My response to a Kierkegard blurb on time and unhappiness.

Jeffrey

Here is the link to the Kierkegard blurb http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/05/05/kierkegaard-on-presence-unhappiness/

Here is my take:

The past and future are a notion or mental label of our conceptual musings. Since past and future are both notions and since the present is relative to a past and a future then time is different from how we assume. I think of it like a circle of book cases all surrounding you. Each book has information. We have our 5 senses and mind and there is a structured world with connections such as information or relationships. There is no amorphous blob of 'nowness'. Yet there is no beginning and end to the books just as 'past' and 'future' are merely notions. From there we are presented with the problem that we want to be satisfied and we indeed often feel unsatisfied and I think that indicates that we are still thinking of phenomena as something to get in the future even though in our thought experiment we have pretended to understand time.

ThePensum

The quote singled out

"Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work."

piqued my interest. In the Christmas edition of the Economist there is a good write up on the busyness of people. It is of course written from a political economy perspective, not so much from a 'how to live a good life' perspective. Also I'm reading a biography on Vanderbilt, the first tycoon, sort of summarising the rise of the American work ethic, businessman mentality.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately since my wife and I are planning a family very soon. This means I am more 'absent' than normal; thinking about the future and the work that needs to be done!