“Why shouldn’t things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory”

The expression “Why shouldn’t things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory?” frames impermanence not as an exception to existence but as its ordinary condition. The paired assertion that things and people are transient, and “go very well together,” turns apparent futility into a stark, wry form of acceptance.

Wording and Argument

The question is followed by its own answer: “They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together.” Its balanced repetitions set things beside people, then bring both into a shared condition. Rather than promise permanence or explain away absurdity, the sentence treats human beings as participants in the same transitory world they inhabit.

Context and Significance

Placed beside the dedication to “barkskins of all kinds”—from loggers and ecologists to foresters, scientists, and picnickers—the expression offers a concise philosophical frame for a book attentive to people and the natural world. Its acceptance of transience also sits in productive tension with the adjacent passage attributed to Lynn White, Jr., which describes how the loss of pagan animism enabled indifference toward nature. Against that history of treating natural objects as feelingless resources, the expression places human and nonhuman existence within a common, impermanent order.