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Buddha agreed with modern biology and New Age movements that happiness is independent of external conditions. Yet his more important and far more profound insight was that true happiness is also independent of our inner feelings. Indeed, the more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer.
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
as long as she lives in a society that values the commercial potential of milk and the health of its human citizens over the feelings of cows, she’d best write up her research proposal so as to appeal to those assumptions. For example, she might write that ‘Depression leads to a decrease in milk production. If we understand the mental world of dairy cows, we could develop psychiatric medication that will improve their mood, thus raising milk production by up to 10 per cent. I estimate that there is a global annual market of $250 million for bovine psychiatric medications.’
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
The one-armed woman said, “There was a movie called Maple recently. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. At the end, an adult and a child stand in front of the grave of a Red Guard who had died during the faction civil wars. The child asks the adult, ‘Are they heroes?’ The adult says no. The child asks, ‘Are they enemies?’ The adult again says no. The child asks, ‘Then who are they?’ The adult says, ‘History.’” “Did you hear that?” The thickset woman waved an arm excitedly at Ye. “History! History! It’s a new age now. Who will remember us? Who will think of us, including you? Everyone will forget all this completely!” The three old Red Guards departed, leaving only Ye on the exercise grounds. More than a dozen years ago, on that rainy afternoon, she had stood alone here as well, gazing at her dead father. The old Red Guard’s final remark echoed endlessly in her mind.…
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
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