This is why Bahnsen claims that ultimately, reason cannot help us in our lives and that our choices must be dictated by feeling. A few years before Nietzsche developed his perspectivism and Kierkegaard wrote that all choices lead to sorrow and regret, Bahnsen had already foreseen these conclusions. He complained that a typical christian missionary would claim that one should just "do the right thing and be rewarded", yet there is not one "right" thing. Each moral choice has consequences and all of them have both advantages and disadvantages. In the face of such a dire existence, Bahnsen views humour as almost sacred. It alone gives us the ability to "laugh off" the tragedy of being and to avoid the clutches of depression.