Member-only story
To Value and To Enjoy
A brief reflection on the beach from the novel ‘Most Famous Short Film of All Time’
I followed the Mathnet segments on Square One when I was a kid. Their motto was: “To cogitate and to solve.”
My philosophical novel, Most Famous Short Film of All Time, has a lot of cogitating and solving, but it also has a brief interlude presenting a motto that’s more like to value and to enjoy. The beach is lovely. We may value and enjoy it as we build a better world and appreciate where we personally are.
We have got to make this world a better place, but we have also got to enjoy the beach, or what’s the point of trying so hard? Besides, if we don’t know how to value a beach, how will we judge whether we’ve improved the world? Camus pointed this out.
While we heal the world, we try to heal ourselves. The same argument applies: What’s the point of healing…
