"To become a citizen, one must learn how to live and participate in a community — the most attractive ideal for any society, in religious or secular terms. It is one of the pillars of civilization. We cannot hope to endure without it.

School, then, is the place where we’re inspired to forget ourselves and become aware of the hopes and needs of somebody else—our neighbors, other citizens.

It’s where we begin active, deliberate and rational participation in a citizen community; and learn how to use the instrument of citizenship to manage, if not eradicate, our inner selfishness, our petty private passions, our personal interests. It’s where we feed and nurture the better part of our natures by channeling the collective efforts toward a higher, nobler purpose: the common weal.

But, somewhere along the way, school became school…"

"If he went to jail to demonstrate his commitment to freedom of others, he went to the berries to exercise his own recovered freedom, the liberty to do whatever he wished, & the evidence in all his writing is that he very often wished to pick berries. There’s a widespread belief, among both activists & those who cluck disapprovingly over insufficiently austere activists, that idealists should not enjoy any pleasure denied to others, that beauty, sensuality, delight all ought to be stalled behind some dam that only the imagined revolution will break. This schism creates, as the alternative to a life of selfless devotion, a life of flight from engagement, which seems to be one way those years at Walden Pond are sometimes portrayed. But change is not always by revolution, the deprived don’t generally wish that the rest of us would join them in deprivation, & a passion for justice & pleasure in small things are not incompatible. That’s part of what the short jaunt from jail to hill says."

"Phoenix Suns basketball star Steve Nash says he's read Karl Marx's The Manifesto of the Communist Party. On the court, Nash is famous for passing the ball to teammates, giving up scoring opportunities himself so others can score. In a league full of flashy, high-scoring players, could Nash be an example of a Marxist player?"

"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"

"But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke a lick of the language. But one of those dudes had a profound affect on me.<br />
<br />
He was the guy that stopped to help me with a blow out with his whole family of 6 in tow… [Great story here.]<br />
<br />
So, to clarify, a family that is undoubtedly poorer than you, me, and just about everyone else on that stretch of road, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took an hour or two out of their day to help some strange dude on the side of the road when people in tow trucks were just passing me by. Wow...<br />
<br />
But we aren't done yet… [story continues]"

"The story ends in hope, acknowledging the beauty and joy in all things, in the everyday and above all in the family—our first school—the only place that most of us learn the truth about the world and ourselves, or discover life’s single most important lesson, of unselfish love." — Terrence Malick

"Ghassan Hage is an internationally acclaimed thinker, both as an academic and an arresting public intellectual. In this Inaugural Distinguished Lecture for the Australian Anthropological Society, he looks at the function of anthropology today. He asks, what is the discipline's potential to help us understand, and be, 'other than what we are'?" [via: http://plsj.tumblr.com/post/1190216571/anthropology-and-the-passion-of-the-political]

"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?”"

"For Darwin, the question of human morality never had to do with pure selflessness. In The Descent of Man he expressed his considered conviction that cultural factors such as “the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c.” play a much more important role than natural selection in advancing what he called the moral qualities of human beings, “though to this latter agency the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense, may be safely attributed.”<br />
<br />
Harman, in his closing pages, underscores the role that culture and education still play in human altruistic behaviors, despite claims by biological determinists that genes run the show. His book is an important contribution to the collaborative work on altruism as it relates to self-interest now increasingly under way, not only in the natural sciences but also in philosophy, political science, economics, and anthropology."

Interview with David Foster Wallace from 2003

[via: http://twitter.com/ddmeyer/status/12414500316 ]

[See also: http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/823228/ ]

"This slide deck is our current best thinking about maximizing our likelihood of continuous success." {Some highlights: slides 10-19, 38-39, 56, 66, 71, 77, 114-117] [via: http://creativegeneralist.blogspot.com/2009/08/netflix-culture-manifesto.html AND http://www.kottke.org/09/08/how-to-build-a-long-lived-culture-of-excellence AND http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/05/other-companies-should-have-to-read-this-internal-netflix-presentation/