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#2 Your Problems Aren't Real (Straw Dogs by John Gray)

Nat's Notes

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The Myth of Sisyphus

If the hope of progress is an illusion, how are we to live? The question assumes that humans can live well only if they believe they have the power to remake the world. Yet most humans who have ever lived have not believed this and agree many have had happy lives. For Plato, contemplation was the highest form of human activity. A similar view existed in ancient India. What I think Gray is getting at is that we're incapable of just sitting and viewing the world. And so we obsess over action and control as a way to escape from confronting this potential feeling of uselessness or the limits of our life.

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