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Life Should Be Challenged By Wallace And Mccandless

Decent Essays

Both Wallace and McCandless propose that life should be challenged in order to live the most fulfilling life, however the two differ in the ways they think life should be challenged. Wallace challenges the “default settings” in his life by attempting to change the way he thinks and make his thoughts more conscious of the society around him as opposed to self-centered thoughts. He describes it on page 5 saying, “Thinking this way is my natural default-setting. It 's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I 'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world 's priorities”. Wallace believes in saying this that humans are inherently selfish creatures. This natural selfishness stems from basic animalistic fight or flight reflexes; humans maintain selfishness because they are always avidly rooting for their own survival. Wallace is of the belief that doing this is outdated, and we are far beyond the point of basic animal instincts. Because of this we should be able to actively change our thoughts to represent a state of mind that more closely reflects the society that we live in now. In order to break free of the animalistic impulses we must constantly make the conscious decisions to see life beyond ourselves, which would prove impossible for an animal but possible for the human who possesses generative

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