A new friend told me that she just wants to have the highest quality of life possible, and she uses her biological remnants as her guide. Which reminded me of something my philosophy professor once said: you should be guided by appearances for practical purposes; all you’re refraining from is making truth claims about those appearances.

The common principle being a dichotomy between what actually is and that according to which we do in fact live (which may or may not be). It seems what is and what we live by are not necessarily the same, but there is also no obvious reason why that should be cause for distress.

It is hard to live without an idea of the “right” way to live, because otherwise how are we to make decisions? But need there actually be a truly right way to live? Or is just a conception of the right way enough? Especially if our realities are created by our own minds. Doesn’t our conception of the right way become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But there’s also a back-up plan: art. In the absence of meaning and morality we have art; for me in some sense, everything is art—it’s just what is.