Nehaveigur

It’s the things we don’t have to do that make live worth living: Art, humor, play. Fleeting grace. Beauty.

When that fight to save humanity means sacrificing those things, the fight becomes meaningless. It’s the same idea than not foregoing our freedoms while fighting to preserve them. Just as we shouldn’t restrict our civil liberties to fight terrorism, we shouldn’t forgo grace and beauty to save humanity.

Not many would disagree that too much work makes Jack a dull boy. The disagreements comes with the inevitable tradeoffs. How much work and how much play? We have to do some fighting, some toiling, make some sacrifice. But how much? That’s where the arguments start. It’s one point, but of course not the only one, on which political philosophies like conservatism, socialism, liberalism or libertarianism diverge. It’s also a question of culture, and one that is answered differently in America, in Europe and in East Asia.