The trend of all this is towards the end of individual privacy, to an extent where it may even be impossible to conceal one’s thoughts. At the end of… - Alan Watts

If, then, a pleasurable state is to be conscious, it cannot be constant, for there will be no contrasting ground against which to feel it. Pleasure is thus in fact the configuration pleasure/non-pleasure (e.g., pleasure/pain, pleasure/anxiety, pleasure/boredom, pleasure/hunger, etc.) in which the first term is the figure and the second the ground.

A successful college president once complained to me, I'm so busy that I'm going to have to get a helicopter! Well, I answered, you'll be ahead so long as you're the only president who has one. But don't get it. Everyone will expect more out of you.

man became overrational and forgot the gods and demons, relegating them to the realm of outworn superstitions. He looked for them in the skies and found only infinite spaces, dead rocks, and orbs of burning gas. He looked for them in thunder and wind and found only unintelligent forces of the atmosphere. He looked for them in woods and caverns and found only scuttling animals, creaking branches, shadows, and drafts. He thought that the gods were dead but in fact they became much more alive and dangerous because they were able to work unrecognized.