Essays and Thoughts
Question: What is the point of reading fiction, watching movies, listening to stories? Why do we need an Iliad that is 500 pages when its plot summary is 20? Why do we care to even know the plot, if we know that it has never happened? Answer: I argue that fiction (in the sense of … Continue reading Why Fiction?
Once upon a time I fell in love with Apocalyptic fiction. I thought it was just a phase. But I have recently relapsed. I pick up, I start reading, and 2 hours go by. My Biology textbooks and Calculus videos are left forlorn on my desk. Out of guilt, I began meditating on the genre … Continue reading Apocalypse and Fiction
Enframing Enframing—the setting of borders and boundaries, the separation of the within and without, the distinction between inside and outside—is the central problem of our time. With humanity’s growing capacity to act, it is necessary to understand enframing—the process underlying action—else we may in turn be enslaved by its operation, acting thoughtlessly towards catastrophe. Enframing … Continue reading Enframing
Resentment (or, to be fancy, ressentiment—signifying the technical Nietzschean definition for the term), is a horribly special emotion. If, for Heidegger, authentic boredom and anxiety fundamentally attunes us to the world, then resentment leads us eternally astray. Resentment is anti-life. It denials rather than affirms appearance. It is not hatred, anger, or envy, and differs … Continue reading Ressentiment
Unedited essay for the UChicago supplement prompt: “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.“—Miles Davis (1926–91). (It is way over the word limit. But...) Note from Dec 16 2022: I got waitlisted by UChi. I still think it is one of the best pieces of writing that I did in my college admissions era … Continue reading “Why do you love me?”
For Freud, we escape from reality into dreams, and then encounter in it what is so real and traumatic that we escape from dreams (desperately) back into reality. This is how we should read the play. It is not a comedy, but the more tragic of all because it ends happily. The middle portion where … Continue reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream
I have been slowly going through Borges’ Collected Fictions for quite some while now (in fact, almost a year), and I’m, finally—or perhaps sadly—more than halfway through. There was one story that I read today that left a great impression on me, more than some of his more famous stories (Garden of Forking Paths, Lottery … Continue reading The Aleph
Warren's Brain Dumps 