I feel fortunate to have been able to spend a fair amount of my time over the last decade reading, thinking and learning. I live in a golden age of learning. I can order a book, and have it delivered overnight, listen to podcast(s) or watch professors/experts on YouTube to supplement whatever I'm trying to learn about.
"In paradise everything is permitted except curiosity." - Lev Shestov
I am curious. Therefore, I cannot live in paradise. Socrates was curious so they killed him.
Human attempts at creating paradise fail, sometimes in spectacular and cruel ways. Hell is other people. We have met the enemy, and they is us.
Mass movements that promise paradise require sacrificing your intellect, morality, and curiosity.
The ability to read and think for yourself, to form your own ideas about right and wrong - what constitutes a good life. that is paradise for me.
People speak of truth - but I can't handle the truth. The question is what sort of fictions we are willing to tell ourselves and what sort of behaviors we justify using those fictions.
"In order to be happy, one must have freed oneself of prejudices, one must be virtuous, healthy, have tastes and passions, and be susceptible to illusions; for we owe most of our pleasures to illusions, and unhappy is the one who has lost them. Far then, from seeking to make them disappear by the torch of reason, let us try to thicken the varnish that illusion lays on the majority of objects."
--Emilie Du Châtelet, Discourse on Happiness
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