Ronnie

“We experience the externalities of the attention economy in little drips, so we tend to describe them with words of mild bemusement like “annoying” or “distracting.” But this is a grave misreading of their nature. In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, to “want what we want to want.” Thus there are deep ethical implications lurking here for freedom, wellbeing, and even the integrity of the self.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“We revere the absolute but are bound to the transitory.”
― Brian Greene, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

“As our trek across time will make clear, life is likely transient, and all understanding that arose with its emergence will almost certainly dissolve with its conclusion. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is absolute. And so, in the search for value and purpose, the only insights of relevance, the only answers of significance, are those of our own making. In the end, during our brief moment in the sun, we are tasked with the noble charge of finding our own meaning.”
― Brian Greene, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

“There is meaning and purpose in not surrendering in the face of loss, but instead working to bind up wounds, ease pain, and spare others what you have seen.”
― James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership