Essays and Thoughts
I don't know whether it's Americans, Math people, or my suite mates, but people around me say "That's Valid" all the time. —Me disassembling my laptop after working on the same Pset question for 3 hours. "That's Valid." —Me feeling depressed and wanting to jump off my dorm naked. "That's pretty Valid." —My talking about … Continue reading That’s Valid
Each joke is a short circuit. It's not meant to be. The world may not be better that it happened, but it has, and for all the destruction it causes, the world is at least more interesting Like in a short circuit, a joke can be dangerous. Things that aren't meant to touch are touching, … Continue reading Short Circuit, In Defense of Jokes
Dreams are where possibility shades into actuality. They're how the world builds and sustains itself. Realism is false because realists never make anything new or exciting. Without dreamers, the unknown and unthought-of engulfs and destroys reality. When people tell you to be realistic, tell them to dream. Dreams are made of love, made of passion, … Continue reading Dream
Love doesn't just happen. At first sight, it's at most an idealization. Idealizations are not false. They're just not true. They're like the Constitution without the constituents. Love is more the generation and preservation of attraction through reciprocal effort towards enlarging, strengthening, and losing the self. It's about the hard and beautiful work into maintaining … Continue reading Romance
We’re almost all privileged. I certainly am. With privilege accompanies a certain guilt. The guilt that comes from the realization that I did nothing to earn what I have. I did not choose my parents, my times, my body. I didn’t even choose to be born. Why do I deserve such a good deal? What … Continue reading Dealing with Privilege
We are all supremely lonely. Maturity is our coming to terms with this fact. It is when we realize that loneliness is necessary, just like birth pangs and death (and taxes). For it's within loneliness that we truly see ourselves, with our beauty and ugliness shining through the cracks that loneliness makes on our myriad … Continue reading Loneliness
Attached above is a map I used to conceptualize the problem. This post talks about the left third of the map. To answer the question, What Is Consciousness? It will be well to probe into two questions: What problem(s) is consciousness the solution to? (Which can be rephrased, more dramatically, as, What is the Human … Continue reading The Human Condition and Consciousness
Guilt, I think, is one of the transcendentals of life, what Karl Jaspers calls the Ultimate Situation—what is inescapably thrown with oneself into existence (if I sound too pessimistic, here I write with the irredeemable guilt of spending the last 23 minutes of my life on YouTube watching god-knows-what). It rises out of a natural … Continue reading Guilt
—This was written before sleep in that weird state where nothing is inhibited and word just flows out of one's fingers without regard for its content. Hence the melodrama, and the sense of (false?) pathos in the words. Originally advice to my good friend Josh who has, recently, fallen prey to Football Manager 2021. Extended … Continue reading What is Hell?
David Foster Wallace is the writer of tedium. And this is why, perhaps, he has struck a chord in the modern imagination, gathering such a large cult following (one of whom is yours truly). He sees people engaging in diversions—through drugs, TV, unlimited consumption—and sees again the same people taking an ironic stance towards everything, … Continue reading Tedium & David Foster Wallace
Warren's Brain Dumps 