Re:What Our Diversions Reveal about Us (1670)
by erwan on Wednesday October 31, 2018 @01:57PM
(#18347874)
143. Diversion.--Men are entrusted from infancy with the
care of their honour, their property, their friends, and
even with the property and the honour of their friends.
They are overwhelmed with business, with the study of
languages, and with physical exercise; and they are made
to understand that they cannot be happy unless their
health, their honour, their fortune and that of their
friends be in good condition, and that a single thing
wanting will make them unhappy.
Thus they are given cares and business which make them
bustle about from break of day. It is, you will
exclaim, a strange way to make them happy!
What more could be done to make them miserable?
--Indeed! what could be done? We should only have
to relieve them from all these cares; for then they
would see themselves: they would reflect on what they are,
whence they came, whither they go, and thus we cannot employ
and divert them too much.
And this is why, after having given them so much
business, we advise them, if they have some time for
relaxation, to employ it in amusement, in play,
and to be always fully occupied.
Re:What Our Diversions Reveal about Us (1670)
by phkahler on Thursday November 01, 2018 @01:58PM
(#18356633)
Perhaps evolution has provided this mental state. Self, family, clan, tribe. Promote these things relentlessly or you will go extinct. There is always something you can do, so idleness is to be disdained. Indeed, much like apoptosis at the cellular level in response to defect, one in deep social isolation and despair for lack of purpose may even withdraw from the game of life entirely. Evolution at work.
Re:What Our Diversions Reveal about Us (1670)
by yesenadam on Thursday November 01, 2018 @11:53AM
(#18355195)
Yes, obviously I had to go to the site to learn that. I meant, there was no indication on HN. I guess I commented because I was disappointed - I read a lot of stuff from the 16th-19th C, and hadn't heard the title before, so I expected something 'new'.
It's not a fragment, it's someone's selection from Pascal's book, one of the most famous books of aphorisms, if not the most famous. It's not Pascal's title.
(just ignore the first sentence/movie reference)
Edit: woops!
It's not a fragment, it's someone's selection from Pascal's book, one of the most famous books of aphorisms, if not the most famous. It's not Pascal's title.