What Our Diversions Reveal about Us (1670) | Hacker News Reader

What Our Diversions Reveal about Us (1670)

stmaryvalleybloom.org

83 pointserwan11 comments

    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.

that's an excellent quote, and reminds me of what I wrote at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17936282

(just ignore the first sentence/movie reference)

Edit: woops!

You seem to have linked your entire account instead of a particular comment.

thanks for pointing it out

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.

Oh, it's a selection from Pascal's Pensées, for some reason not labelled such.

It's on the second line. The title is the name of the fragment.

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.

Ah I see what you mean

He would've loved Buddhism

Very relevant to something I am experiencing now. Thanks for sharing

Reply on news.ycombinator.com