existential_wind epitome of incomprehensibility It's more dignified to be woken up with existential wind than existential_gas, but still a bit too airy for down-to-earth sorts. Airy-fairy, and when I fell asleep again I dreamed I could fly. But yes. I woke up at around 11:30 PM, worried suddenly that when I died I'd live forever. I didn't want to live forever; the problem with forever is that it never ends, and that's hard to imagine. But what's the alternative? Disappearing completely? What could I believe in that could comfort me? Taking a third option, that consciousness and existence could be merged, changed, without being destroyed? After all, didn't the theologian Karl Barth think that God was essentially unknowable to humans here on earth? Couldn't consciousness be unknowable too? And couldn't I stop worrying about things I didn't know about? What was really bothering me? That last one had an answer: I was tired, I hadn't slept that long yet, and something had woken me up. It was the noise of the wind. The weather forecast had predicted snow, but now it was windy and raining. I saw a flash and looked out the window. The lights inside homes that'd still been on when I went to sleep were off, but the streetlights shone brightly. Then I saw the next flash of lightning. Then another. As the rain hit the window, the streetlights seemed to grow brighter and brighter. I wondered why that was, and realized that seeing them through water droplets made them look bigger. For some reason this made me very happy. Even if you don't know what to believe, the world is beautiful. (It did snow after the thunderstorm. In the morning, the roads had grown thin white borders.) 171110 ... unhinged puts life in the sails 'utopia for realists' by rutger bergman 'the difficulty lies, not in new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones' - john maynard keynes 171112 ... e_o_i Thanks, this looks interesting! At least from a glance: https://www.amazon.ca/Utopia-Realists-Universal-Borders-Workweek/dp/9082520303 Utopia for Realists... Basic income and less nationalism, yes. 15-hour workweeks, I don't know. This might sound silly, but I imagine a large number of people wouldn't know what to do without structured time. Eh, I'm making the classic egoist mistake: assuming that other people are like me. Unhinged is not like me because her writing is beautifully compact. :) 171114 ... unhinged ;) i know what i would be doing if i only had a 15 hour work week. i would be feeding all the parts of me that are starved by work. like even more reading, meditating, yoga, creating, writing...all sorts of stuff. work is not the be all end all. the author of that book is dutch so...basic income and much less work are much less unrealistic to the northern europeans 171114 what's it to you? who go blather from