The modern world has delivered great progress, but a fierce price. That, in a nutshell, is the story of disen­chantment. It’s neither truthful nor helpful. 

The notion that things “happen for a reason” is a powerful idea. It is also a dangerous one. The concept of “agency” is so central to our under­standing of ourselves and our world that we apply it even where there is no agency to be found.

I can tell a sauropod from a theropod and I know the difference between dark matter and dark energy, but I’m no paleon­tol­ogist or physicist. Not by a long stretch. But I do so love listening to such specialists talk about what they do. Because I’m not one of them.

A human life is punctuated by events of special signif­i­cance, which are often surrounded by rituals. The rules of the market­place are redefined in the reality distortion zone that surrounds these events.

It’s a useful concept that deserves to be in everyone’s mental toolbox. If both sides of a debate adhere to it, that levels the playing field for a true exchange of ideas, instead of a battle of opinions.

You can learn things from reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being that you would never glean from any scien­tific tractate. And you can see things through the Hubble telescope that no amount of poetry could ever disclose.