"triumph over time and live as long as you please: death eternal will still be waiting for you."


un petit morceau of optimism to start out the semester. montaigne proceeds to enlighten us by explaining that it is only at death, when we cease to exist, that we are deemed happy. you should be indifferent to both your death and everybody else's, since a non-existent being cannot lament, rejoice, suffer, philosophize, etc.


in other words, I may as well drop all my courses, hold up a chocolate factory, and hitchhike across canada until I find a suitable location to pitch my hammock and live off the spoils - rather than death-marching my protesting neurons through another ten years of school just to delay a few people their moment of true bliss and escape into nonexistence.


I think philosophy courses are a bad idea.