the task of education

"Like Rousseau, Kant criticizes parents who have their children taught solely with an eye to their career prospects and making money, and rulers who see schools and universities as nothing more than training grounds to maximize the efficiency of their subjects. Instead, it is the task of education to improve the world by turning individuals into better people: "Good education is exactly that from which all good in the world arises." "

— Kant: A Revolution in Thinking by Marcus Willaschek

“Why Aren’t Smart People Happier?”

In Experimental History, his Substack, Adam Mastroianni asks a basic question in an essay called “Why Aren’t Smart People Happier?” Intelligence helps people solve problems and understand situations, so smart people should be leading happier lives, but they are not. He says it’s because we too narrowly define intelligence. We give people multiple choice tests in reading, math, history and language, and we think we are identifying people who have general intelligence that helps them think through a wide array of domains.

But in reality, all these different tests are measuring only one ability: the ability to think through defined problems. These are problems with stable relationships among the variables, there’s no disagreement about when the problems have been solved, and the correct answers are the same for all people. But life, he continues, is largely about undefined problems. How do I get my kid to stop crying? Should I be a dancer or a dentist? How should I live? In these problems there is no stable set of rules to find the right answer. One person’s right answer might be another person’s wrong answer. We need a word for people who are really good at solving undefined problems.

David Brooks
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/26/opinion/good-essays-news-sidneys.html?smid=em-share

Resentment vs. Happiness

"...In an inevitably plural society, one of the things a person growing up needs to acquire is skin thickness. So I don't think encouraging people to resent everything they think is a moral mistake made by everybody else is a good way to prepare yourself for a happy life. I have not myself very often experienced people complaining about this sort of thing, but I don't like it when they do. If I'm teaching a course on race and racism, it's a bit weird that I'm not allowed to mention the N-word.

At the beginning of most of my classes, I tell students that if someone says something that upsets you, assume they didn't mean to. Let's start with that. Evidence can mount up that that's not what's going on. But that should be our presumption in a college classroom..."

Kwame Anthony Appiah on Identity in an Age of Essentialism
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-professor-of-pluralism?bc_nonce=hpau1vwvsvdpy3tcevyy7a&cid=reg_wall_signup

Schopenhauer

"Nietzsche considered him one of his most important teachers, and Freud, astonishingly, thought him one of the half-dozen greatest individuals who had ever lived. One of the few professional philosophers to treat him as more than a crank was Wittgenstein, who perhaps saw in his work an anti-philosophy akin to his own."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n22/terry-eagleton/pregnant-with-monsters

Today

"The highest possible philosophy is to enjoy today, not regretting yesterday, not fearing tomorrow." - Robert Green Ingersoll

Last Bregman Reith lecture: Fighting for humanity…

https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/m002nhld

Bilbo's "happifying life"

"My life went well because I was part of the victory over darkness. Victory over darkness! So a life well lived – a happifying life – is one that does not succumb to darkness. And while in my old life evil's ways to bait, beguile and betray always seemed so many, now they all seem as one.

All the same, Gandalf, I cannot say enough about quiet nights, time for quiet, even solitude, and the wide, true world. One wonders what good anything would be to anyone if there were no good world to be in. And this Undying world! – where the shimmering, undulating hills of light melodize with the open expanse above and the fresh rushing rivers glide over the glassy rocks below, as if there were a glowing ageless twilight in each stone!"

Philosophy Now
Dec '25

"9 Life Lessons" on Commencement Day, from Aussie comic Tim Minchin

"...Two: Don't seek happiness. Happiness is like an orgasm. If you think about it too much it goes away. Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy and you might find you get some as a side effect. We didn't evolve to be constantly content. Contented Homo Erectus got eaten before passing on their genes..."

Read the whole thing here. Sure beats the "eat more fiber" debacle of '21.

The gratitude lady responds to the question “Are you AI?”

And shares data…

Better than the proverbial apple

Way better. Thanks, Rhys!

Published 1920

Volume I... II

 

That wonderful letter to Henry Adams ("so happy...I can stand it no longer") is in volume II, p. 346.