But you don’t always need to be cared for. You don’t have to justify your existence by caring for others. Instead of making mutual care an absolute principle, you could understand that need, absence, and ignorance allow wonder and new life.

Moralistic judgments are always based in anxiety. They sound high and righteous, but they come from a small, worried, and barely concealed desperation.

It’s tempting to become the hero and savior, but getting life in apparent order is not the same as giving the soul what it needs. It may need more chaos, deeper impasse, and increased darkness.

Contrary to most modern psychological approaches, which imply that the human soul is a major problem and host to a vast range of illnesses, an aesthetic psychology senses the soul as beautiful, even in distress.

But if we are guilty of gross moral errors ourselves, then locking in our present values would also be a disaster.

Instead, we should try to ensure that we have made as much moral progress as possible before any point of lock-in. Political philosophers often argue over what an ideal state would look like. I think we should accept that we don’t know what the ideal state would be; the primary question is how we can build a society such that, over time, our moral views improve, people act more often in accordance with them, and the world evolves to become a better, more just place.