Passionate and pained

Just because you feel something deeply doesn’t make it a deep well of wisdom. Vulnerability is not redeemable on its own. It’s kind of painful to watch someone self-flagellate, to become a garish wound while not getting any closer to understanding the knife.

It’s almost impossible to have an easy life and be interesting. Suffering is what gives people texture.

The decline of deviance is mainly a good thing. Our lives have gotten longer, safer, healthier, and richer. But the rise of mass prosperity and disappearance of everyday dangers has also made trivial risks seem terrifying. So as we tame every frontier of human life, we have to find a way to keep the good kinds of weirdness alive. We need new... See more

I once spent an unpleasant year studying torture in various countries where it is endemic and I was quickly shocked to learn that torture is not about pain. Pain is merely one tool used by torturers. It’s not even the most effective tool. Torture is about the psychological breakdown caused by the loss of control and understanding.

The essay suggests that in high-energy emotional states, such as falling in love, grief, awe, psychedelics, deep meditation, the brain becomes molten, its patterns loosened, more open to reorganisation. The person we focus on in these states becomes like a mold for the cooling metal, shaping how our thoughts settle, what habits crystallise, what... See more

I often joke that I make life incredibly difficult for myself, and these days I do genuinely say this in good humour. But there was a time when I often wondered why I couldn't just be happier with less—doing less, having less, being less.

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives.