Excerpts

Introduction

 

“there is not and then there is and then it goes away again.  routine as the dusk.  and while it’s gone you look forward to it, and when it arrives soon you are tired of it.  You only relish it as it approaches and as it departs because you experience what you are truly seeking - unfulfilled expectation in certainty of momentary bliss when it lands and an equally satisfying longing remorse that ignites loss because you can’t do anything about the exit. It’s the chase that leaves you breathless, struggling for air, weak in the bones and knees, on the verge of a death you can taste which is the true pleasure of man, and then your heart and lungs recover as you cannot chase any longer, sip water, and head back to your own repetitive slog until the next time it’s almost dusk again.”

 

Humans are never satisfied.  It’s what makes us take two steps forward and one backwards.  We innovate, and that innovation brings suffering at some level every time.

 

“when the entire world is connected, the most adamant make the most noise - and the most adamant are polarized ideologies.  A connected world is doomed to polarization as the increase of connectivity can never be matched by a profoundly lesser increase in a population's understanding through critical thinking”

 

Even so, with the slim chance that we are not doomed, we do what we must to try and save the species.  This book is about hope.  The hope that the chase can be ignored, and within the moment of behavior, “choice accompanied by noise”, we can learn, again, to think.