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The Observe and Rapport Newsletter
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A weekly guide of my favorite books, articles, products, and lifestyle habits.
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June 21st, 2024 | by Kyle Brennan
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Thought of the Week
You can't truly call yourself "peaceful" unless you're capable of great violence.
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If you're not capable of violence, you're not peaceful. You are harmless.
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I always liked the adage of Miyamoto Musashi, "It's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war."
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It sounded sage and judicious.
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But to be honest, I didn't quite comprehend its meaning until I started training martial arts.
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When you're confronted in hand-to-hand combat, you quickly realize how helpless you are. Sure, you might have a good right hook and some muscles, but if you're up against someone with years of training, you're as good as dead once they get their hands on you.
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And yet, training in the lethal art of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I've learned more about peace than violence. Becoming capable of fighting, counterintuitively, has made me less combative and hostile. I've learned to be dangerous, but simultaneously, I've learned to control it.
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If I'm faced with a real-life situation in which I have to protect myself, I'm confident in my ability to do so, but that doesn't mean I should use it. What's been harnessed is my ability to maintain calm and know that if I need to harm someone, I can.
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If you're incapable of violence, not being violent isn't a virtue. If you're not a formidable force, then there's no morality in your self-control.
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Jordan Peterson puts it another way I love: A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control.
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What I'm Reading
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We know that many animals can sense and perceive the world in different ways than humans do, but it’s hard to imagine it when we are used to relying on our own perception of the world.
Ed Yong explains how each species has its own Umwelt, a German word meaning "environment" that describes the specific part of an animal's perceptual world.
Each animal's Umwelt is unique. Most humans' dominant sense is sight and, compared to most species, we have excellent vision. We forget that some species don't see at all and the ones that do see in many distinct ways, experiencing different colors for instance, and levels of acuity.
Here's a tiny sampling of some interesting facts:
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- Zebra stripes have zero to do with camouflage
- Lions would be considered legally blind in the human world (and they can’t see these zebra stripes from hunting distance at hunting times)
- Scallops have hundreds of beautiful eyes that function as a version of a security camera system
- Tick repellents stop them from tracking heat. Ticks track their hosts through scent and use temperature to check if they've landed on bare skin.
- Dogs see mostly in shades of blue, yellow, and grey
- Dolphins are basically living CT scanners
With humans not being able to perceive things other Earth inhabitants do it’s scarily easy for us to completely mess up other creatures’ day-to-day existence and survival even when we don’t mean to. All the extra light and sound that comes as a byproduct of our overpopulated overcrowded existence is extremely disruptive, but unless you think of it from the perspective of others’ Umwelten it may be hard to realize or remedy.
Definitely recommended if the subject matter interests you. Would suggest you read it a chapter at a time as it gets quite saturating otherwise.
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My Latest Article
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I haven't published a blog post in over four months. That's because this particular post meant so much to me. I spent the last year sorting through the common "truths" about our human existence from all of the great books over the last 2,000+ years. It took me months of painstaking research, writing, editing, and re-editing to feel confident I'd left no stone unturned.
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This is my attempt to thread the needle of what every great author has been attempting to tell us for centuries. I have no doubt that what follows will remain relevant for centuries to come. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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What I'm Watching
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I love nerding out on in-season sports documentaries and this one is fantastic. In the 2022-23 season, English Premier League team Manchester City achieved what's called the "Treble" - when a club team wins their domestic league title, the domestic cup, and the UEFA Champions League.
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I loved watching Pep Guardiola and Erling Haaland dominate.
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Best Used Book Finder
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The best online source for used books is BookFinder. Its bare-bones design is unchanged from 1997 and feels like a Craigslist for books. It’s an aggregated meta-search engine that simultaneously looks for a book on Amazon, Ebay, Abe, Alibris, Bibio, and 100,000 indie booksellers. It will find all copies available and arrange them by price, and supply the link for purchase from the source. (In other countries and languages it is known as JustBooks.) It reliably yields the least expensive option for a used book.
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Best Books for Book Clubs
- The Help - Kathryn Stockett
- The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
- Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
- The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
- To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
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Podcast I'm Listening To
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Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business, a public speaker, entrepreneur, and an author. I've always been a big fan of Prof G and particularly enjoy reading his weekly column on Medium.
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One of the best insights he shared on this episode with Chris Williamson was his personal well-being acronym (SCAFA). He visits this acronym any time he feels overwhelmed, angry, or frustrated - and it's a reminder to get back to the basics that are so important for zooming out, living in the present, and being grateful.
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- Sweat - get a hard workout in
- Clean - eat clean, avoid food with preservatives, oils, and all the unhealthy shit
- Abstinence - from THC and alcohol
- Family - spend time with your loved ones
- Affection - acknowledge that you're feeling anxious/angry/frustrated and ask your loved ones to treat you affectionately for a few minutes.
Quote I'm Pondering
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"Every act of concious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially in van or important, cannot learn at all."
-Thomas Szasz, Psychiatrist
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Keith and Kyle sit down to discuss Keith’s recent trip to Texas, the practice of applying selfishness as a path to happiness as discussed in Ayn Rand’s book “The Virtue of Selfishness”, The mind-opening and fascinating insight of Carl Jung as discussed in his autobiography “Memories, Dreams & Reflections”, and their top 3 topics for a public speaking event for teenagers.
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Books discussed in this episode:
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Check Out My Amazon Favorites Bookstore
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Browse my favorite book selections hand-curated by me. I also earn commissions so if you buy anything, those earnings get reinvested right back into this fancy newsletter ;)
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Kyle's Published Work
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33 Life Lessons on My 33rd Birthday
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Thirty-three was a big one. Mostly because I became a dad. Our daughter was born on New Year’s Eve — a fitting arrival for a kid destined to reset everything. It’s been a beautiful, if slightly sleep-deprived blur ever since. I’ve only been “Dad” for less than ten months, but if I’m being honest, I’ve been preparing for the role for over …
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Depth Over Downloads: Why Spending Time with Books Still Matters
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Everyone wants faster information. But no one asks if faster information leads to better understanding — or a better life. In the age of AI and tweet-sized wisdom, we’ve confused information with transformation. But there’s a massive difference between knowing what a book says and being changed by it. The Delusion of Instant Learning In a recent interview, political journalist Ezra Klein admitted he once believed …
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The Jack Reacher Approach to Never Being Caught Off Guard
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There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, ‘Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,’ and an optimist who says, ‘Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.’ Either way, nothing happens.” —Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia I don’t read much fiction, but I’ve always been hooked on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. He’s not your typical …
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