“1983 was when my life fell apart completely. From 1983 to 1988, which is six winters, I spent outdoors in Oxford, working on my ideas in the Bodleian Library by day and sleeping rough by night. I lived a very exposed life. I only had a groundsheet and sleeping bag, and if it was raining I tried to cower under the ground sheet. My emotional life was non-existent but I was growing intellectually throughout that time. I was doing several things in the Bodleian. One, I was desperately worried about nuclear war and so was trying to work out a way out for the human race on earth. Two, I was reading the works of Freud, Marx, Einstein, Darwin and Jesus, trying to work out the core structure of what they were talking about, trying to reintegrate the human psyche so that you didn’t have to choose between arts and science, you didn’t have to overspecialise, you could create your own synthesised worldview.

Basically I’ve been living with myself for twenty years now. The advantage is that you do get a lot of time to do thinking, which people who are busy in life don’t get to do. So I have thought out a great many things in life that other people haven’t thought out yet. And I say, ‘what’s your position on X?’ And they say, ‘I haven’t thought about it’. And I say, ‘my position is this’.”

—Roman Krznaric.

I suggest reading the entire thing.

(Source: outrospection.org)