On the whole, I think of myself as one of those people who take a convenience-sake view of prevailing world conditions, events, existence in general. Not that I'm such a blasé, convenience-sake sort of guy—although I do have tendencies in that direction—but because more often than not I've observed that convenient approximations bring you closest to comprehending the true nature of things.For instance, supposing that the planet earth were not a sphere but a giant coffee table, how much sifference in everyday life would it make? Granted, this is a pretty far-fetched example; you can't rearrange the facts of life so freely. Still, picturing the planet earth, for convenience sake, as a gigantic coffee table does in fact help clear away the clutter—those practically pointless contingencies such as gravity and the international dateline and the equator, those nagging irregularities that arise from the spherical view. I mean, for a guy leading a perfectly normal existence, how many times in the course of a lifetime would the equator be a significant factor?
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1991)
I find your choices of what to link to far funnier than the quote itself :)
Posted by: Suresh | July 22, 2004 at 09:50 AM