Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.

William S. Burroughs, Letters to Allen Ginsberg (via quotespile)

We [are] strongly inclined to believe that our continued existence is a deep further fact, distinct from physical and psychological continuity, and a fact that must be all-or-nothing. This is not true. Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was such a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.

Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (via philosophybits)

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (via unequaintrelle)

The truth is you already know what it’s like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes. But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think…The truth is you’ve already heard this. That this is what it’s like. That it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you’re a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it’s only a part. Who wouldn’t? It’s called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it’s why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali–it’s not English anymore, it’s not getting squeezed through any hole. So cry all you want, I won’t tell anybody.

David Foster Wallace, Oblivion (via acomedyofthirst)

Shadow owes its birth to light.

-John Gay

"That’s one of the most threatening thoughts to me. Because for better or for worse, I put comprehension as one of my highest ideals. I want to understand everything. I want people to understand things. I love understanding things. I love explaining things to myself and to others. We’ve always had plenty of people who, for good reason, said, “Oh, don’t bother explaining to me how the car engine works, I don’t care. I just push the ignition and off I go.” What happens when we take that attitude towards everything?"

This is one of the features of the new transparency that is most worrying. No sooner do we develop the hardware to give the globe a nervous system than we spoil it. We’re at great risk of going blind.

Daniel Dennett

Chomsky on Trump’s alleged “anti-establishment” actions

Chopin’s Nocturne No. 1 in B-flat Minor taped on a 40+ year old cassette

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Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point

Love is wise – Hatred is foolish.

Bertrand Russell (via quotemadness)

This seems trite, but it's important to remember every day.

People have so manipulated the concept of freedom that it finally boils down to the right of the stronger and richer to take from the weaker and poorer whatever they still have. Attempts to change this are seen as shameful intrusions into the realm of the very individuality that by the logic of that freedom has dissolved into an administered void

Theodor Adorno, Message in a Bottle (via post-makhno)

She came from a background where nothing was ever good enough. And that was something that weighed heavy on her. But in our house together, it was a sense of just trying stuff and allowing each other to fail and to be excited about things. That was liberating for her. It was exciting to see her grow and both of us grow and change together. But that’s also the hard part: growing without growing apart or changing without it scaring the other person. 

- Her (2013) 

When raised on the idea that our lives' paths have been supernaturally, immutably ordained, people have trouble making decisions, especially the important ones. It becomes necessary for many to reject that doctrine. In its place comes freedom. Not just freedom to make choices that are right or wrong, but freedom to choose one's Self, to a certain extent. To craft a life out of a series of choices that will only ever be on a spectrum of better or worse. Because, the best choice does not exist, it's a fiction. And thus, our lives become not a work of divination, looking to the stars while feverishly interpreting every cryptic movement of Nature, but instead a work of fiction. We write ourselves into the canon of the Human Race with an artistic flourish. It's an act of creativity and discovery; a wedding of the artistic and scientific organs of the mind.

For the past few years I’ve let recordings build up on my hard drive, but recently my friends* helped me finish them up.

If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.

Noam Chomsky