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“The aspects of our existence that limit us, Merleau-Ponty says, are the very same ones that bind us to the world and give us scope for action and perception. They make us what we are. Sartre acknowledged the need for this trade-off, but he found it more painful to accept. Everything in him longed to be free of bonds, of impediments and limitations and viscous clinging things. Heidegger recognised limitation too, but then sought something like divinity in his mythologising of Being. Merleau-Ponty instead saw quite calmly that we exist only through compromise with the world — and that this is fine. The point is not to fight that fact, or to inflate it into too great a significance, but to observe and understand exactly how that compromise works”
― At the Existentialist Café
― At the Existentialist Café
“You can't change the feeling
but you can change your feelings about the feeling in a second or two”
―
but you can change your feelings about the feeling in a second or two”
―
“If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA's state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts [...] That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on [...] That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused [...] That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer [...] That loneliness is not a function of solitude [...] That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt [...] That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness [...] That the effects of too many cups of coffee are in no way pleasant or intoxicating [...] That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it's almost its own form of intoxicating buzz.
That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused [...]
That it is permissible to want [...]
That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.”
― Infinite Jest
That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused [...]
That it is permissible to want [...]
That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.”
― Infinite Jest
Daniel’s 2024 Year in Books
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