The November Criminals

If you think about it long enough, you see that the paradox is actually pointing you to the idea that we have no freedom whatsoever. If we're forced to use free will, what meaning does freedom have?

That's how life is: it provides these accidental answers. Or it seems to. You have to judge by results.

Success is supposed to lead you on to more success. Our whole society is constructed around this principle.

His story also demonstrates an obscure truth. Having a plan, any plan, means you know on some level you're going to fail, you're in the wrong. This contradicts everything I've been taught, all the larger principles of modern life, which are all about planning and calculation. But if you're going to success, how could you need to think it out beforehand? If you had the necessary confidence--in every case perfect, unbreakable confidence--the idea of a plan would make you laugh.

Reliable mediocrity, I’ve decided, is the most important thing for the continuation of human existence.