Nourishment for the soul

#139: ψγxhσ Iatpeion???

“The value of something relates to how it is treated, your grace. If you see these items as junk, then they are, regardless of what someone else would pay for them.” - Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

I got many private comments from last week’s. This week is somewhat of a continuation…revision…no, I don’t know

Let me start with this video. You probably won’t watch the whole thing. That’s ok.

I want to include this quote from it: “The only thing that produces quality is care. The person who made your shirt needs to, themselves, feel that “I have done good work" making this shirt”, and in order to get to that place, importantly, that designer must be willing to put in the time and the money to even know what their own satisfaction should look like. The satisfaction of the maker, that is what you and I, as the purchaser, need to be looking for.” (From 29:46)

Last week, I mentioned that I think we are about to see a big trend towards higher quality goods, less quantity driven consumption, and goods that require care but will last forever. Not only does it require the creator develop taste and craft enough to create beautiful and long lasting items, but buyers need to develop taste in order to select correctly where they spend more money, but less often.

I’ve mentioned Die, Workwear (aka Derek Guy) before, here he is again. I fell asleep listening to this podcast, but some of the same concepts came across.

1. To learn you need to fail. Trial and error is key in developing a style. I don’t mean clothing style, though it applies too. Everything we do in life we do in our own style; work, play, art, whatever. The more things we try, the more we find out the W5H behind it. (Who, What, When, Where, Why, How). One suggestion given is to copy things you like until you feel you have enough taste to deviate from the “templates”.

2. You also need to seek out knowledge - the sources you begin to trust, the info that you are drawn to will guide and shape your learning. Exposure helps build personal taste. Get out in the world and see what catches your eye, no matter what medium or method it gets to you in.

Your experiential and learned preferences will develop how you see and do whatever it is that you do, but there will always be constraints. These aren’t chosen but will just exist and you will have to deal with them. If the other two things didn’t make your output unique, this will ensure it.

1. Many follow this pattern, you can’t skip steps, the journey is the process. Unfortunately, you can’t just get the good stuff, because the good stuff becomes more and more custom to you as you progress the timeline.

   1. Exploration — find out what exists, taking basic notes

   2. Regime - you think you’ve found your taste, have strong opinions, and set rigid rules for yourself

   3. Nirvana - You know the rules but you’re not strict on them; you just like what you like

From a recent Landfill/x/ for my brother’s birthday; a Nassim Nicholas Taleb quote. Everything always comes together.

An aside, they shout out one of the most influential books for me in my early 20s, Paradox of Choice. It really skyrocketed my interest in Behavioral Economics and related psychology towards the end of my college years; shaped a lot of what I read for the 5 years after and there are probably some ripple effects still at work.

Not just for clothes, mind you, that’s just the context here.

Hopefully I’m not just proving Schopenhauer right and simply justifying buying nice things.. at least I’ll have something nice to show for it… “We do not want a thing because we have found reasons for it, we find reasons for it because we want it.” (Will Durant on Schopenhauer in The Story of Philosophy”)

Also read more. Read books that will excite/educate/inspire you now and ten from now. Better yet, ones that will work for your grandkids as well.

For those of you who like resolutions, I’m slowly priming you to make reading more and more broadly on your list ;)

Lastly, remember last week how I mentioned that once everyone can be skinny with drugs that being skinny will no longer be a status symbol and that I hope it means athleticism will be the new ideal? Just on queue I have an, albeit fashion-based, tweet to back me up. You’re welcome.

Hope you had a great long holiday weekend Americans, and a a good normal one to everyone else!

Enjoy this photo of a turkey I saw in 2019.

Other things to share:

https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1861583359518089544

Video response to last week from a subscriber; you may recognize him from the Pamplona post.

Final note: If you’re curious about the title this week, so am I. I saw that Egyptian libraries (or at least one old one) had this inscription, “nourishment for the soul”. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I was able to find a couple things online about it. Enough that I could copy that Greek inscription (not sure why it’s in Greek) and confirm that I wasn’t crazy.