Fading Novelty

A core aspect of human experience is our pursuit of novelty. This may already be obvious to you. "Of course we look for newness!" you might say, "Why, that's a big part of being human!" I don't disagree, of course. It does seem obvious that there's something tantalizing about chasing after that which is new. Correspondingly, it's not just that we like chasing after things which are new. We stop chasing after things which are old. And, with time, everything becomes old. We find ourselves, despite our best efforts to change things, back in a similar state of mind. In response, people will often say that "the novelty has faded", hence the title of this post. That's the main intuition. For more concreteness, here are three more everyday examples of fading novelty: When on this topic, it's easy to dive too deep and draw grand conclusions about the futility of desire, or the transience of pleasure, or the fleetingness of happiness. Before we get into any philosophizing at all, though, I want

A core aspect of human experience is our pursuit of novelty. This may already be obvious to you. "Of course we look for newness!" you might say, "Why, that's a big part of being human!" I don't disagree, of course. It does seem obvious that there's something tantalizing about chasing after that which is new. Correspondingly, it's not just that we like chasing after things which are new. We stop chasing after things which are old. And, with time, everything becomes old. We find ourselves, despite our best efforts to change things, back in a similar state of mind. In response, people will often