Hey Brian, thanks for reading and sharing your insights. It definitely was influenced by many philosophies, one of them definitely being Buddhism.

I realized that the more I tried to avoid suffering and indulged in our desires, the more I suffered and the more I tried to drown out the pain by filling myself with more short-term pleasantries.

That’s an awesome problem that we don’t think about. We’re so busy trying to eliminate problems and find ways to live as easy and as comfortably as possible (not that there’s something inherently wrong with that, since we also are trying to eliminate needless suffering and have helped countless people out of extreme poverty and cured many sicknesses).

It’s funny to imagine that in the future, we are going to have to create adversity for ourselves rather than try and get rid of them all. We are perpetually reaching for utopia, but our humanity will always be the barrier that stops us from getting there. We are mysterious and tragic creatures, walking paradoxes. We are both chaos and order, and that will never change.

“Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in bliss so that nothing but bubbles would dance on the surface of his bliss, as on a sea…and even then every man, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer libel, would play you some loathsome trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive rationality his fatal fantastic element…simply in order to prove to himself that men still are men and not piano keys.”

Dostoevsky knew enough of the human condition to know that we would never thrive in a utopia, as we are always half animal, half god.

Nietzsche believed that Man was to be overcome, to be the bridge from animal to god.

We do not and cannot ever know what is good for us, what we want, what we need… but can you blame us for trying?

Thanks again Brian — your insights provoked my thoughts enough for me to get this all out. You inspired me!