I resisted reading Taleb for a long time, because my first exposure to him was a video in which he most completely ruffled his feathers at an interviewer in his most arrogant way. But, I am such a hypocrite! If it is difficult to suffer fools (I must admit I think it is, although the sole strategy I allow myself is simply to attempt their avoidance), then it is difficult, too, to suffer lesser philosophies. He is no quasi-intellectual (read his recent paper on tail risk treatments across distribution domains here). But do not misunderstand me - I am no snob. As these formless (though potent) ideas have taken shape and combined and aged within me, I have found the most common effect to be that I speak of them less. (to assume that such a tendency belongs also to others is to be shown convincing evidence that we are not evolved for this society we have formed)
Such things are not my primary joys today, though. I have come back to literature after being gone so long, and it has been something like a renaissance. I have been both reading and writing with a joy beyond what I have experienced in a long time - ten years or more. What strange teleological thinking I have always had, to assume such things could simply end. I believe I have banished that from my mind, although I may find myself broadening such a thought beyond my wildest dreams before I am done here. BioTime (NYSE:BTX) seems to be cracking the code to deliver stem cell-derived regenerative therapies for everything from retinal degradation to heart disease in the next few years. Speaking of telelogical thinking, what will happen to the earth's population when regenerative therapy is not only complete but ubiquitous? The effect on availability of human capital practically begs for a new era of slavery (we may consider our laws to be based on collective morality, but over time the morality implied by our laws bends towards profit).
And quite separately, others will find me endlessly delusional to suggest it - and although I still mean it only as playful conjecture - one day we may find that we are not from the past, but from the future. Extrapolate the history of video games and regenerative technology into the future and what do you have? Would you want to live in that world or this one? It even invites fractal arguments of iteration - probably the outer world does not quite look the same as ours, with both symmetries and derivations pervasive in its architecture and ours. What a book that would be to write.
But I digress. I was talking about books, and I was sitting here thinking about one or two of them, even as I was writing something completely unrelated. I want a long holiday alone with my books without urgency, alone with thoughts and easy desires. I want to escape the anxieties that my lifestyle has injected so unnaturally into my everyday composure and disposition. I want my mind to clear. So, I will work on that first - eating healthier, developing an approach to health that will work because it will feel natural. Now, if only I could wake up early to do yoga or take a long lunch at work to meditate.
And finally, I can see my two worlds living together, after all these years. I believe my future is to accept objectivism and aesthetics into the same place in my mind and go forward. But if I must choose, objectivism will not stand a chance. Give me the loves in my life and set me off.
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