Love wasn’t possible without a self, and nor was thinking.
Selfishness is also written on our hearts. This is our mammalian conflict – what to give to others, and what to keep for yourself.
The infinite variety of the human condition precludes arbitrary definition.
It was once convenient to think biblically, to believe we’re surrounded for our benefit by edible automata on land and sea. Now it turns out that even fish can feel pain. This is the growing complication of the modern condition, the expanding circle of moral sympathy.
Early in my conscious life one of my fingers, not then subject to my influence, brushed past a shrimp-like protuberance between my legs. And though shrimp and fingertip lay at differing distances from my brain, they felt each other simultaneously, a diverting issue in neuroscience known as the binding problem.
He needed that time edged with boredom in which fantasy could flourish.
Everyone nodded, nobody agreed.
Past a certain age, men froze into place; they tended to believe that, even in adversity, they were somehow at one with their fates. They were who they thought they were.
The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return.
Muslim majority countries plagued by religious puritanism, by sexual sickness, by smothered invention.
And foe-of-convenience, the United States, barely the hope of the world, guilty of torture, helpless before its sacred text conceived in an age of powdered wigs, a constitution as unchallengeable as the Koran.
I’ve never outgrown that feeling of mild pride, of acceptance, when children take your hand.
The United States-It’s nervous poplulation obese, fearful, tormented by inarticulate anger, contemptuous of governance, murdering sleep with every new handgun.
Words, as I’m beginning to appreciate, can make things true.
Childhoods shine through adult skin, helpfully or not.
What people queued the entire weekend for became, six months later, as interesting as the socks on their feet. What happened to the cognition-enhancing helmets, the speaking fridges with a sense of smell? Gone the way of the mouse pad, the Filofax, the electric carving knife, the fondue set. The future kept arriving. Our bright new toys began to rust before we could get them home, and life went on much as before.
A blend of desolation and outrage. Or longing and fury. She wanted him back, she never wanted to see him again.
Self-aware existence. I’m lucky to have it, but there are times when I think that I ought to know better what to do with it. What it’s for. Sometimes it seems entirely pointless.
Chi prende in mano un violino, o qualunque altro strumento, compie un gesto di speranza che comporta il desiderio di un futuro.
Consent has rough edges.