George Saunders

Of course, you know, we want what we want.

And it's beautiful to want what we want to a certain extent.

But on the absolute sense, it isn't true.

So to the extent that we go through life embracing that illusion wholeheartedly, I think we cause suffering.

And of course, there's a position where you can go, yeah, I want to wear my sweater.

And also, I recognize that this self is something that my mind is creating.

And I think that's where we get into spiritual ideas.

Okay.

I think sin is what we were just talking about.

This is not the Catholic understanding, but my understanding is sin just means you're out of step with truth.

whatever it might be.

And the world has a way of either internally or from outside of punishing sin in that way.

So again, if I think I'm a really tough guy and I'm still me and I go out and challenge somebody and I get my ass kicked,

I've committed a sin, the sin of misunderstanding who I am, and then there's a punishment.

So for me, in the book, sin is just being out of touch with the way things actually are.

That's it.

And so, again, in Buddhism, karma, but what that really means is cause and effect.

So basically, the view is cause and effect is absolutely undeniable.

When you do something, there's a reaction.

Now, the sort of comic tragedy part of it is that we aren't very good at predicting causes from effect.