Benji

In the era of infinite creation and consumption, it’s not the technicality of individual works but the authorship of aesthetic frameworks through them that matters. Authoring an iconic aesthetic—creating, coining, and embedding it in culture—may be one of the last defining acts of human creativity. The aesthetic is the art now. The aesthetic is the... See more

I think what it means to be a member of a community is to accept responsibility for what the community does, or to understand that you need to play an active role in shaping the kind of community you want. Passivity, in other words, is the enemy of community. That’s the idea that I’m pursuing in this book, that there’s too much passivity. The... See more

When anything difficult arises—any kind of conflict, any notion of unworthiness, anything that feels distasteful, embarrassing, or painful—instead of trying to get rid of it, we breathe it in. The three poisons are passion (this includes craving or addiction), aggression, and ignorance (which includes denial or the tendency to shut down and close... See more

As Girard once said: “There are fundamentally only two ways of looking at religion: as superfluous, added on—or as the origin of everything.” If there can be no in-between, I suspect that like Girard, Thiel sees religion as the origin of everything.