Stephen Donahue
234f3697f6
All checks were successful
Deploy to S3 / deploy (push) Successful in 1m45s
1.9 KiB
1.9 KiB
title, layout, permalink
| title | layout | permalink |
|---|---|---|
| Absurdity | base.njk | /notes/absurdity/ |
Rough Notes
Quotes
Questions
- What makes a good story?
- the situation?
- the narration?
- what are the rules?!
- Rules are about as compelling as a yield sign
- It doesn't even have the gravity of a full-on stop
- It's just a non-committal suggestion that you might have a better time if you don't do the thing right away
- Rules pave over context. They omit the story by design.
- Betty got hit by a semi on this corner. Her parents sued, so they installed some flashing lights, and added safety paint.
- So seeking out rules feels like paving over the ground: it might make the drive easier, but it leaves less room for the plants to grow
- What does it mean to be tragically normal?
- Can you still be considered normal? The tragic part seems to put you into into some kind of exceptional bucket.
- It's like being painfully average. I feel like it's taken a sharp edge from dead-center.
- But if there are so many categories of 'not-'average, then being dead center starts to feel more exclusive.
- How many people do you know who grew up with 2.5 kids?
- What did they do with the half?
- Or, where did it come from?
- How many people do you know who grew up with 2.5 kids?
- So if being average is actually quite rare, then its more common to not be?
- There's something frustrating about realizing that so much thought is repetition, imitation, and then realizing that includes this thought too.
- What's more unoriginal? Repeating someone else's ideas in some form of imitation, or repeating how unoriginal your ideas are?
{% include "bell-curve.svg" %}
- I went to a lot of trouble for that bell-curve, I hope you appreciate it.
Definitions
- Crofter (n), Scottish tenant farmer
- Coracle (n), small wooden boat.
- David Hume, Scottish Philosopher