Excellent Advice For Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

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KELLY: Yes. The last thing, and I have to say this very cautiously — but I have been deciding that I think the Civil War was a mistake. That we should have — we, the Union, should have left the South to secede, if the majority of people who were voting had voted for it, and that the right of the Union to enforce that Union, I think, was a mistake. Kevin Kelly]: Reflecting on my personal journey, there are four influential communities that have significantly shaped my experiences.

Maybe they do — maybe that is the fundamental impetus, is presenting things that are conceptual in a visual way. On traveling well I’m trying to think of somebody who really regretted having done too much in their lives. I think I’ve not met anybody who’s ever told me that. I’ve met people who told me that they regretted not doing things. I think minimizing regret is still a good idea. I think painting certainly may be part of that. Or rendering it — making it visual. That’s the point: is that that may be something that we can do without having to go through language or our fingers to get there. For the grandchildren, this ability for maybe playing games or maybe creating things or maybe walking through this virtual metaverse space — this may be an interface to it that’s very different from the interfaces that we have right now.What I found out was, later on — they didn’t have enough to process what it was. And it was later on that those trips became more and more important to them as they were able to digest and process it. Even though they maybe didn’t appreciate it at the time, or seem to be paying attention, they were actually reprocessing later as they grew up, and those trips became more important to them than they were at the time.

The events that befall us are typically beyond our control, hence they are not the primary drivers of our life story. Instead, our true story is crafted through our responses to these uncontrollable circumstances That is precisely what Kevin Kelly gathers in Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier ( public library) — an herbarium of learnings that began as a list he composed on his 68th birthday for his own young-adult children, a list to which he kept adding with each lived year. Kevin Kelly in his 70s. (Photograph: Christopher Michel) I think I’d be very hesitant to use certain kinds of genetic germline alterations. I’m not sure I would say no, but I would certainly be very, very, very hesitant about that. I think we have to be very cautious. So there are things that I’m cautious about, and I would say, “Well, let me see how — ”Then I went on to make a nature museum when I was 12. I found a book at the library about how to make a nature museum. And I was doing collections and making exhibits, and I went on to make other things like that. I don't know, it was just something in me that wanted to make stuff.

KELLY: I had a hippieish attitude, and when I was dropping out, I was very influenced by the Whole Earth Catalog. I believed what it said, that you should invent your own life and that all these things were possible. I had a very arm’s-length — I owned nothing. I was very suspicious of computers, which my dad worked with. Kind of the “small is beautiful” take. Thoreau was my hero in high school: building your own house, living in a little simple life. That, I believed, was my destination. Before you are old attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving. Kelly’s timeless advice covers an astonishing range, from right living to setting ambitious goals, optimizing generosity, and cultivating compassion. He has wisdom for career, relationships, parenting, andfinances, and gives guidance for practicalmatters ranging from travel to troubleshooting.I would say that’s one place you might be looking for things that could happen kind of suddenly, even though the research has been going on for decades. And that would really shake things up if that was to happen. I’ve learned not to travel around. When I go somewhere, I’m very content to not travel within a country but to travel around where I am in that, to exploit that. Still, I want to keep going. For the sake of others and my own sake, I’ve tried to slow down a little bit. But I keep making the mistake of trying to do too much. COWEN: How would society most change if we simply could double or triple our amount of long-term thinking? Listening well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?” until there is no more.

I’m reluctant to assign any large general thesis to all the things I’m interested in, because I think it’s just a pure reflection of my own idiosyncratic interest in the world. I’m not sure that there’s a bigger thing connecting them all together. I’ve learned to wean myself off from that necessity. Now I can travel with just a phone for the selfies that you might want to take. Seeing how high all this AI could work is really hard to see. How is there a world in which we have ubiquitous AI, ubiquitous genetic engineering, constant surveillance — how is that a world that we want to live in? I’m trying to imagine what that is with a set of scenarios that would say, “Here’s a possible future of this high tech that could work,” and I call it the Hundred-Year Desirable Future or Protopia. In a kindred sentiment that would have pleased Simone Weil, who exhorts us across the epochs to “never react to an evil in such a way as to augment it,” he adds: Kevin: Well, so I have some other advice in the book about kind of the journey, which I think is close to last week, which is like basically, your goal is to be able to say on the day before you die, that you fully become yourself.COWEN: Why is it good? Would it lead you to do too many things just so you don’t regret having missed out, but in fact a lot of it just amounts to nothing? COWEN: If someone asks you for advice on “how do I get better at following advice,” what do you tell them? People write me for advice every day, and at least half the time, I feel maybe they want the feeling of having asked me rather than the advice. Now I’m happy to supply them with that feeling, but maybe it’s process they’re maximizing. COWEN: Now, when you were in your twenties, you hitchhiked to work, I understand. Do you advise the same to your grandkids (or forthcoming grandkids)? All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.