Here are some highlights from it…

“Everything existing in the world ‘falls to the bottom.’ The ‘bottom for any part of the Universe is its nearest stability, and this stability is the point toward which all the lines of force from all directions converge.”

Beezelbub’s Tales to His Grandson

“Eldest of my grandsons ! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do.”

C.I. Gurdjieff

“If you go on a spree, then go the whole hog, including the postage.”

C.I. Gurdjieff

Was C.I. Gurdjieff reading this blog ?

“Time in itself does not exist, there is only the totality of the results issuing from all the cosmic phenomena present in a given place.”

C.I. Gurdjieff

The hell ? I wrote as recently as last year that time does not exist…

This book is a difficult read…many of you will drop it after 20 pages…

Meanwhile, I wish Gurdjieff had quoted me…

Max Cantor quote never seen by Gurdjieff:

Taking a controlled breath, via @NYTimes

The best Meditation apps according to NYT Wirecutter

1. Reader Cornelius asks What is the ideal age of the women you should date ?

Answer: There is no set age, at least not in my book. Young guys (20s) will gravitate towards women who are their age or slightly older. However, the formula that’s most widely used and accepted is dividing your own age by two and add a seven to it. So, if your 40 years old, 40/2 + 7 = 27. Your best bet is a woman aged 27 (or around that). But if you’re really in good shape, I say just halve your age.

2. Reader Clark asks: I’m a founder of a tech startup (medical field). How can I get some information on the investors in my field. I need to know who is reliable and truthful to his word.

Answer: Your best bet is to go to this website, VCguide where founders review anonymously fund & investor partners (NPS reviews). Lots of people use it, and I believe it is updated monthly.

3. Reader Paul says: I’m going through a divorce and a layoff. It’s tougher than nails. What would you do ?

Answer: Paul, obviously there no short and easy answer. As I had pointed out many times in this blog, you must take forget about getting married again -you don’t want to fall into that trap. Be a man. 395 articles on this blog in 7+ years should help you on your quest. It is never too late to start over.

4. How many people should I have on my team, asks Sean. Sean is a founder of his own SaaS company.

Sean I don’t know what stage your company is at, specifically which funding stage. SenovoVC has a post on it. Hope it help

“On the founder / MD level, the roles and responsibilities shall move into three classical C-level roles, namely Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Operating Officer (COO including the financing responsibility)…”

SenovoVC

Keep them questions rolling people…I’ll add more to this post. if there are more than 10 questions, I’ll make a separate post.

Note: I realize I said there were going to be 10 questions while I have only 4 up so far, please bear with me since this is an open post ! Thanks.

5. Best video for flexibility training no – equipment needed. This is related to a question I got on fitness routines recommendations.

The goal of this blog is betterment, evolutionary progress, strenght-building and self-actualization. Towards that, forgetfulness plays a major role.

Of course, forgetfulness includes forgiveness. Or is it forgiveness prods forgetfulness ? These two are not the same. We must understand the underpinnings of forgiveness, however, since forgiveness is a willing act of forgetfulness and reconstruction of memory.

In order to forget and forget, we must reconstruct the neural pathways of memory.

To put out the new (forgive) it is necessary to throw out the old (forget). Or is it the other way around ? Kind of a chicken-and-the-egg issue.

To forgive effectively, we must be good at forgetting.

According to a recent study by “Paul Frankland, a senior fellow in CIFAR’s Child & Brain Development program, and Blake Richards, an associate fellow in the Learning in Machines & Brains program, our brains are actively working to forget.” -study cited in Forgetting can make you smarter

Quote of the day: “We are blessed with good fortune.”-Agron to Spartacus, as thunder signals approaching storm upon Vesuvius.
Spartacus replies: “Good fortune ? Free men create their own” –Spartacus series

Key takeaway: We must help our brains forget better and faster. (yes I know, everybody else is telling you the exact opposite:  learn to remember better and defeat forgetfulness). If you’ve read something and hours and days later “you’re in a fog” about it, it probably wasn’t worth reading it.

If you read the article, you see that generalization works out against you.

Children, “whose hippocampi are producing more new neurons [than adult hippocampi], forget so much information.” Can you point fingers on children for memory loss ? Hardly. Memory loss, amnesia and dementia are the pride of the elderly. Yet children forget like a drunk on his 6th margarita.

What does science say about forgiveness ?

“Forgiveness is understood in this model as a shift in interpersonal motivation, marked by reduced retaliatory sentiment, decreased avoidant sentiment, and/or increased goodwill toward the transgressor. This shift in interpersonal motivation has the ultimate purpose of realizing long-term benefits of continued, productive interaction, and may be contingent upon improved treatment by the transgressor (McCullough et al., 2013).

Empirical tests of the evolutionary forgiveness model thus far have frequently been longitudinal in nature (McCullough et al., 2010, 2014), although recent experimental work using both cognitive priming (Burnette et al., 2012) and a behavioral economics framework (Tabak et al., 2012), has generally supported the model. The neuroscientific literature, meanwhile, has begun to identify the neural correlates of social decision-making across an array of contexts, including those involving forgiveness, but rarely engages this evolutionary model of forgiveness directly.”- The Neural Systems of Forgiveness: An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective, May 10, 2017

To train in forgetfulness, we don’t need to to lose consciousness. We don’t need to receive shock therapy.

I train in prescriptive forgetting and planned obsolence.

Some people train in Gestalt psychology.

Shouldn’t you ?