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Pascal would also tell us that the stakes are high, quite high. “The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries,” he writes. “For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves, and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.”

Desire, Dopamine, and the Internet

The Convivial Society

Unable, then, to see the world because I have forgotten the way of being in the world that enables vision in the deepest sense, I can then be convinced of the superiority of virtual worlds.³ Increasingly captivated by virtual worlds, I am less likely to demand anything more or better. The tools that diminish my capacity to experience the world in full simultaneously promise to give me a better-than-real world.

Vision Con

The Convivial Society

Félix Ravaisson, the vitalist philosopher whose Of Habit remains one of the most in-depth treatises on the phenomenon, deems habit a form of grace, one that allows humans, who are burdened with consciousness and will, to take part in the spontaneity of the natural world.

Routine Maintenance, by Meghan O’Gieblyn

harpers.org

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