After a life spent dreading his inevitable death, Soren Kierkegaard — age 42 — finally succumbs. As he exhales his final breath, Soren feels released from his tormented life. At last! He can be with God, before God, as he believes is proper for every human being!
These Strange Days
Dear Fellows of the ‘Essence of Water’,
I hope that you are all well, staying safe and making the Herculean effort — as I am — not to touch your face. In this time of social distancing, as governments everywhere are taking extraordinary measures to ‘flatten the curve’, I know that we are all affected by this new virus. Maybe your daily routine has changed. Maybe your level of general anxiety has peaked. I know, mine has. Yet, I cannot help but be glad that we — humanity — are suddenly forced to realize the depth of our interdependencies.
Future Blockaded
Canadians are such a mild-mannered people that, if you bump into us, we will likely apologize. Not for ‘being in your way’ per se but simply because civility obliges us to. Indeed, we value courteous social relations to the point where we might not ‘say what needs to be said’ if it’s likely to cause even a smidgen of tension. You may call us conflict-avoidant. I prefer to say ‘Peace-Loving’ — but I recognize that ‘being polite’ might not be the ‘winning’ attitude when worldviews collide. Therefore, when our nation gets embroiled in any conflict, it shocks us to our very core.
Testimony of a Forfeiter
In An Educated Guess, Peter explores the ubiquity of the ‘Life as Game’ metaphor and the quasi-sacred importance accorded to ‘winning’. “We live to win!” & “The winner takes all!” — So everyone seems to say! We are generally fine with those maxims for the simple reason that we get to participate in the ‘game’ (even if it is rigged against the vast majority of individuals). Indeed, the ‘game metaphor’ feeds on our hope that we might one day achieve a ‘win’. We are taught — from the cradle to the grave, really — that ‘winning’ matters; that it makes us better, more important in the eyes of others… So of course, we try to ‘win’ without even considering the costs of ‘giving it all’ to the game.
Book Recommendation
To All, I have an unorthodox request: What book would you recommend me on the theme of ‘authenticity’? Ideally a novel, but any type of creative and narrative text would do.
I’m asking because I am enrolled in a ‘Literature and Philosophy’ class — and it is a requirement of our term paper that we crowdsource book recommendations from algorithms, peers and strangers. Notwithstanding what we (and I !) have said lately about the quality of education, there are still innovative professors with worthwhile agendas in the classrooms.
Thank you so much for your suggestions and I’m looking forward to them!