I have friends who think that our society is destroying itself through sheer hedonism. I am far more pessimistic than that. The hedonist seeks pleasure, and I see little evidence that we are even on nodding acquaintance with the stuff. We seek numbness, avoidance of pain, oblivion. Examples could be enumerated indefinitely. I think of the student I read about in a recent reported piece for New York magazine who uses ChatGPT to do most of her homework so that she has time to scroll through online shortform videos until, by her own admission, her eyes hurt. She represents both my greatest worries about my students and, though to an exaggerated degree, my disappointments with myself. I wake up every day aiming at Christianity, and often can’t even land on Epicureanism.

Phil Christman reviews Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation by George Musser, Mathematica: A Secret World of Intuition and Curiosity by David Bessis, Fully Alive by Elizabeth Oldfield, and Making Time by Maria Bowler.