Something to Keep
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Soren Kierkegaard
A Second Look
As a human living in the 21st century, I often think about anxiety. There are several ways to define anxiety, but one of my favorites comes from Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. The quote reframes anxiety as the privilege of rich nations, where people have endless choices from the cereal we eat to the partner we marry. Calculating which choice will bring us the most happiness is overwhelming, and the feeling that we might be making the “wrong” choice is paralyzing.
Something I Liked
I recently got all of Yuval Noah Harari’s books. I finished Sapiens (I’m working on a summary for the site) and I’m reading Homo Deus, but I also have 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, as well as Nexus. Since I found myself with downtime lately, I’ve been dealing with distractions, so having books I’m interested in and a couple of hours to kill has been great.
It’s been a while since I’ve been so immersed in a series of books. Since I launched the site, I read so many books that finding something refreshing has been hard. If you’ve never read Sapiens and you’re interested in evolution, human psychology, or sociology, you should give the book a chance, since it tells the history of humanity in 500 pages or so.