The Insatiable Need for Meaning, According to Nietzsche

The Insatiable Need for Meaning According to Nietzsche J.W. BERTOLOTTI Why are humans driven mad by meaning? “What a strange urge, the human need for purpose,” writes Nate Anderson (author of In Emergency, Break Glass). As Nietzsche wrote in Human, All Too Human, “In a journey, we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and […]

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE J.W. BERTOLOTTI Navigating our way through life is a perennial challenge. But does it have to be? One can discover what the most remarkable thinkers had to say on virtually any topic within minutes. Although read any book on living a good life, and you’ll find what seem to […]

The Goal of Wisdom: A Buddhist Teaching

THE GOAL OF WISDOM A BUDDHIST TEACHING J.W. BERTOLOTTI Onone occasion, a wise disciple of the Buddha known as the Venerable Sāriputta was approached by a wanderer. The wanderer asked — what is Nibbāna (or wisdom)? As the story goes, Sāriputta answered, “The destruction of lust, the destruction of hatred, the destruction of delusion: this, friend, is […]

Becoming Who You Truly Are, According to Jung

BECOMING WHO YOU TRULY ARE According to JUNG J.W. BERTOLOTTI The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are, wrote the psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” This short reflection explores […]

Discerning Life’s Questions, According to Jung

DISCERNING LIFE’S QUESTIONS According to JUNG J.W. BERTOLOTTI How comfortable are you with questions that have no answer? The psychologist Carl Jung suggested, “The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble.” There are questions in life that can never be solved — only outgrown. This ‘outgrowing’, observed Jung, […]

There is More Within You, According to Camus

THERE’S MORE WITHIN YOU According to CAMUS J.W. BERTOLOTTI What if there is more going on within us than we realize? The philosopher Kierkegaard once asked, “What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?” In The Stranger, philosopher Albert Camus wrote, “In the midst of hate, I found there […]