On 9/17/26
Daily Letter
Happen · Inspiration & Quotes
The impulse to keep to yourself what you have discovered is not only shameful, it is destructive
You can not change the human condition but try and mitigate bad externalities
One of the reasons why I am in favor of less government is because when you have more government, industrialists take it over, and the two together form a coalition against the ordinary worker and the ordinary consumer.
Jung on depression
Anonymous
Dear N., 9 March 1959
I am sorry you are so miserable. "Depression" means literally "being forced downwards." This can happen even when you don't consciously have any feeling at all of being "on top." So I wouldn't dismiss this hypothesis out of hand. If I had to live in a foreign country, I would seek out one or two people who seemed amiable and would make myself useful to them, so that libido came to me from outside, even though in a somewhat primitive form, say of a dog wagging its tail. I would raise animals and plants and find joy in their thriving. I would surround myself with beauty-no matter how primitive and artless-objects, colours, sounds. I would eat and drink well. When the darkness grows denser, I would penetrate to its very core and ground, and would not rest until amid the pain a light appeared to me, for in excessu affectus' Nature reverses herself.
I would turn in rage against myself and with the heat of my rage I would melt my lead. I would renounce everything and engage in the lowest activities should my depression drive me to violence. I would wrestle with the dark angel until he dislocated my hip. For he is also the light and the blue sky which he withholds from me.
Anyway that is what I would do. What others would do is another question, which I cannot answer. But for you too there is an instinct either to back out of it or to go down to the depths. But no half-measures or half-heartedness.
With cordial wishes, As ever, C.G. JUNG
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.
Whoever tries to help a butterfly come out of its cocoon, kills it. Whoever attempts to help a bud emerge from the seed, destroys it. Whoever tries to awaken consciousness in someone who is not ready, confuses him. There are certain things that cannot be helped, they must happen from the inside out.
Most men are good through fear, not through a love of goodness.
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
People & Society
Simone Weil’s greatest insight was that attention is the foundation of morality and that letting your attention span degrade is the first step on the road to hell.
All the good in the world rises out of care and judicious concentration.
The saints are saints because of where they choose to look, what they choose to see
What a privilege it is to be lost in a self made dream instead of threading other people's nightmares through your own mind
Misc
You can’t make this shit up
All you need to know is F=ma & you can’t push a rope
Everything else can be derived from first principles
The more time you spend in hedonism and sin, the more pain you will some day have to face - the damage done to the spirit and the body can be undone by feeling it with honesty