Sign up to get the Sloww Sunday newsletter via email for free:👇
Sloww Sunday Newsletter 114 (Aug 14, 2022) — Voluntary Simplicity, Purpose Diagrams, Biology of Behavior, & More
Happy Sunday!
Here’s the latest from Sloww along with the most interesting things I discovered last week.
To respect your time and attention, every newsletter can be read in under 5 minutes. If you enjoy it, please take 5 seconds to forward the email version to some friends and family. 🙏
🌎 Lighter Living
What is Voluntary Simplicity?
Various reads | Sloww
The concept of “voluntary simplicity” absolutely blew my mind when I first discovered it. You’re telling me there are people out there who are intentionally choosing to downshift and rebel against the mainstream mindset of more and faster?? Sign me up! I’ll never forget stumbling upon Katie Barton’s college thesis on voluntary simplicity in 2016. It was one of the initial epiphanies on my journey after my existential crisis in late 2015.
Pair with:
- “Voluntary Simplicity” by Duane Elgin (Book Summary)
- “The Value of Voluntary Simplicity” by Richard Gregg (Essay Summary)
“Duane Elgin popularized the term ‘voluntary simplicity,’—which pacifist Richard Gregg had coined in 1936—as a characterization of the modern simplicity movement. To live voluntarily, Elgin explains, is to live conscientiously and deliberately, and to live more simply is to unencumber oneself in all aspects of life in order to ‘(meet) life face to face.’ In short, voluntary simplicity is ‘outwardly more simple and inwardly more rich.'” — Katie Barton
🧭 Higher Purpose
Venn Diagram approaches to Life Purpose
Various reads | Sloww
Looking for purpose and meaning? Find your unique intersection of any/all of these images below. And, if you want community support with purpose and meaning, discuss it in the 🔒Sloww Society community.
The simplest intersection:
“The place where your talent meets the world’s needs is the job God has in mind for you.” — Marcus Bach
Hedgehog Concept: What is the Hedgehog Concept by Jim Collins? (& How Does it Compare to Ikigai?)
Talent Stack: What is a Talent Stack? (& How I’m Thinking about My Unique Stack)
⭐️ My Recommendation (incorporates all above and more): Ikigai 2.0: A Step-by-Step Guidebook to Finding Life Purpose & Making Money Meaningfully (+ Bonus Workbook)
🧠 Mental Wealth
Biology of our Best & Worst Selves
15 mins | TED (YouTube)
I’m falling back down the Robert Sapolsky rabbit hole. Sapolsky is a researcher, author, and professor of biology, neurology & neurological sciences at Stanford. Maybe you’ve heard of his 25-video series on human behavioral biology, his book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (on my full reading list), or his upcoming book about free will (which should be fascinating from his perspective). The video linked above is his TED Talk, but also check out this 75-minute Stanford lecture and 90-minute Sam Harris podcast if you want to dive deeper. I’ve shared full highlights from both videos in the 🔒Sloww Society community.
In a nutshell, think again if you think you know what caused your (or anyone else’s) behavior:
“If you want to understand a behavior, whether it’s an appalling one, a wondrous one, or confusedly in between, you’ve got take into account what happened a second before to a million years before, and everything in between. So, what can we conclude at this point? Officially, it’s complicated. It’s complicated, and you’d better be real careful, real cautious before you conclude you know what causes a behavior, especially if it’s a behavior you’re judging harshly. Now, to me, the single most important point about all of this is one having to do with change. Every bit of biology I have mentioned here can change in different circumstances … Most importantly, brains change. Neurons grow new processes. Circuits disconnect. Everything in the brain changes, and out of this come extraordinary examples of human change.” — Robert Sapolsky
☯️ Timeless Wisdom
The Lottery of Birth
Various reads | Sloww
My deepening interest in the lottery of birth finally culminated in reading one of the go-to books on the subject and publishing a Premium synthesis. Up next, I’ll be dissecting my own lottery ticket and connecting the puzzle pieces between the lottery of birth, free will, self, and enlightenment.
🆕 Book Summary: “Creating Freedom” by Raoul Martinez
🔒 Premium Synthesis: Lottery of Birth Synthesis: How to See Yourself and the World Drastically Differently (+ Infographic)
🔒 Bonus: Discuss in the Sloww Society community.
I don’t think I’ve ever publicly shared a Premium infographic before, but I’m doing it this once because the lottery of birth is just that important:
“We do not choose to exist. We do not choose the environment we will grow up in. We do not choose to be born Hindu, Christian or Muslim, into a war-zone or peaceful middle-class suburb, into starvation or luxury. We do not choose our parents, nor whether they’ll be happy or miserable, knowledgeable or ignorant, healthy or sickly, attentive or neglectful. The knowledge we possess, the beliefs we hold, the tastes we develop, the traditions we adopt, the opportunities we enjoy, the work we do – the very lives we lead – depend entirely on our biological inheritance and the environment to which we are exposed. This is the lottery of birth.” — Raoul Martinez
🤯 Mind Expanding
Tribesmen in the Amazon react to Images of our World
9 mins | YouTube
A must-watch video to reset your perspective today. Some things really do transcend cultures—other things, not so much. This is probably as close as it comes to what we can imagine aliens viewing the Voyager Golden Records would be like.
Thanks to Tom Morgan for sharing this on Twitter.
Sharing: If you enjoyed this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding the email version of this issue to some friends and family. It’s free for them to subscribe here.
Support: Sloww is a one-human labor of love (it’s just me over here 👋). Your support keeps the site ad-free and invests in me while you invest in yourself—a true win-win! There are a few free and financial ways to support.
Feedback: Have something you want to say, or just want to say hi? It’s always greatly appreciated. Just send me an email or reach out socially.
Have an alive week!
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
Leave a Reply