Daily Update September 8, 2022
Today we have another lesson on creating a feeling of dependence and quotes from Eric Hoffer and Hannah Arendt.
The Daily Text
The Art of Worldly Wisdom Baltasar Gracián
Aphorism 5
Create a Feeling of Dependence. Not he that adorns, but he that adores makes a divinity. The wise man would rather see men needing him than thanking him. To keep them on the threshold of hope is diplomatic, to trust to their gratitude boorish; hope has a good memory, gratitude a bad one. More is to be got from dependence than from courtesy. He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well, and the orange, once sucked, falls from the golden platter into the waste basket. When dependence disappears, good behavior goes with it as well as respect. Let it be one of the chief lessons of experience to keep hope alive without entirely satisfying it by preserving it to make oneself always needed, even by a patron on the throne. But let not silence be carried to excess lest you go wrong, nor let another's failure grow incurable for the sake of your own advantage.
Quotes
These three quotes are things we can see daily in our political climate. Lies fall apart quickly as those spreading them don’t know or agree with the truth about what they hope to conceal.
We see people putting their lives into a political cult because they are missing something in their own lives.
The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and the deceiver want to hide.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), Crisis of the Republic, 1972.
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
Eric Hoffer
The True Believer
Link
The article recommendation from today is from Effectiviology about projection bias. This is a bias that can impact us all as we make decisions for the future based on current attitudes and feelings.