David Heinemeier Hansson

So I ask @jasonfried what tool he used to pixelate personal data in his screenshots. Tells me to get Cleanshot. It's really good. Go there, and of course he's the fucking hero testimonial 😂. OKAY I'LL BUY IT!

Eric Fromm followed the same path of wisdom to additional insights. In The Pathology of Normalcy, he spells out exactly what makes modern man condemned: Getting everything he wanted while having nobody asking him for anything. The satiation of every desire paired with a relief of every responsibility is a psychological death sentence to many.

Victor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning after surviving a concentration camp during World War II. He observed the outer extreme of what happens to people who no longer have a WHY to live for. They’d wither and die in the camp. Even the most dire rations and punishing labor could be survived by many, as long as they had a purpose still beckoning, but once that light went out, so did they.

Modern life is rarely that dramatic for most people likely to read this, but Frankl’s fundamental truth is still relevant. A truth he spent the rest of his life trying to teach in the form of logotherapy as a psychotherapist.

Dostoevsky knew this too. In Notes From Underground, which I’ve referenced before, he lays out perhaps the most succinct literary case against paradise. That man is less a problem-solving creature than he is a problem-creating one. That he needs the tension inherent in some degree of struggle.

A few years ago, I remember reading about forest bathing. The idea that spending time walking in nature lowered blood pressure and stress significantly more than walking the same distance in a city. I completely believe it.