76. Open Questions

You are aware, intelligent, savvy. You know the things you hear are not always true. Countless narratives are being spun around you. Powerful interests are trying to influence outcomes. Systems and institutions are working to preserve the status quo and themselves. People are continuously interpreting reality and each of these interpretations is biased. Sometimes these biases veer far from anything that could be called truth.

You know all of this, but if you happen to forget, the absurd media that ceaselessly attacks your senses will quickly remind you. You’re not going to fall for any lies. You examine everything you hear carefully, disregarding what is obviously false and investigating what you don’t yet understand. Sometimes people try to convince you of the truth of their particular narrative. You listen politely, but you always go your own way.

75. The Critical Life

In its everyday usage, to criticize something is to find fault with it. But in the world of literature and art, to criticize is to inquire into a work. Rather than focusing exclusively on faults, the aim is to explore the work broadly and see what might be found in it.

To inquire into a work is to pose questions and discover how the work responds. It is to posit interpretations and meanings — typically nonexclusive ones that expand our view of the work rather than confine it to strict boundaries. Criticism of this kind is deeply resistant to boundaries. It resists anything that limits, anything final. It remains open to the arrival of a future audience, one that will see the work in a new way, who will pose a new set of questions revealing something as of yet unseen. It means both exploring and investigating, taking both the broadest available view and the narrowest, reaching as far as possible into the wide unknown and diving deeply into the details.

74. The Privacy Of Mind

A human being needs privacy. Having privacy means being able to temporarily escape from reality. It is to enter your own world, a sanctuary for you alone. In your own world you are completely in charge: you make the rules, and you decide what happens.

In this way, your private world is a kind of imaginary space. Here, there is no other, there is only you. Here, the distance between your imagined ideal and your reality is much smaller. And if your ideal does not involve other people, your private world might even be your ideal world.

73. Everything That Is Happening

It seems like he is always reading the news. He checks it at least ten or twelve times a day now. He knows it’s becoming a bit much. But there is so much happening in the world and it all feels important.

New pathogens are migrating between species. The local government is in disarray. The climate is becoming more and more extreme. Elections are happening here and then there. New methods of digital surveillance are emerging. Resources are being consolidated by a small group of oligarchs.

72. Extinguishing Ignorance

Hearing ignorant opinions can be frustrating. They are almost inescapable when they are widely shared, so this frustration can become part of daily life. The situation feels even worse when the ignorant opinions are shared by those who have power over others.

In response to my frustration, I want to block out the ignorant views. But when I do this, I run the risk of limiting my own awareness, which is the only thing that protects me from succumbing to ignorance. For my awareness to broaden and grow, I need to allow my attention to remain open, and that means I will be regularly exposed to a wide variety of opinions, including ignorant ones.

71. The Need To See

We ordinarily expect to be able to understand our experiences. If an experience is incomprehensible, we want to understand why. We expect there to be a reason and if one is not readily available, we start to look for it.

In some cases, our search lasts only a few seconds, especially if we realize the answer is unimportant. But more often, what is not understood is intriguing enough to trigger our curiosity, leading us to expend some effort looking for an explanation. We try to gather context and clues that might reveal the nature of the thing in question. We read texts that clarify but also pose further questions, and so we read even more to try to locate reliable answers.

70. A New Form Of Life

You’re forever stuck with your own point of view. There’s no way to escape from your subjectivity. There’s no way to see yourself as you exist in this moment from outside your own body.

Even advanced technology capable of recording your every word, expression, and movement wouldn’t help. A recording can’t solve the problem because what you actually want is to be able to observe yourself in each and every moment as it happens. You want to see yourself right now, from a third-person perspective, without being influenced by your observations. But there is no tool that can offer this kind of objectivity.

69. Awareness As A Goal

We want to be successful, so we are always thinking about our goals. We reflect on which goals to set. We measure our progress towards them. We often achieve them through careful self-control. We believe that happiness is only possible if we obtain the success that reaching our goals seems to promise.

All of our actions are devoted to this cause. We measure and evaluate and plan everything we do for the purpose of fulfilling our goals. These goals might be significant projects that will take months or years to complete, but they can also be so small that we don’t even realize they are goals. Our compulsion towards measurement and progress is so strong that we might even go so far as to plan out our spare time to achieve the best possible outcome, even if it is just to maximize the pleasure we experience.

68. To Be Anywhere But Here

She has been listening to him talk without pause for nearly half an hour now. Just when she thinks he’s about to stop, he launches another salvo of words at her. The gala was supposed to be an opportunity to relax, and maybe even have fun, but now she’s trapped, unable to escape from this rain of endless chatter. If he were just anyone, she could’ve walked away or told him to get lost. The problem is that this man is her boss.