We talked about hedonism, and Armen, maybe without really meaning to, sounded like that might be a problem. The good life. The pretty things. The pretty people. The pretty clothes. I knew what he meant. But this is the problem, right, of 2000 years of falsehood. Because: Hedonism is a humanism, I shouted without shouting. He knew what I meant, and I knew why he thought this might be a problem. This is the West, after all. This is the culture of sufferance, of the cross, of the rational duality. No fun, no ambivalence, no play. Just dead serious thinking. Schools of thought that perpetuate what they are thinking for the only reason to justify their existance. University as the breeding ground for all things mediocre. So why join a place like that? Why not do something different? Why not create the new? Is this how things have to be? What if they were different? Why is it so difficult to see to the other side? Why is it so difficult to find the switch? That makes you see things upside down. And feel at home, all of a sudden. Ah, right, this is how the world is. This is how the world should be. Unwound. Naked. True. – Yeah, right, I know. I got lost. In the rift.