Nobody reads the disclosures that roll down your computer screen. You click 'I agree' but you don't know what you're agreeing to.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur
Interpretation
This quote critiques modern society for lacking meaningful virtues associated with different life stages.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's quote highlights how modernity has altered traditional perceptions of youth, age, and life's significance. He suggests that in contemporary times, youth is often devoid of heroic qualities, older individuals lack the wisdom that experience should bring, and life itself is stripped of its grandeur, implying a deficiency in the authentic experiences and values that enrich human existence.
In practice
In a discussion about the values of contemporary society.
Nobody reads the disclosures that roll down your computer screen. You click 'I agree' but you don't know what you're agreeing to.
Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.
Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.
Individuals should think about the worst-case scenarios and plan for them. The world will be crazier than you think it will be. Put money away, and then you can live with much more freedom.
A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.
When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darknessβI am nothing.
ORPHAN, n. A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude . . .
So use your own property as not to injure that of another
If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default-setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying.
Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?
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