There are a few points about de Waal that I think are worth mentioning. A lot of what he does is "adaptive" for someone in his situation: accept flaws, celebrate chance, don't sweat the small stuff. Keep producing. He can seem a bit twee at times and I think that is a problem with aestheticism in general. Once you start finding interesting sensory phenomena everywhere, it's difficult to make decisions about aesthetic value, and easy to start declaring everything "wonderful" and "perfect".
