Look on the Bright Side!

The world is rife with pathologies of all sorts: spiritual, psychological, moral, and medical. But it's all grist for the thinker's mill. That is the bright side. One can allow oneself to become depressed at how pathetic we all are -- in different ways and to different degrees -- or one can cultivate wonder at our strange predicament and get to work understanding it, thereby squeezing the joys of theory from practical misery.