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When I was nineteen or so I loved dance parties. Then I had this nightmarish thought that all of life might just end up amounting to just that, a procession of flashing lights. They never did much for me ever again. So goes life of the senses. What was Kingson’s yearbook quote? The effort to understand the universe is the one thing that raises life above the level farce and gives it the grace of tragedy. Yes, it’s important to understand. It even feels like the most important. There are other things. Exploring. Creating. There isn’t much else.

This book I finally got around to usurping from the sibling unit and reading might be one of the few that will really change my life. It’s about Platonism versus empiricism. I’ve always thought that empiricism is just a lot of boredom, left to people with more patience, a better work ethic, and that Platonism is about possibilities and therefore far more interesting. Taleb prefers empiricism, for fantastic reasons. We’re both right.

The thing of interest here is what is easily mistakable for nothing at all (for the peasants, for the ants on the anthill, as is the nature of insects to look down and not out). The black space off the edge of the map. The vast intractable unknown. How to get acquainted with it? Maybe even bootstrap oneself into it? Back in the day the popular consciousness put seamonsters and all sorts of other things in that black space. Bolder types go out and survey the place, generate maps. Empirical, like. Close to reality. Some time later others come back and reshape the place, (Platonically) carve out the island of Manhattan for example. And look how that thing has surpassed its progenitors.

Relatedly, of course what I’m in my heart of hearts most interested in isn’t love or kindness, but a leaving a self-perpetuating something that issues forth from myself, a copy that copies itself, viral-like. Those feelings are lubrication for that disease, what it ferments in. The luckiest person in the world is the one who loves his work and loves his family too. But love doesn’t seem like an end upon itself as much leaving a mark does—and it’s always important to hedge one’s bets—here, between work and progeny, hope that either one or the other doesn’t fail. I don’t have any intention of telling my kids that, though.