Anybody else finding Chuck Palahniuk worthwhile? I like Lullaby with all the invasive species information, though I’d be more interested in reading a more interesting Starhawk kind of portrayal of Wiccan Women.
I like this quote from an alternet interview with Palahniuk.
"We’re just running out the clock now, and until we actually make that jump to a cause, we’re just paying the bills and jacking off and eating three square meals a day. Unless we chart our lives to something, we’re just animals in the zoo."
I bet the messsage is something similar to what you can find in Bertrand Russel’s Conquest of Happiness.
" Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to centre my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection. External interests, it is true, bring each its own possibility of pain: the world may be plunged in war, knowledge in some direction may be hard to achieve, friends may die. But pains of these kinds do not destroy the essential quality of life, as do those that spring from disgust with self. And every external interest inspires some activity which, so long as the interest remains alive, is a complete preventive of ennui. Interest in oneself, on the contrary, leads to no activity of a progressive kind. It may lead to the keeping of a diary, to getting psycho-analysed, or perhaps to becoming a monk. But the monk will not be happy until the routine of the monastery has made him forget his own soul. The happiness which he attributes to religion he could have obtained from becoming a crossing-sweeper, provided he were compelled to remain one. External discipline is the only road to happiness for those unfortunates whose self-absorption is too profound to be cured in any other way."
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