and again and again

COP OUT POST!!!!!!!!!1one
ok, i have been trying really hard not to say more things about this, the most awesome of books, until i actually finish it and can find something ultimately profound and funsauce to blabber about. HOWEVER. ive been superbly slow and hyper-underline-y and i'm almost done and i really really really just need to blurb this blurb cuz it would be too long to put in a post about OTHER stuff TOO so here goes.


 The Unbearable Lightness of Being is pretty much my soulmate. it explores Nietzsche's eternal return in familiar AND new/awesome ways. one of which i will gladly show you now. also, i must say, i love when the author inexplicably pops out of the text and goes 'ISNT THAT WEIRD!?' without explanation or context, just popping your bubble of suspended disbelief and making you want to go 'YAH TOTALLY LETS HUG ABOUT IT!' anyway, here you go:

Several days later, he was struck by another thought, which I record here as an addendum to the preceding chapter: Somewhere out in space there was a planet where all people would be born again. They would be fully aware of the life they had spent on earth and of all the experience they had amassed here.

And perhaps there was still another planet, where we would all be born a third time with the experience of our first two lives.

And perhaps there were yet more and more planets, where mankind would be born one degree (of life) more mature.

That was Tomas's version of eternal return.

Of course we here on earth (planet number one, the planet of inexperience) can only fabricate vague fantasies of what till happen to man on those other planets. Will he be wiser? Is maturity within man's power? Can he attain it through repetition?

Only from the perspective of such a utopia is it possible to use the concepts of pessimism and optimism with full justification: an optimist is someone who thinks that on planet number five the history of mankind will be less bloody. A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise.