I’ve put considerable effort into learning the most fascinating things in the whole world. Therefore, by my own standards I know the most fascinating things in the world, and being someone who prizes knowledge, I have made myself into my own ideal of the most fascinating person in the world. It’s too bad these standards are strictly my own. Dang. (But there’s an upside: because knowledge isn’t treasured it’s inexpensive. I can buy miraculously good books for ludicrously low prices. This book I’m reading right now ought to cost more than a house, but I got it for $20, brand-new.) Still, I’d love to meet someone who recognizes the value of the insights I’ve worked for and fought for. I feel like I’ve accumulated zillions of dollars in a currency nobody exchanges.

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Maybe it would be fruitful to ask some questions about what makes my fascinating knowledge so fascinating. Is the knowledge itself fascinating? Are the applications of the knowledge fascinating, as case studies? Does the knowledge itself only become fascinating as it is being applied, so that the conjoining of theory and practice is what is fascinating? Or is the activity of applying the knowledge the locus of the fascination – and if it is fascinating as an activity, is it a participatory or spectatorly fascination? Or is the fascination bound up with the entity acted upon in the application of the knowledge? Or is it being, oneself, the object of the application, being acted upon, affected? Maybe it’s a matter of presentation or packaging.

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I asked myself a question five years ago: If I discovered there were no practical purpose at all in my learning and thinking, would I do it anyway? My answer was “yes”. I need to keep it that way. And I need to protect my life as a means to do this learning and thinking. Because when I ask that same question about just about everything else my answer is “no”. That “yes” and that “no” is one’s ethical kernel.

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Love is what we do for no reason.

Once you are clear on what in your life is ends and what is means you can be a real son-of-a-bitch.

Maybe my existence in regard to all other people is absolutely purposeless. Then what? What do we owe one another?