Brian Thomas Clark

Complicated Culture

Daisy Alioto with W. David Marx.

dirt.fyi

why is a restaurant reservation a high status thing? It's because it is in a specific place. It is finite in supply. A lot of times you have to be somewhat connected to get it. It is the opposite of the Internet.

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I simply think we can't keep sleepwalking into hoping the (poptimist) world

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Philosophy begins in wonder, and the art of it is to keep this wonder with you. Many questions are worth asking, re-asking, revisiting, rethinking. One must seek Knowledge, but be a little wary of finding it. Perhaps excessive, but one could say the idea of possessing knowledge represents a kind of complacency. This is what Socrates meant: Once you... See more

Collins suspected, as I do, that the books he can’t remember must have had an effect on his brain anyway, that the experience of reading and engaging with the texts must have changed him in some deeper way, leaving “a kind of mental radiation — that continues to affect me even if I can’t detect it.”

Now in his mid-30s, Chayka questions whether the nearly endless availability of cultural content to younger generations has made them value it less, compared to the effort it once took to discover what you might love. But a decade or more ago, I was wondering the same thing about people his age. Before that, perhaps older people thought the same... See more

As anything scales too effectively - from fashion to restaurants to music - the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, many of us crave the artisanal coffee shop. Once our favorite Italian restaurant becomes a chain of three, we grow tired of it. Why? First, so much of what we buy and do is tied up in... See more

I can’t stop thinking about how objects hold me. How they alter the way I carry myself in a new room. Or hug me when surrounded by strangers. Clothes keep teaching me valuable lessons of tenderness and repair–of repetition, and the importance of returning to things that are worthy of love. This is not to encourage anxiety or hyper-attachment to our... See more

Journaling, especially if you include things you’re grateful for, is the cheapest possible therapy. It’s been shown to provide positive mental health benefits, alleviating anxiety, and tamping down intrusive thoughts while improving short-term memory. Focusing on gratitude has been shown to decrease materialism in young people, among the myriad... See more

The larger truth is that the Internet creates the illusion that all culture is taking place right now. Actual history disappears in the eternal present of the web.