The most defiantly, radically individual thing an individual can do today is to reject individualism and to live alone with the absurd consequences.

It is much harder to be individual than you might think, and it is also a lot shittier. And it’s really not intrinsically valuable. Sometimes radical individualism can be useful when a new vision of life is needed, but that’s an exceptional case.

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(Said cheerfully): Philosophers are spiritual mutants. 99% of philosophers are pure waste, and the ones who aren’t waste are useful due to accidents of history. But philosophers are like salmon or sperm, doing their thing for no reason at all, for the sake of something they cannot see until it has been accomplished. When I use the word transcendence as a verb, what I am referring to is this kind of nonrational obedience to one’s own urgency that reveals its purpose only in hindsight.

The tragic vision: embracing the fact and its consequences that countless are wasted for the sake of the rare success, and experiencing pride in being wasted as an individual for the sake of one’s kind, which is the true seat of one’s own identity. It is affirming: “Lord, let me die… but not die… out.”

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