Brian Thomas Clark
@btc
Strategist/Producer/Collector
Digital Experience Director @risd
Brian Thomas Clark
@btc
Strategist/Producer/Collector
Digital Experience Director @risd
NOBL 2/10/26
In previous generations, depression was likely to result from internal conflicts between what we want to do and what authority figures – parents, teachers, institutions – wish to prevent us from doing. But in our high-performance society, it’s feelings of inadequacy, not conflict, that bring on depression. The pressure to be the best workers,
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The Wisdom and Prophecy of Jimmy Carter’s ‘Malaise’ Speech
The trends he saw emerging two generations ago now bear their poisonous fruit in our body politic.
Carter’s central insight was that even if the country’s political branches could deliver peace and prosperity, they could not deliver community and belonging. Our nation depends on pre-political commitments to each other, and in the absence of those pre-political commitments, the American experiment is ultimately in jeopardy.
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And so, when people valorize these kinds of outmoded media, and outmoded acts of endurance and devotion, I don’t think it’s just about empty nostalgia. Because these are touchstones and processes — precisely in their inefficiency — by which people can open themselves up to transformative experience, and honor the depth and fullness of what art means to us.