SINK OR SWIM

there is a little bit of sink or swim in every aspect of the human world. at the risk of veering toward the fran liebowitz model, as harsh as it may seem, in the end it’s hard to be honest about the prospects of real people without admitting that some of them, through no fault of their own, are going to fail. they are going to fail in the usual (and unusual) ways that people do, in mundane (and spectacular) ways, and no amount of well-intentioned intervention is going to save them.

whether this profound result is unfair is beside the point. it is actual. darwin, in his infinite if accidental wisdom, explained more and broader aspects of the whole cosmic enterprise than he knew. it turns out that wherever you look, from higgs bosons to slugs to black holes, the lesson is endlessly there.