24 — What is the Point of Anything? — Growth Mindset Podcast
Rob Price — English Teacher and Philosopher
Rob Price, an English teacher, author and philosopher working in Thailand and soon moving to China. He has really interesting views on the world and in my own view is like a younger, more English version of Jordan Peterson.
On the podcast we discuss a variety of things from the topics of teaching and being useful to the world and travelling. To such things as Nuclear Winters, AI taking over the world, human beings taking over the galaxies, what is the point of living and why no one will read in the future. So certainly a great podcast for anyone who likes to think about the future and what is the point of things. Rob has a great way of unpicking what humans tend to believe versus what is actually true and I certainly learnt a lot in the conversation.
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TIPS
OPTIMISE YOUR AID GIVING
Try to be as useful as possible — If you want to visit a country and physically help out you should develop specific skills. Don’t just go somewhere on a glorified holiday where you mainly just get in the way. You would net make far more difference by just sending your money to charity and going on a holiday yourself.
LET PEOPLE BREAK STUFF.
A solid piece of advice from an actual teacher. Let people make their own mistakes and learn through messing up as it is far more empowering that keeping them in an enclosed system.
MAKE POSITIVE RESOLUTIONS
Instead of focusing on the negative try to find things that can make you happier and more useful to others or build better connections or add a skill.
BOOKS
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE — INFINITE JEST
A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America.
Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human — and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
H. P. LOVECRAFT — THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS
Millenia ago, the Old Ones ruled our planet. Since that time, they have but slumbered. But when a massive sea tremor brings the ancient stone city of R’lyeh to the surface once more, the Old Ones awaken at last.
The Whisperer in Darkness brings together the original Cthulhu Mythos stories of the legendary horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Included in this volume are several early tales, along with the classics ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and ‘At the Mountains of Madness’. Arm yourself with a copy of Abdul Alhazred’s fabled Necronomicon and prepare to face terrors beyond the wildest imaginings of all, save H.P. Lovecraft.
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