To dig strenuously with its enormous shovel-paws is the business of its whole life; permanent night surrounds it … what does it attain by this course of life that is full of trouble and devoid of pleasure? Nourishment and procreation, that is, only the means for continuing and beginning again in the new individual the same melancholy course.
from _ The World as Will and Representation_. the shovel-pawed mole as an emblem for human enterprise
pretty metal