Marginalia: Bounded virtues, living fuller and the beauty of chalk
Bounded virtues
Our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and power of disposal; they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which we have made it our duty to exercise them that if we come to engage in an activity of a different kind, it catches us off guard and without the slightest awareness that it might involve the application of those same virtues.
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, In Search of Lost Time Volume II (page 2).
Live Fuller, Not Bigger
While most Christians would say the devil is the best liar in the world, I think the best is the person in the mirror. Self-delusion is perhaps the most challenging aspect of attempting the fuller lifestyle. Avoiding work because you're being negligent and avoiding work because you are achieving balance look identical from the outside. Getting this right means you have to be able to confront the full breadth of your weaknesses to ensure you aren’t being controlled by them. The hard part of living fuller, not bigger, is being honest with yourself. That there is no answer is the answer. You have to believe that you have the intelligence and grit to figure it out yourself.
Evan Armstrong, Napkin Math
The Beauty of Chalk
We mathematicians like to watch mathematics being done with chalk on a board for the same reason that people like to listen to music note by note, in real time. Science, at least mathematics, is made of information plus experience. Our age is addicted to transmitting more and more information, blaring climax (result) after climax. For us, that’s not enough: we also want to experience, indeed to relive personally, how the result has come to be. Only in this way can we create science – and on the side, experience joy.
Roy Peachy, Plough