"The problem is, eternity is barred to humans, and so humans, all too painfully aware of that and entertaining little hope of appealing against that verdict of fate, seek to stifle and deafen their tragic wisdom in a hubbub of frail and fleeting pleasures. This admittedly being a false calculationâfor the same reason which prompted it (that tragic wisdom can never be chased or conjured away for good)âthey condemn themselves, whatever their material wealth, to perpetual spiritual poverty: to continuous unhappiness (âA man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself to beâ). Instead of seeking the way to happiness within the limits of their predicament, they take a long detour, hoping that somewhere along the route their odious and repulsive destiny may be escaped or fooledâonly to land back in the despair that prompted them to start on their voyage of (dearly wished for, yet unattainable) discovery. The only discovery humans can possibly make on that voyage is that the route they have taken was but a detour that sooner or later will bring them back to the starting line."
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[paraphrasing the view of Seneca], p. 34.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zygmunt_Bauman
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Zygmunt Bauman
Zygmunt Bauman (19 November 1925 â 9 January 2017) was a Polish sociologist and philosopher born in Poznan. Bauman was a social theorist, writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity. He was forced to renounce his Polish citizenship by Poland's government in 1968, and to leave the country, and lived in the United Kingdom from the early 1970s.
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