Aphorisms

Dan Riley -

DanRiley.org

(All aphorisms can be seen here; after three, the theme's full list can be seen via the highlighted title's link)

Aging:

  • The first thing to go when aging is imagination.
  • Most people say “this is who I am now” around 30, and stop growing.
  • Most meet most of their friends before 25.

Conversation:

  • Life is a dinner conversation.
  • For many, people are space-fillers once a phone’s dopamine hit subsides.
  • The best conversationalists never lost childhood's wonder and beginners mind.

Decision-making:

  • Knowing what to do next takes time.
  • Commit only to what you can sustain.
  • Rationalizations cover for emotional reasoning.

Friendship:

  • Friends see your blind spots, and show you.
  • Buying someone a meal never disappoints.
  • Avoid humorless people.

Health:

  • Most misery is self-made.
  • Depression arrives when growth is hindered.
  • Pagers used to be seem as annoyances, an intrusion into private life - people are now pinged dozens of time a day and wonder why their anxiety is up.

Human nature:

  • Those who are too nice, too appeasing, violate a rule of healthy relations: equality, and mutual skin in the game.
  • The passive aggressive are sensitive souls, dying to stand up for themselves.
  • The sign of an insecure know-it-all: in small groups, they lecture, rather than converse.  A slight tension is in the air.

Lifestyle:

  • People who think tattoos are unwise often recommend marriage.
  • The result of wisdom and wealth is the ability to pursue intrinsic enjoyments, indefinitely.
  • An empty calendar is a peaceful mind.

Men and women:

  • When dating, find someone that falls into your “must-have” attraction zone; then, pick for character and personality.
  • People want to be desired; this, mostly, is what makes a great lover.
  • Men are best appreciated by older women, slightly past their prime.

Organizations:

  • Benevolence or malice, leadership or its abdication, trickle down from the top.

Questions:

  • Is your “love” just obsession by another name?
  • Do people have ideas, or do ideas have people?
  • Compared to what (when assessing the quality of any system)?

Philosophy:

  • Know yourself - the First Amendment of every autonomous person.
  • The ultimate power is the ability to say "no."
  • You want to be known for signal, not noise.

Relationships:

  • For couples, emphasize growth, not fusion.
  • The best friends, lovers, family members bring out and encourage the best in you.
  • Your most important relationship is the one you have with yourself; surround yourself with those who respect that, and don’t ask you to sacrifice your authenticity and autonomy.

Society:

  • To flourish, merge the best of modernity with the best of our ancestral foragers.
  • The modern rebel resists cheap dopamine, relishes silent solitude, and cultivates a long attention span; technology is their slave, not the inverse.
  • Politicians lambast identity politics, then castigate "the Democrats" or "the Republicans."

Truth:

  • The trouble isn’t knowing the truth, it’s learning how to deliver it with decency and courage.
  • People tend not to skew towards the truth, but to what’s incentivized.
  • Beware of teachers who complicate; genius is in simplicity.

Wealth:

  • The ultimate wealth is time wealth.
  • The purpose of money is autonomy.
  • To create wealth and take asymmetric risks, extend the early 20’s lifestyle for 15 years.