“What kind of world do we inhabit, in which things that bring us consolation at intolerable cost might continue to cost but cease to console?” Great question, not merely rhetorical. And great post (but as with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus I’m not quite sure what to make of the numbers.)
In a better world consolation would be on tap, without cost. That’s James’s “wishing-cap” world, utopia, literally nowhere.
So we have to work for our consolation, without guarantee of success. We have to be meliorists. The upside is that it becomes easier to identify the sources of false consolation, the “degrading poisons” of misleading allure, and renounce them. Smoking and drinking were relatively easy to give up, for me, compared to dreams of Utopia. But dreams of an incrementally better world are easier to believe in. Slightly.
I always look forward to your Saturday dispatches, Kieran. (And we’re reading Life is Hard in my classes again this semester.) Thanks for this. Carry on.
“What kind of world do we inhabit, in which things that bring us consolation at intolerable cost might continue to cost but cease to console?” Great question, not merely rhetorical. And great post (but as with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus I’m not quite sure what to make of the numbers.)
In a better world consolation would be on tap, without cost. That’s James’s “wishing-cap” world, utopia, literally nowhere.
So we have to work for our consolation, without guarantee of success. We have to be meliorists. The upside is that it becomes easier to identify the sources of false consolation, the “degrading poisons” of misleading allure, and renounce them. Smoking and drinking were relatively easy to give up, for me, compared to dreams of Utopia. But dreams of an incrementally better world are easier to believe in. Slightly.
I always look forward to your Saturday dispatches, Kieran. (And we’re reading Life is Hard in my classes again this semester.) Thanks for this. Carry on.