Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

“emergent storytelling,” a fictional tale written collectively by a nearly anonymous internet, then veering into reality

the idea of empathy itself only dates to the late eighteenth century. The notion was invented by psycho-physiologist Wilhelm Wundt to describe our ability to experience another’s experience, and different, Wundt thought, from sympathy and compassion. Empathy is about the transmission of information; sympathy and compassion are reactions to that

Live the questions, said Rilke.

Dune mantra: “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

An artist has a primal emotion that becomes an original insight that births a work of art. Viewers tap that source code via viewing, as if the feeling that led to the original insight gets broadcast, and people with the right kind of radio can detect the signal. Tune the frequency correctly and the experience is shared experience, transmitted

Sow an action and you reap a habit, sow a habit and you reap a character, sow a character and you reap a destiny. Psychologist William James paraphrasing philosopher Aristotle, and the first thing he thinks about this morning.

Lion thinks empathy is another way we have learned to recognize life. When the party ends and guests leave, the house doesn’t just look empty. It feels empty. Absence of life gives off sensation. One possibility is mirror neurons, which are the habit machinery beneath empathy. In the presence

Anxiety is the enemy of empathy. Fear makes us egocentric; egocentric makes us blind. An amygdala/prefrontal-cortex two-step that narrows the search parameters of the pattern recognition system. Pretty soon, as anxiety climbs too high, we lose our ability to find one another.