The following is an excerpt from a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece by David Brooks:
Mostly, I’m happy on an existential level. I like to be reminded that the universe is basically crooked. This is what the zero-tolerance brigades and all the better living gurus never quite get. They’re busy trying to mold everybody into lifelong valedictorians, who spend their adulthood as carb counters and responsible flossers – the sort of organized folk who actually read legal documents before they sign them.
In reality, life is perverse and human beings don’t get what they deserve. The people with the worst grades start the most successful businesses. The shallowest people end up blissfully happy and they are so vapid they don’t even realize how vapid they are because vapidity is the only trait that comes with its own impermeable obliviousness system. The people regarded as lightweights, like F.D.R., J.F.K. and Ronald Reagan, make the best presidents, while you – so much more thoughtful and better read – would be a complete disaster.
Life isn’t fair, logic is of limited value and, as Woody Allen observed years ago, everything your parents once thought was good for you turns out to be bad for you: sun, milk, red meat and college.
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.