Member-only story
Speculation free from contact with the earth, from experience, will not, and cannot, survive; the mortification of the humanities is the natural result of the dismemberment of the humanities: the removal of philosophy, art, and literature from the web of life. There is no time for Tolstoy or Proust in the research university, or a profit-driven society. The humanities died because they tried to make themselves useful, accepted the standard of usefulness. The best things, the highest things are perfectly useless: that’s their point.
My own best moments are quiet moments with a book, when I’m reading (merely) for my own curiosity and pleasure. Happiness, in so many ways, is the embrace of uselessness, of being without purposiveness.
It’s so muggy tonight, while I’m writing this; New York City is a sauna — it’s really disgusting. I want to read — and to move as little as possible.
I’ve been drinking too much lately, and thus, spending too much money on alcohol. I wonder why “getting drinks” is considered a normal, social activity. So often, I just want to pay the bill and escape.
I sometimes fail to make the all important distinction between the useless and the pointless.
I should save more time and money, simply do less. I recognize that my life in New York would be abhorred by all the classical masters of wisdom. I abhor it myself sometimes.
