101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think

“In reality, you likely created something better, but foreign, and your brain misinterpreted it as ‘bad’ because of that.”

Writing from the second-person point of view to speak directly to the reader here establishes a level of comfort. The tone is casual and conversational. Using the quotation marks for the word “bad” hints at her future argument that “bad” is subjective.

“To be effective is to be a machine, a product of the age. A well-oiled, consumerist-serving, digitally attuned, highly unaware but overtly operational robot. And so we suffer.”

Here, Wiest uses metaphor to compare a person to a machine in an attempt to explain why people suffer. The reason is that they act like machines—they are not in touch with their emotions and only aim to be productive. She argues that to be too effective in a capitalist society is to lose one’s humanity.

“Have you ever felt joy for more than a few minutes? What about anger? No? How about tension, depression, and sadness? Those have lasted longer, haven’t they? Weeks and months and years at a time, right?”

Wiest asks these questions directly to the reader and then responds as if it is a conversation. They are rhetorical questions, but at the same time, she provides her own answers, still in the form of questions. The use of questions forces the reader to draw their own conclusions and softens the pain of new realizations.