Conversation

You know how Rick on Rick and Morty is a genius who can think arbitrarily deep, but operates by “don’t think about it” and strikes a precarious irony-sincerity balance that races 1 step ahead of nihilism? I think David Foster Wallace is what you get if you *do* think about it
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DFW is the anti-Rick. I’ve read his major essays and started but abandoned Infinite Jest and I can see how his inability to “not think about it” perhaps drove him to suicide (I don’t know the details/backstory there do can’t be sure)
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Both DFW and Rick strike me as characters (though latter is fictional) whose fundamental tragedy is that their analytical power and tactical inventiveness far exceeds their fundamental imagination in conceiving a life worth living
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Rick’s idea of a life purpose is McNuggets schezwan sauce. DFW, from what I’ve read was just super excruciatingly observant of “real life”and prodigally analytically-verbally inventive at capturing it, but somehow unable to imagine life as it could be as opposed to the way it is
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Replying to
I think I share some of these predispositions at a non-genius level, but am naturally good at “not thinking about it” and I think this is what I’m cashing out as my philosophy of mediocrity. “It” being the irony-sincerity paradox of being/becoming
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It’s a genuine info hazard that leads to suicidal ideation if you can’t “not think about it” The Rick-DFW basilisk. I suspect most of us have strong natural immunity to the temptation to “think about it”
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