suffering disconnect from meaning

• we are the animal that suffers disconnect from meaning ... our system produces a complex series of interactions — feeling responses, dreams ranging from the turbulent and troubling to the transcendent, symptoms, patterns, sudden jolts, insights, recognitions, regressions — and then ineluctably surges forward again and forges new connections ... somewhere in all that complexity is the fantasy of, the possibility of, choice
• as Jean Paul Sartre argued, we must act as if we are free, take on the “terrible” burden of choice, and be accountable
• adapting by curbing our desires