When we live the 21st-century good life, almost every aspect of it is predicated on not looking at the implications of what we're up to. Happiness at this point has a lot to do with not looking, so you don't feel complicit in some vast and awful enterprise.
Interpretation
Happiness may stem from ignoring the unpleasant realities of our modern lives.
Paolo Bacigalupi's quote explores the notion that contemporary happiness is often based on willful ignorance of the moral and ethical implications of our lifestyles. In the pursuit of what is often called the 'good life,' individuals may choose to overlook the broader consequences of their actions, thereby finding temporary joy while remaining unaware of their complicity in larger societal issues.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about consumer culture and environmental responsibility.
All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought.
What you hear depends on how you focus your ear. We're not talking about inventing a new language, but rather inventing new perceptions of existing languages.
In our view the Olympic idea involves a strong physical culture supplemented on the one hand by mobility, what is so aptly called 'fair play', and on the other hand by aesthetics, that is the cultivation of what is beautiful and graceful.
Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.
He that will maintain that man's free will is able to do or work anything in spiritual cases, be they never so small, denies Christ.
Silence is ever speaking; it is the perennial flow of language.
The Russian yearning for the meaning of life is the major theme of our literature, and this is the real point of our intelligentsia's existence.
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