Most of a good life is simply refusing to do what is bad.

There was a Jesuit preacher, Anthony de Mello, who said if you’re suffering but not willing to do anything about it, you need to suffer more. Suffer until you get sick of your suffering. Which sounds harsh, but it’s true

This, mind you, is the best definition of addiction I’ve come across: something that makes you feel terrible, but the only way to feel better, it seems, is to do it again

its popularity was not from the quality of the writing but the resonance of the topic. It gestured toward a subconscious yearning we all seem to share. This urge to be less online. To be less performative, less see-through, less concerned with what others think of how we live, and more deeply involved and intimate with our own real local lives

“If there’s no price, you are the price.”

We are drowning in a river of short-form video. Where the allure isn’t even the content but the abundance, the infinitude of the flow. As the cultural conversation is dominated by what is fast and loud and immediately engaging, because those are the qualities screens reward, we lose the capacity to think in paragraphs, to think hard about the same... See more

As you pull yourself away, as the chains you never saw come crashing to the floor, you learn things. You learn books can tell you things about yourself you don’t know. You learn concentrating on anything is very hard work. You learn what you pay attention to is the job of a lifetime, a job that never ends, a job that quite literally shapes your... See more

Because there is no space for your conscience to talk to you, to tell you things you don’t know about yourself. There is no space to ask questions about yourself, inquire of yourself, interrogate yourself, wanting to know your own deepest secrets, the things you dislike so much you don’t even think about anymore. There is no space to accuse... See more

the flood of information on the internet made me feel anxious and incapable and directionless and overwhelmed. So I stopped.