Midway upon the journey of our life

henry miller
paul ryan photography

So I saw in my dream that the man began to run. Now he had not run far from his own door, but his wife and children perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on, crying, "Life! life! Eternal life!" So he looked not behind him, but fled towards the middle of the plain.

John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress

A lack of nerve and imagination

katie allen

Some people must fit perfectly well into the world as it is. Others don't, and must change themselves and / or their environment. But some don't fit and don't change anything, and those people are fucked most of all.

This idea is probably due to a lack of nerve and imagination on my part.

The imperatives of survival on six distinct time scales

katie allen [click image for huge]

The destiny of our species is shaped by the imperatives of survival on six distinct time scales. To survive means to compete successfully on all six time scales. But the unit of survival is different at each of the six time scales. On a time scale of years, the unit is the individual. On a time scale of decades, the unit is the family. On a time scale of centuries, the unit is the tribe or nation. On a time scale of millennia, the unit is the culture. On a time scale of tens of millennia, the unit is the species. On a time scale of eons, the unit is the whole web of life on our planet. Every human being is the product of adaptation to the demands of all six time scales. That is why conflicting loyalties are deep in our nature. In order to survive, we have needed to be loyal to ourselves, to our families, to our tribes, to our cultures, to our species, to our planet. If our psychological impulses are complicated, it is because they were shaped by complicated and conflicting demands.

Freeman Dyson: From Eros To Gaia, p. 341, via Warren Senders: Eight Thoughts About Timescale

Same same, but different

trustocorp

I don't know about you, and I don't know what your friends are like. But this seems to me to be a sadder, more hungry generation. And the thing that I get scared of is, when we're in power, when we're the forty-five and fifty-year olds. And there's really nobody - no older - that no people older than us with memories of the Depression, or memories of war, that had significant sacrifices. And there's gonna be no check on our appetites. And also our hunger to give stuff away.
...
And we're the first generation - maybe people starting about my age, it started in '62. We grew up sorta in the rubble of the old system. And we know we don't want to go back to that. But the sort of - this confusion of permissions, or this idea that pleasure and comfort are the, are really the ultimate goal and meaning of life. I think we're starting to see a generation die...on the toxicity of that idea.

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace, by David Lipsky, p159

Related post: The long line of supposedly beaten generations