It was both odd and unjust, a real example of pitiful arbitrariness of existance, that you were born into a particular time & held prisoner there whether you wanted it or not. It gave you an indecent advantage over the past and made you a clown vis-a-vis the future.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the arbitrary nature of time and existence, highlighting how our place in time affects our perspective.
The quote by Daniel Kehlmann expresses the idea that being born into a specific era is both fortunate and limiting. It emphasizes the randomness and unfairness of existence, suggesting that our time and environment shape our advantages and limitations in relation to both the past and the future. We are prisoners of our own time, and this confinement can make us feel either privileged or foolish when considering what has come before and what is yet to come.
In practice
During a lecture on philosophy, this quote can illustrate the complexities of existence and temporal perception.
Make your will one! Don't listen with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don't listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty- and waits on all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.
Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.
Beware of the words "internal security," for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
This freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart. Like the right of assembly and the right of association, it often makes all other rights meaningful-knowing, studying, arguing, exploring, conversing, observing and even thinking. Once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer, just as when curfew or home detention is placed on a person.
Capitalism’s real “grave-diggers” may end up being its own delusional Cardinals, who have turned ideology into faith. Despite their strategic brilliance, they seem to have trouble grasping a simple fact: Capitalism is destroying the planet. The two old tricks that dug it out of past crises-War and Shopping-simply will not work.
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