- Have you found Hofstadter's Law to be true?
- What is worry, at its core? 116 Are you, or were you ever, a worrier? How did you, or will you, get over it?
- What do we mean when we say we have time? How does that bear on the way we think about the future? 117-8
- Do you struggle for certainty? Do you acknowledge the futility of that? If you stop, will you be liberated from anxiety? 119, 123
- Do you find de Beauvoir's reflections on chance "soothing"? 120-21
- How important is it to you to make specific plans for your days, weeks, year, lifetime? Does it disturb you when your plans are foiled? Do you think it should?
- To what extent do you "live mentally in the future" (126), either your own or that of your (actual or prospective) children, or of humanity in general? Can it ever be a good thing to do that? Do you agree with WJ that "The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?"
- Is it "insane" to live from project to project? Is Alan Watts right about the "hoax" of education? 127-8
- Does the deliberate attempt to optimize a child's development in some way devalue childhood? 129-32 Have you spent time with a zero-year old? Do you look forward to doing so? To what end?
- Could we de-instrumentalize our relation to capitalism and turn life into less of a "slog" simply by rethinking our relation to time? Was Keynes right about "purposive man"? 133-6
- Do you have a hard time "being here now" and pleasantly, un-self-consciously absorbing yourself in mundane activities ? 137-9
- Does society or higher education overemphasize "justifying life in terms of the economy"? 142 Should you feel guilty for "enjoying leisure (whether in Aristotle's sense -144- or some other) for its own sake" rather than for its contribution to your potential productivity?
- Do you or anyone you know suffer "idleness aversion"? Are you/they "attempting to avoid confronting difficult emotions"? Such as...? 148-9 Is John Gray right about the present age? 154
- Does the Protestant Work Ethic make any sense at all?
- Is modern fitness a form of self-flagellation? 150
- Is Thomas Wolfe right? 151
- Should we re-institute a real (if secular) Sabbath? 152
- What are your favorite atelic activities? 156 Did Schopenhauer overlook the possible gratifications of this dimension of life? 158
- Does Rod Stewart have the right approach to hobbies, and Richard Branson a wrong one? 159
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