John’s Comments (group member since Jan 30, 2017)

John’s comments from the Project Mimir group.

I think that's a great idea. I like how it helps to make concrete the qualities that you value as well as increases your gratitude for others.

Bruce wrote: "It doesn't talk about this."
Curses!

The r/stoicism FAQ is a fantastic source of practical modern stoicism.

This will be a repository of all the article supplements for our group.

I'm going to need to reread A Guide to the Good Life.

From my understanding, one of the tenets of stoic philosophy is the reduction of negative feelings (anger, sadness, jealousy etc).

Are negative emotions important for our well being? Shouldn't we not be afraid to feel them?

My one recommendation is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's a story about the power of science and rational thought.

In addition I would like to voice my support for reading Pirsig or Greene.

I would be down with that but not everyone is so flexible. Since there are so few of us it might make sense to just do it when the majority of people have read the book and have come.

A poll would work, but I'd like to expand people's horizons and have them read books they otherwise wouldn't. That could be achieved by picking a person to pick a book each month or just picking a book on our shelf at random. Or maybe everyone picks a book they want the group to read and we pick from there at random. Best of both worlds.

Here's a link to the class

What do they talk about in Psychology for Screen Writers? Is it mostly about how to write realistic characters?

I hope every enjoys and takes something away from this class. I'm still slowly going through the text myself.

Ed wrote: "Think a book a month is reasonable, would not be apposed to maybe two a month (maybe do one fiction, one nonfiction/philosophy). I know not everyone has a crazy amount of time to read."

I imagined that it wouldn't be required reading. Just a suggestion if you wanted to be involved with the discussion. I imagined that everyone would also want to read other things as well, that way we can find more suggestions for the group or flesh out our personal interests more. That's why I like one book a month. Not too demanding and it's pretty easy to accomplish.

Ed wrote: "The White Oleander, which I highly recommend for pretty much all of you."

Would you recommend it enough to include it on the groups bookshelf?

What do you think about each person having a bookshelf of books they recommend. It would be like Staff Picks.

How should we organize this? A book a month? Several books a month? How does everyone want to do this? I'm inclined to do a book a month as a suggestion, but having many discussions going on at once. I figure everyone will read their own stuff, and if they found something inspiring they could share it with the group and we'd take it as a strong suggestion to read it ourselves.

Any suggestions, discussions about the group, or the group format go here.

I'm currently reading a comedy book called Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. It's laugh out loud funny.

Tell us what you're reading and your thoughts.