarchist unlike someone who has another concept of life and crystallises this concept in a political practice, in political theory."

"Be patient; Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn't say to him; Never assume motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are; Expand your sense of the possible; Don’t trouble yourself w/ matters you cannot change; Don't ask more of others than you can deliver; Tolerate ambiguity; Laugh at yourself frequently; Concern yourself w/ what is right rather than who is right; Try not to forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong; Remember your life belongs to others as well. Don't risk it frivolously; Never lie to anyone for any reason;  Learn the needs of those around you & respect them; Avoid pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission & pursue that; Reduce your use of 1st personal pronoun; Praise at least as often as you disparage; Admit your errors freely & quickly; Become less suspicious of joy; Understand humility; Remember love forgives everything; Foster dignity; Live memorably; Love yourself; Endure"

"1. Establish an individual set of values but recognize those of the surrounding community and of the various cultures of the world.

2. Explore their own ancestry, culture, and place.

3. Are comfortable being alone, yet understand dynamics between people and form healthy relationships.

4. Accept mortality, knowing that every choice affects the generations to come.

5. Create new things and find new experiences.

6. Think for themselves; observe, analyze, and discover truth without relying on the opinions of others.

7. Favor love, curiosity, reverence, and empathy rather than material wealth.

8. Choose a vocation that contributes to the common good.

9. Enjoy a variety of new places and experiences but identify and cherish a place to call home.

10. Express their own voice with confidence.

11. Add value to every encounter and every group of which they are a part.

12. Always ask: “Who am I? Where are my limits? What are my possibilities?”"

"Recently at IDEO we've been talking about the difference between having a vision and having a purpose. A vision is something you shoot for, a point in the future, while a purpose is a point of origin, something that guides you. We're of a belief that visions are tough to go after when you desire innovative outcomes because they tend to reduce emergent behavior and serendipity. A single, defined point in the future may be better suited to a top-down, variance-eliminating organization trying to reach a single goal, rather than for one trying to exist in certain way, believing that a guiding purpose will ensure that the outcomes that do arise will be not only appropriate, but likely extraordinary."

The land of the free has become a legal minefield, says Philip K. Howard -- especially for teachers and doctors, whose work has been paralyzed by fear of suits. What's the answer? A lawyer himself, Howard has four propositions for simplifying US law.

"FUKINSEI (imbalanced)

"I was always critical of facebook, now after facebook's recent change in its terms of service I have deactivated my account. I cannot work towards creating an open society and still be apart of the old world order, it would be hypocrisy on my behalf."

"I spent a lot of last year urging people to work on stuff that matters. This led to many questions about what that "stuff" might be. I've been a bit reluctant to answer those questions, because the list is different for everyone. I thought I'd do better to start the new year with some ideas about how to think about this for yourself. ... 1. Work on something that matters to you more than money.2. Create more value than you capture. 3. Take the long view." See also video interview: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-matters-interview-tim-oreilly.html