When I say "transhumanism," I'm not talking about inhabiting Mars or becoming a multi-planetary species. I'm talking about the philosophical position that human limitation is a fundamental error.

A book about presence, written by someone who seems barely present with or tolerant of the reader's actual experience of reading it: that's the central irony I kept returning to, and I was never quite able to shake it.

There is a very specific thing the vast majority of the world wants, and the sophisticated word for it is reconciliation.

I don't so much mind the overstimulation leaking onto other areas of my life, but lashing out at the person I love most is the saddening, sobering consequence of a pattern continuing for far too long. Not only are the tasks not handled, but I come home irritable and no fun to be around. It's a lose-lose.

It's really no woman's fault that she feels the need to diet, obsessively work out, or take a drug to lose weight. It is what is not-so-subtly asked of all of us. Especially now, in the most conservative era we've lived through in quite a while. But this is where everyone's got it backwards.

If we perceive that the "big players" - the private-jet-celebrities and the fossil fuel CEOs - aren't doing the heavy lifting, our brain registers our own small efforts as futile. We start abiding by the thought process of "no ethical consumption under capitalism" and call it a day. We aren't necessarily becoming "bad" people, we're just tired of being the only ones trying.

We can’t care about everything at 100% intensity. We just can’t. The physics of the soul won't allow it. And yet, I find myself terrified of the alternative.

Our culture, and often our own psyche, demands constant peak performance. But a peak implies that there is a work-up to the top and a descent back down. Without that structure, its simply a plateau. In seasonal living, we flip this narrative.