“Why do we accept bad listening? Because, I think, listening well is hard, and we all know it. Like all forms of self-improvement, breaking this carapace requires intention, and ideally guidance.”
“In terms that Orwell would understand, Segnit finds the idea of giving up his family – as all true retreatants must – appalling. A writer’s centre in Vermont that allows partners and children is praised for offering a way ‘to go on retreat without abandoning your family’. This gives the narrative a relatable human touch; but with most modes of retreat being dedicatedly solitary, it also means that the account becomes rather alienated from itself.”
“If you are one of those souls who are compelled to make a feast of questioning – whose enquiries are by nature incessant, maximalist, thorough – then you must eventually arrive at pessimism. Like athletes or armies, philosophies prove their strength by doing battle with their sternest possible foes.”
"I have come to understand David Foster Wallace's Oblivion for what it really is: A work of horror fiction, whose unique brand of horror is rooted in Wallace’s reading about the brain."
"Does the current state of neuroscientific research create a pessimistic picture of human existence; and if so, how should we react? Can an individual consciousness know itself, and to what degree? And can an individual consciousness contact and know other consciousnesses, and to what degree?"
"In its debates, and its attempted or resisted rapprochements, neuropsychoanalysis dramatises a tension between two basic ways of thinking about what it means to be a human being: as a subject, and as an object. Or, to use an unfashionable dualism: as a mind, and as a brain."