You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
So which is the lie? Hard or soft? Silence or time?
Interpretation
The quote questions the nature of truth and deception in our perceptions of reality.
David Foster Wallace's quote encourages reflection on the complexities of truth and lies as they relate to the human experience. It prompts us to consider how we perceive hard versus soft truths, and whether silence or the passage of time can distort our understanding of reality. This philosophical inquiry suggests that our interpretations may be subjective and influenced by various factors, leading to deeper questions about knowledge and belief.
In practice
During a philosophical discussion about reality versus perception.
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 you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, I’ll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated. Only caricatured.
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
I looked back at the summit of the mountain, which seemed but a cubit high in comparison with the height of human contemplation, were in not too often merged in the corruptions of the earth.
Morality [or ethics] is not a subject; it is a life put to the test in dozens of moments.
Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names.
We cannot confront solitude without moral resources.
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