Enjoying the view from Limbo
It takes more than an hour to make stuffed peppers. At best, that hour’s effort will give me, or perhaps one or two other people, five minutes of vanishing sensory pleasure. A student sends me a message asking how to handle her anger with a rude coworker. I reply that being spoken to rudely is annoying, but causes you no essential harm, whereas...
A student recently sent me a short e-mail consisting almost entirely of this thought: “Desire for recognition from others, including co-workers, family, friends…I really hate this.” The topic is worthy of serious consideration. Let us take a moment to examine this strange but all-too-common tendency in humans, the “desire for recognition.” It is unlikely that human beings could ever completely numb themselves to...
A Musing on Pleasure.— Imagine a door so rare and enticing in its loveliness that passing through its frame engenders an immediate obsession with the act of passing through as such, and thus an overwhelming desire to open that door again, and then again, until one can hardly stand the thought of ever walking away from it, for fear of losing contact with...
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 12, 2019 · Last modified February 14, 2019
(If you have not done so, please read Part One and Part Two.) I concluded Part Two of this series with the challenge, directed at all my students, real and hypothetical: “Why are you living a life you don’t want?” In a sense, the answer is obvious: Because they don’t know what life they want. In fact, I believe the problem is even...
When someone says New Year’s Eve is one of his favorite holidays, and expresses dismay at my lack of New Year’s Eve plans, I feel I am talking to an empty shell. New Year’s Eve has no religious, moral, or intellectual significance. It is nothing but an opportunity — one justified by the calendar, and therefore appearing vaguely “natural” — to have fun....
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