The Endless Pursuit of Endless Boundaries

   This new book is very straightforward, especially when compared with Dostoyevsky, and the author is brilliant in the way he writes, making sure it flows well and keeps a consistently vivid mental image through his descriptions. When looking at the actual characters, it seems that they are very inconsiderate and extremely pretentious. The way that they are described when talking about different philosophical viewpoints makes them sound like the default pretentious asshole in that they constantly sound like ‘you are wrong and I am right, and there is no other way it could be.’ Even though they may act pretentious, some of the philosophical ideas they are explaining are very interesting. The comment that when you have finally escaped the pen that is high school, you are only released into another pen, whose boundaries are incomprehensible at that moment is probably the most interesting to me. I find it interesting because it makes sense, when you are a little kid, there are massive amounts of boundaries and all you want to do is grow up to get past them, and at the instant you get past one boundary, you feel as though you are completely free. Until you spend some time in that level of freedom, then you realize that there are still boundaries, and the cycle repeats itself indefinitely. The author made a great example which is applicable to almost any high school senior, you are painfully aware of the boundaries that different sources put on you and all you want to do is graduate and get past those barriers until you are finally free. Then you realize that even though you are in college there are certain boundaries for you to follow, and by the time you have reached your senior year, all you want to do is escape. I find that this idea follows very closely with the idea that Dostoyevsky implies with the desire for humans to rush headlong to the next wall and explanation, yet once we are there, we don’t know what to do other than to break it down and continue to the next set of walls or explanations.