The Anti-Calculator

An Antidote to the Technological Age (Cage)

“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.” —Gabriel Marcel

When I lived in Rome, I once made a weekend bicycle trip about 60 miles north to the town of Tarquinia, known as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its massive necropolis of Etruscan tombs. The Etruscans were the forerunners to the Romans.

The night that I arrived, I was up until 4 o’clock in the morning having an impassioned debate with a local man outside of the town’s “brew pub.”

(That’s what the Italians call them. Craft beer had just recently become popular in Rome and Milan, and the phenomenon had swept through the country—quite mimetically, I might add. By this time, nearly every ancient town had one. Of course, I had no complaints about this.)  

So there I was, tucked away in a cobblestone alley with a pint of overly-hoppy Double IPA, defending myself in my best Italian from this man who claimed with great pride to me that he was a nihilist and that all of the transcendental values that I pursued were but …