soul project
Call it what you want, but everyone needs a little soul in their lives. A little worldly wisdom, particular to you, built up from that highly unique set of people and ideas you encounter and hold. Everyone has it, but there's something about recognizing that you have it and consciously working to strengthen and expand it. Many of the people I admire most think very explicitly about iteratively improving their souls.
So I am thinking about improving mine.
Religious people get a soul-improvement plan out of the box to some degree - there are patterns you practice, defined roles that people fill in your life, ideas that are repeated until you can’t forget them. That’s not to say that everyone of a given religion ends up with identical soul - they just start with more of a map for how to proceed. Starting habits. I am pretty bad at starting habits (and breaking the bad ones).
I like to think I have some good habits. I wasn’t raised in a religious family, but my parents definitely had a strong sense of the types of values they wanted to instill in us and the types of relationships they wanted us to have with others [1].
Now, I’ve been out on my own for a while and still hopefully have a lot of time left in the world, so I started this project to design a specialized soul-improvement plan.
[edit: my Supreme No-Nonsense Editor doesn’t think “soul” is the right word to use here, but it captures a whole bundle of things that don’t fit one of my more rational-sounding options, so I’m keeping it. Among this bundle are the values you hold, the ways you view and interact with others, the ways you think about the world, and the ways you express yourself.]
The Soul Project
One religious soul-building habit I particularly appreciate is ritual reflection. There are the big holidays, where it’s most obvious. But I also appreciate the perhaps more conservative tradition of daily reflection. In Judaism (and others? No idea, honestly.), a section of the Torah is read every week (the same section on the same week of the Jewish calendar). It’s a nice way to ensure you think about all the big (& small) ideas every year.
I don’t think The Actual Bible is really going to get me going (parts, maybe, TBD). But there are definitely things I’ve read that affected me deeply or cover themes I’d like to keep further to the front of my mind, so I’m putting together my own little me-specific Torah. The very ambitious goal is to find some little thing to read for every day of the year, but for now I’m just sprinkling them across the year as I go. Don’t want to fill my bible full of crap for the sake of a completed calendar.
I’m also trying to reach outside of where I’m currently at. I asked friends to recommend essays/poems with the prompt of “affected your thinking” or “helped you think about life,” hoping to get a wider range than I would cover on my own. A lot of people came back with nothing (I’m holding out hope they’ll get back to me eventually), but several passed along great stuff and I still haven’t had a chance to get through it all. For anyone reading this, the content request is forever standing and the weirder the better.
That said, everyone I ask is going to be a bit different and not everything they recommend will work for me. So I came up with some (very flexible, non-binding) ground rules:
If I ask someone for suggestions, I will read at least a portion of anything they recommend to me (“portion” is flexible - some people recommended podcast series, and I don’t plan to listen to everything. I will also break this rule when people recommend books because I have my own reading list I have been neglecting and I don’t want to get too bogged down all in one year).
I will wait at least a few days to a week after I read something the first time before adding it to the library. Sometimes I read something and think it will really impact me, but then it quickly fades. Other things I’ll read and find kind of lame, but then notice I’m thinking about it weeks later. I’m more interested in the latter, since I’m supposedly committing to reading this far into the future.
I can swap pieces out in the future - if anything starts to feel pretty stale, I’ll probably dump it. And obviously I plan to keep reading new things, so I’ll want to swap in some of the brighter stuff. Haven’t figured out how to deal with the problem of feeling differently year to year. I guess I will just save alternatives when I decide to swap things out. I’m also nowhere near having too many entries, so I can keep adding things for a while without any sacrifices.
I read something once about how to best decorate your house - put up the most beautiful things you can think of and then when you find more beautiful things, replace them. That’s kind of the vibe I’m going for here, although I don’t want the turnover to be too high.
Shorter than ~30 pages (and ideally shorter than 10) - I don’t want the ritual reading to become onerous enough that I eventually abandon it. Sometimes I will group short blogs/quotes if they are on similar themes and don’t exceed the length requirement. [edit: my Supreme No-Nonsense Editor pointed out that “the internet doesn’t have pages, idiot” so I guess I’ll revise this to a 20 minute read, max 60]
No criteria for how narrow or vague it is - I like stories that are specific and get me to think about particular things, I like pieces that are general and philosophical that I will be able to relate to differently at different points in life. I want to add more stories.
Things I’m not including (for now):
Full books. There are plenty of books that heavily influenced the way I understand the world, much more than any individual article, but it’s just too much to reread a whole set of the same books every year. Maybe I’ll write a future post about books that most affected me &/or think about some books I should revisit over the next 5-10 years.
Movies, TV. These also definitely affect me, but I will probably not revisit with any regularity for the length reason. I do have a shortlist that I recommend whenever I can:
The White Right by Deeyah Khan
Documentary by a Muslim woman talking to a bunch of white nationalists she met in the group that marched in Charlottesville. (tldr: humans change, kindness is a way in. Watch this if you are feeling despair about humanity.)
Last Chance U
Documentary series about DI-level athletes who end up in community college because of grades or criminal offenses and are trying to get themselves eligible again. (tldr: great stories about young people from largely unfortunate circumstances who still haven’t figured out a lot about life, pursuing pipe dreams when they should probably just be figuring out how to pass art class. Watch this if everyone you know is highly educated &/or if you have strong opinions about how to improve the education system or solve poverty.)
The Wire
Crime show set in Baltimore in the thick of the War on Drugs, created by a former Baltimore cop and journalist. Each season adds another layer to the issue - politics, schools, news coverage, etc. (tldr: social problems are a giant tangled mess and lots of people are operating under bad incentives. Watch this if you want to get really fucking depressed.)
I’m planning to add some good interviews from podcasts, but haven’t put the time in to gather them yet.
The list built from my personal reading is pretty heavy on Scott Alexander (SlateStarCodex). He’s great and deserves the space, is all I have to say about that.
General themes I am looking for:
Being thoughtful and present
Gratitude
Generosity
Charity
Truth and integrity
Reminders to act
Reminders to be an individual
What is “meaningful”
Heads up - the rest of this is just another list of things to read on the internet, and we all know there are enough of those, so feel free to peace out now. Will continue adding, so this could definitely get out of control.
Here’s what I’ve gathered so far - organized by theme, but some pieces overlap with multiple:
Being thoughtful and present: Life is extremely short and unpredictable. Savoring your time on earth is the best you can do - enjoy life and do what is meaningful to you. Be there for it and be there for the brief lifetimes of those around you.
Out to Get You, Slack, Sabbath Hard and Go Home
Time and space are valuable resources, it’s easy to mindlessly waste them - don’t.
Letter to Menoeceus - Epicurus
A brief summary of the stoic mindset. I also plan to go back through my copy of Marcus Aurelius’ meditations to find the passages I liked the best, but this one is nice for putting all the main ideas in one place.
Burnt Norton - TS Eliot
(recommended by a friend)
All you have is the moment you’re in to appreciate.
Breaking Points - Agnes Callard
You do owe something to anyone on the other side of a meaningful relationship. In modern times, everyone loves to tell people it’s fine to just walk away and that we don’t owe anyone anything. But that’s just not true (or ethical or kind) - meaningful relationships deserve more negotiation when circumstances change.
Your Life in Weeks, 100 Blocks a Day, The Tail End - WaitButWhy
Face up to the amount of time you actually have left and don’t waste it (more importantly, use it.)
Gratitude: Lots of overlap with being thoughtful and present, but deserving of its own category. Most of all, be grateful that you have the amazing, modern, mostly comfortable, shockingly luxurious life you have, compared to the majority of human existence, now and especially in the past. Also - practice gratitude toward others for the small ways they improve your life. Because they do and you should not take it for granted. These are things to read when you feel the world is conspiring against you.
Who By Very Slow Decay - SSC
A reminder of how terrible some moments in life can be, how you may avoid or plan for them, and that you should be grateful when you aren’t in them.
Generosity: Pretty self-explanatory, but get out of your own damn head and help others. Offer things beyond what is asked of you, be generous with your time and friendship and money and support, be creative and focus on what actually helps. It’s Good.
Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Life FAQ (particularly 1.2, 1.4, 3.6)
(yes it’s a google doc)
The best reason to put forth effort in your life is altruism. Succinctly covers the questions:
Why should I get up in the morning?
Is my life significant?
How can I become a better person?
[Placeholder for Canonical Effective Altruism Article]
Will edit when I find a better representative for my own list, but this is a primer on the idea of Effective Altruism - that you should care not just about generosity in itself, but that you are being generous in the way that achieves the most good.
Charity: Assume those around you are not evil or idiots. Assume, like you, they are muddling through life (jolting around in the dark), trying to be good and trying to understand the world, but not always succeeding, for many reasons beyond their control. You should try to understand them. Most people are sympathetic characters if you really give it a go.
Yeah, the majority of the world is full of fickle, irrational fools and one day you’ll see it for all its horror. Don’t let it turn you into a misanthrope, you’re one of them.
I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup - SSC
A classic SSC essay (maybe the canonical SSC essay) about how you justify your identity and your tolerance for others. My favorite part is the opening story about forgiveness.
Meditations on Moloch - SSC
On the ever-present monster of coordination problems.
Preaching to the Choir - Rebecca Solnit
(Recommended by a friend)
On the value of talking to people who already agree with you. In general, I find preaching to the choir performative and self-serving, but this was a much more charitable take that got under my skin because I think some of it is right.
Unpopular Ideas (Social Norms, Political and Economic Systems, Crime and Punishment, Children)
Collected by Julia Galef (recommended by a friend, years ago)
Julia Galef says it better than I would:
“Even though I disagree with many of these ideas, I nevertheless think it’s valuable to practice engaging with ideas that seem weird or bad, for two reasons: First, because such ideas might occasionally be true, and it’s worth sifting through some duds to find a gem.
And second, because I think our imaginations tend to be too constrained by conventional “common sense,” and that many ideas we accept as true today were counterintuitive to past generations. Considering weird ideas helps de-anchor us from the status quo, and that’s valuable independently of whether those particular ideas are true or not.”
Revisiting these ideas every once in a while will be interesting, to see how I (and popular opinions) shift around over time.
This doesn’t fit in super well with “charity,” but it’s a helpful calibration for “how absolutely batshit is the world” based on how many people are willing to endorse any crazy conspiracy they hear (~33%).
Truth and integrity: Be curious about the world and what is true. Don’t let alliances or social conventions get in the way of understanding. Act in a way that is most likely to get you to the truth, rather than an answer you’d like to hear. Be graceful when you are wrong and value corrections.
Live Not by Lies - Solzhenitsyn
I don’t live in a gulag state, but everyone can use a reminder to only say what you mean and believe to be true.
The PNSE Paper - SSC
People who think they’re enlightened usually look unchanged from the outside, the feeling that you’ve figured out life and transcended might just be narcissism. Outside view matters!
Twelve Virtues of Rationality - Eliezer Yudkowsky
Care about truth & do it well.
A Fable of Science and Politics - Eliezer Yudkowsky
Recognize how you react to information, if curiosity isn’t your first instinct, that’s something to work on.
Keep Your Identity Small - Paul Graham
If you allow believing certain things to become part of who you are, you are going to have a much harder time reasonably evaluating arguments around those beliefs.
Reminders to act: You have more options than you think, try making some new choices. Most of what you consider constraints are artificial and breakable, and you are not really doing anything until you start breaking them. Don’t live a passive life, what’s that worth?
Babble & Prune Series - LessWrong
If you want to have more good ideas, the best way to start is to just have more ideas of highly variable quality. (Same applies to other things: if you want to have more good experiences, if you want to have more good friends, if you want to have better conversations with people).
Essays from my grandmother
My grandma (and namesake) dropped out of college at 19 to marry, had a bundle of kids, eventually got a divorce, remarried, and went back to school in her forties. She had a habit of burning everything she ever wrote and cutting herself out of pictures, but a few essays from her college composition class somehow evaded destruction. They include an autobiography and a few stories from her happier second marriage when she made her life more of what she wanted it to be.
Excerpt from ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’ - V.S. Naipaul
Too long to include here, but if you know the book, it’s the part where he hires a man to help him build a house. He can’t actually afford all that he wants, and the man helps him substitute all the materials (branches for rafters, rusty corrugated iron covered in tar for the roof, shitty wood for the floors) - he gets a house that keeps things dry. A little parable about swallowing compromises for the larger goal.
Reminders to be an individual: Think for yourself, understand your own values, understand your own habits, understand your aspirations. They don’t have to match anyone else’s and, frankly, if they do, you should be concerned. Conformity creeps in quietly, but know thyself.
Of Individuality (from On Liberty) - John Stuart Mill
The beauty of freedom. I actually have not read this in years and don’t remember it well, but I do remember loving this chapter in particular, so I’m looking forward to revisiting.
(a story I grew up with, but also reread this version recently in a book recommended by my aunt)
This is a story about losing your place for a long time and then finding it again. And the horrible position of being forced to sacrifice some things you love to fully return to yourself. And the horrible position of being the only one who can make the decision.
What is “meaningful”: Catch-all, but requires its own spot. I believe that what is “meaningful” is a healthy mix of the universal human meaningfulness and the individual inner experience, and everyone has their own balance between the two. You should learn what is meaningful to others to understand your fellow humans a bit more deeply, and you may discover those things are also meaningful to you.
Hell is the Absence of God - Ted Chiang
Shit happens and sometimes the way people try to squeeze meaning out of their lives is hilariously dark - still gotta love life and do what you can to make it mean something.
They’re Made Out Of Meta - SSC
Our ability to experience things and notice that we are experiencing them is special, the meaning that comes from it is something not entirely easy to explain.
Concept-Shaped Holes Are Impossible to Notice - SSC
It’s hard to recognize when you don’t really understand something. I feel this the strongest with general life advice - it sounds obvious and/or detached until it’s relevant to the actual situation you find yourself in, when all of a sudden it has this depth that you couldn’t previously imagine.
The Kekule Problem - Cormac McCarthy
(recommended by a friend)
The only thing written by Cormac McCarthy that I’ve actually enjoyed - it’s about the breakdown between our deeper consciousness and language, how much exists nonverbally that we aren’t able to fully explain.
Lastly, a few quotes I like:
From Beginning of Infinity:
“Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home and our resource. The bigger the better.”
From Eugene Gendlin, read in The Sequences:
“What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away.
And because it’s true, it’s what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.”
On soul:
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Footnotes:
[1] Tangent - I'm somewhat convinced by the evidence that as long as your parents don't malnourish or severely abuse you, the genes they give you matter a lot more for how you turn out than whatever their parenting style, but that is wholly off-topic.
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