The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.
“If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves. Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves. How can I dare to guess about humans in the far future? It is, I think, only a matter of natural selection. If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.”
― Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
― Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― A Dance with Dragons
― A Dance with Dragons
“This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with depression is that it's such a self-centered illness - Dostoevsky shows that pretty good in his "Notes from Underground". The depression is painful, you're sapped/consumed by yourself; the worse the depression, the more you just think about yourself and the stranger and repellent you appear to others.”
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“...living is merely the chaos of existence...”
― The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
― The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Josh’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Josh’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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