MONTHLY MULLING 💡
Lessons from Stoicism, Incentives, Chaap Tilak, and NFTs🚀
Hi👋,
Tapan here.
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Happy Sunday y’all!
My house is near the riverfront and I try going for a walk along the river on most evenings during sunset. I clicked this photo yesterday during one of those gorgeous sunset walks.
What do you usually do to wind down? What’s that one routine that you follow every day no matter what that makes you feel at peace? I would love to know!
Moving on🚀
💀LESSONS FROM STOICISM (3 minutes)
Stoicism is one of the philosophies I am learning to practice. I wanted to write a quick short starter guide for people who are curious.
🤔Philosophy
Stoics believe in rationality as the path to virtue, and therefore, happiness. They see emotions as potentially dangerous distractions from one’s goals. The Stoics believe that one should minimize one’s passions and make decisions based as much as possible on facts. Stoics accept the moment as it presents itself by not allowing themselves to be controlled by desires.
The essential idea being you don’t control the world around you, you only control how you respond.
In most interpretations that I have read, they say the only thing you can control is your mind. Even your body is not in your control, it decays and will wither away.
Now, this is just my basic understanding of the philosophy and there are a lot of interpretations out there. So please feel free to enlighten me on the subject if you have the knowledge.
✍🏼Key Lessons
I wanted to share the most important lessons that I have learned from this philosophy that I carry with me every day.
Memento Mori: a reminder of the inevitability of death. Reflection on death is an important practice in Stoic philosophy.
Accept the pain, don’t chase pleasure: most things that people do, they do it because it will make them feel good. Desire is the contract you make with yourself to be unhappy.
Focus on things that you can control: don’t let the external things that happen to you distract you.
Reflect: if you are unable to observe thoughts of your own mind, you are unhappy. Journaling is one of the key practices in stoicism.
🗄 Resources
Books: Meditations, Letters from a Stoic, Daily Stoic (recommended for beginners), Ego is the Enemy, Obstacle is the Way
Newsletters: Pooran’s Newsletter, The Daily Stoic Newsletter (though I thought a daily email was a lot)
💭MULLING
🤑 A World Driven By Incentives by Lawrence Yeo (Article - 8 mins)
The author of the article, Lawrence, says he has learned three things in his Economics education.
(A) The supply and demand graph,
(B) The law of diminishing marginal returns, and
(C) The fact that incentives drive everything.
The article is about the last bullet.
People inherently care about their self-interests than others. It's human nature. We prioritize our personal needs over the needs of others.
Adam Smith’s observation that a man’s loss of his little finger would cause him far more suffering than the knowledge of the pain of millions, points to the inherent nature of self-interest in human beings.
This forms the cornerstone of capitalism - since your own well-being will always be at the top of your mind, it will be in your self-interest to produce goods that will benefit others’ self-interest, which facilitates trade between you and the other party.
🎶 Chaap Tilak by Namita Choudhary (Music - 3 mins)
Last month the YouTube algorithm recommended this song to me. And I absolutely loved it. I guess I have trained my algorithm well.
Soon, I realized that there were a lot of covers for this song but Chaap Tilak by Namita (linked above) still remains my favorite (Coke Studio coming a close 2nd).
But all these covers were being openly published which meant that the lyrics did not have a valid copyright. And thus, I went down the Sufi rabbit hole. A well-written Sufi song is like reading a book on philosophy. In less than 5 minutes.
Chaap Tilak is a 14th-century ghazal composed by the Sufi mystic, Amir Khusro. It has beautiful lyrics and Khusrao dedicated it to his mentor Nizamuddin Awliyah. Revering your mentors is one of the core tenants of Sufism.
But it was written in the 14th-fucking-century! It was the Delhi Sultanate! It's mind-blowing that we are able to STREAM a poem that was written 700 years ago!
I spent the past month listening to qawallis and ghazals from a lot of other Sufi artists. But would love to hear from you if you have some more recommendations.
Sufi music is soulful and the lyrics make you contemplate life.
Sufi ghazals/qawallis that have gone mainstream: Arziyan, Kun Faaya Kun, Khwaja Mere Khwaja, Teri Deewani, Tajdar-e-haram, Tere Jeya Hor Disda
Bonus 1: I also was recommended a song by Willow and Jahnavi Harrison called Brahma’s Song. Turns out the Sanskrit lyrics of the song are from a 14th-century verse from a Vaishnav text called Brahma Samhita. Even I don’t understand Sanskrit, so do give it a shot if you like experimenting with music.
Bonus 2: I also created a Spotify playlist with other such soulful music.
🔀 The Paradox of Choice by Sketchplanations (Article - 3 mins)
Has ordering food gotten much more difficult since the conception of delivery apps? I spend a ridiculous amount of time just deciding on the cuisine I want to order. After which I spend another 30-minutes deciding on the restaurant. And then comes the part when I decide on what I actually want to eat.
Barry Schwartz studied how more choice not only doesn't always help us choose better, but can also make us feel worse about what we got even if it was great. Reduced satisfaction arises from:
The escalation of expectations
The opportunity cost of what we could have had and what was good about other options
Regret and anticipated regret of the choice we made
Self-blame when we think we are responsible for not doing as well as we could have
📚TREAT YO’ SHELVES
READING CHALLENGE 2021
Check out my 2021 Reading Challenge page (read 30-pages per day). You can join us on Goodreads, we have a group for the challenge!
I wasn’t able to complete any new book because, in the words of Ali Abdaal, I was being a complete wasteman.
📚 I am currently reading
Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama
The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks
Here are a couple of things I learned from Howard Marks about being an investor. More to come when I finish the book.
No asset is good or bad. It’s the price that makes it good or bad. You can still end up with a bad investment if you buy a “good” asset at a high price.
Investing is a popularity contest. The most dangerous thing is to buy something at its peak of popularity. The safest bet is to buy something when no one likes it.
🎙PODCASTS
💰COLD BREW MONEY
👴🏼 #34 - How much money you need to retire? - how do you calculate how much money you need for retirement? There needs to be enough, no?
🤯 #35 - Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter and NFTs - yes, like everyone on the planet, we are discussing Non-Fungible Tokens. It’s a fun one!
🎧 APPLE | SPOTIFY | GOOGLE PODCAST | ANCHOR | CASTBOX | JIOSAAVN
chala.
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