Activity

[...] Achievement can be more dangerous than failure. At least failure leaves you with the fantasy of some uppercase Substance. But imagine what happens when "you attain the goal and realize the shocking realization that attaining the goal does not complete or redeem you, does not make everything f…

[...] Desire naturally assumes that its own intensity is strong evidence for the existence of a correspondingly intense satisfaction. Desire assumes some correlative Substance. It invests its idol with the promise of release. But there is no such substance. [...] Desires wants to desire. It blindly…

[...] when life starts to feel insubstantial, you may be tempted to abuse substances. Wallace hints at this connection between feeling insubstantial and the abuse of substances by consistently writing "Substance abuse" with a capital "S". He does so because part of what's at stake in substance abus…

[...] the more time you spend stuck in your head, ignoring the world, hungry for transcendence and distraction, the more superficial your life becomes. [...]

It's tempting to read this moment of disappointment, this moment when worship fails and transcendence collapses back into distraction, as cause for either condemnation or vindication. As grounds for condemnation, the moment of disappointment can be taken as more good evidence that the religious pro…