2026.02.17
Every act of attention is an act of exclusion. In paying attention to something, we are forced to ignore a multitude of other things.
We are born into a helplessness unmatched in the animal kingdom, and if, in our prolonged immaturity, no caretakers regard us as deserving of their special attention, whether we deserve it or not, we die. Our need for connectedness, in its most fundamental sense, begins here.
First, list all the things that presently could happen to you that would significantly enhance your flourishing. Some of them might be highly unlikely, such as winning the lottery (even more unlikely if you've never bought a lottery ticket), others not quite so improbable. Now list all the things that presently could happen to you that would significantly diminish your flourishing. Compare the number of possibilities on your first list with the number of possibilities on your second list. If you have done it right, the result should be disheartening. The preponderance of possibilities in our disfavor explains why there are so many more negative emotions than positive ones, so many more bad choices that lay open to us than good ones, so many more ways to achieve unhappiness than happiness--all because there are so many more ways to achieve disorder than order. It also explains why it's so much easier to destroy than to create. To destroy is to work in the direction of entropy, while to create is to resist entropy. Almost all the things worth doing in this world--learning, loving, creating--require our resistance to entropy.
Is it any wonder that living a human life is so unremittingly demanding? It demands not only the struggle against entropy but also the struggle to convince ourselves that we are *deserving* of the struggle.
All tragedies are thermodynamic.
We are all soldiers in the war against entropy
Two surveys, from European and Anglophone countries, found that the United States had "the largest happiness penalty for parenthood among the 22 developed countries, even after controlling for a host of individual-level variables that affect parental happiness." The negative effects on parental happiness were explained by the presence or absence of social policies that allowed parents to combine their ability to financially support their families with other obligations. And this was equally true for fathers and mothers. "Since the U.S. is the only major industrialized nation left without guaranteed parenting leave, paid sick and vacation days, and one of few rich countries that fails to subsidize childcare, it isn't surprising that U.S. parents have the biggest happiness gap compared to nonparents. The U.S. simply asks too much of parents at a time when the economic costs of supporting children are enormous and the time to raise them effectively has been whittled away by employers that favor long hours and no breaks."
In talking about human greatness, [Wittgenstein] once remarked that he thought that the measure of a man's greatness would be in terms of what his work *cost* him.
The transcender can't know that their version of the cosmos is true even though they can't help longing that it is.
Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the *Yes* function in man, it brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth.
Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
It used to seem to me that the only difference between me and the insane was that I had not only all the horrors and suffering of insanity but the duties of doctor, nurse, and strait-jacket imposed upon me, too.
Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
[I don't like the way the award] plays on my ego . . . If you really want to say 'nice one,' then I would humbly accept your comment. But a more appropriate word would be 'jebise,' which is Slovenian humour, and a greeting between good friends. It's said with a smile. It means, 'Hey, fuck you!'
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight don't matter.
All things deteriorate over time in the approach to the journey's end, worn out by the ancient span of years.