“The Sirens of Titan” by Kurt Vonnegut (personal notes)
Would not recommend reading in Dutch.
- Everything has always been and will always be the same; telling the future is no big feat and is actually pretty simple, if you look at the current state of things.
- Once you know how things will turn out (e.g. that you are going to marry that one person), you try way less hard as you trust (know) the way it will all end up.
- A revelation can bring about drastic changes and decisions in very little time; once you know or have been shown the way and now just scurry to follow it as quickly as you can. “Within two months’ time, when Rumfoord appeared again, quite a bit had changed, Constant had sold all of his galactical possessions…”
- The bright, sparkling eyes of human beings, as opposed to the dead eyes of the hypnotized, brainwashed, robotic subjects, are something precious and a reason to celebrate: liveliness, life. “A warm-blooded being.”
- “I never heard of friendship before coming to Earth. It was exciting.”
- By naming people and referring to them by their name, you can tie their life circumstances and events to them; distinguish them, recognize them. It’s all not a big jumbled mess anymore.
- Having a “buddy” lets you transfer your gained personal wisdom to them, letting them transfer it back to you when you relapse or reset; reminding you of your latest, highest self-expression, and letting you resume from it. The buddy system makes the two of you resilient: unless the two of you get simultaneously wiped out, one of you can always rehabilitate the other.
- Write down what you do not want to forget, even after your death (or “reset”), in your next incarnation. Record and pass on to posterity what you have experienced and learned, the wisdom you have gained.
- You can be at peace where you are; make it comfortable for yourself; “life is nice if you just don’t think about it anymore.”
- People are only ready for so much bliss or enlightenment (at any one stage in their life). Overpowering them or showing them too much might have adverse consequences, the opposite effect to what was initially desired. Dying of ecstasy versus still being able to digest it. Gradual glimpses.
- Numerous truths can co-exist. Everybody’s reality is true, and there is no one objective truth. People know compromising things about each other, about which it might be better not to talk. Letting sleeping dogs lie.
- De facto egalitarianism pushed to the extreme through wilful self-handicapping is absurd.
- Conflict builds community.
- The meaning of life is not somewhere out there, but somewhere in there.
- “Tell me one good thing you did in your life.”