Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

If you were eventually able to engineer her to the point where dashing up Mount Everest presented no great challenge, you would have robbed the entire exercise of its point. Flow doesn’t increase if you have more ability; it simply requires challenge sufficient to your ability. We are already capable of being as absorbed and engaged as we ever coul

Take all that you have and be poor. […] As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

I’ve already explained the most obvious reason that this supposed freedom seems profoundly coercive: You can, with some effort, rebel against the ways you were raised. (Consider, say, the number of lapsed Catholics, despite all the combined and ferocious efforts of parents and nuns.) But you can’t rebel against the genes implanted inside you: The c

Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will cal