You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.
Interpretation
The quote explores the extremes of devotion and rejection in American culture.
David Foster Wallace's quote reflects on the dualistic nature of American society, where individuals often feel compelled to either idolize something, elevating it to god-like status, or dismiss it entirely. This stark binary reveals the intense dedication and subsequent disillusionment that can characterize modern life, suggesting that such polarized views can lead to a loss of nuance in navigating beliefs and values.
In practice
During a discussion on cultural values, one might reference this quote to illustrate the intensity of American beliefs.
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like youβve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and itβs like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
There is not a separate God for each person. There is one universal intelligence flowing through all of us.
When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.
Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic
I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.
Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever.
We are material beings for but a moment in time, but we are spiritual beings forever.
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