🏡 I Don’t Resonate With You

Resonance is radically non-instrumental, Rosa stresses, so it cannot be used to maximize an outcome. It has no goal. Unlike harmony, it allows space for dissonance. In fact, resonance requires a certain friction. Paradoxically, when two people entirely agree on a point, when their experiences are fully congruent, or when an idea doesn’t encounter a... See more

Like resonance, the term echo chamber has both literal and figurative meanings that are related, but not the same. In the former sense, an echo chamber is an enclosed space that naturally amplifies an original acoustic signal. Literal resonance differs from echo because it is based on the idea of vibrations (good or bad). In physics’ terms, resonan... See more

In a dialogue with fellow scholars Thijs Lijster and Robin Celikates, Rosa imagines resonance as a descendant of Emile Durkheim’s notion of “collective effervescence,” the ecstasy shared by participants in music, sports, dancing, or spirituality. Rosa believes that attuning ourselves to this intense feeling of invigorating camaraderie is a necessar... See more

What Rosa calls resonance is a way of relating to the world such that we are open to being affected by it, can respond to its “call,” and then both transform and be transformed by it—adaptive transformation as opposed to mere appropriation. “The basic mode of vibrant human existence,” Rosa explains, “consists not in exerting control over things but... See more

You can’t try to resonate. Ultimately, resonance is beyond us. Like happiness, it can’t be a goal.

Is it possible that we must be passive to experience resonance? Do we only hear those loud, clear, deep, and continuing sounds—perhaps the heartbeat of the universe—when we forfeit control and let the wind blow us where it may? Does our grammar know more about the world than we do—does it embody wisdom that eludes the modern mind?

For an idea to resonate, it needs to do the following:

Something in my subjective experience or previous insight connects to the idea in front of me and gives it potency. The connection between two ideas always carries the possibility of a third, new idea.

It moves me through language. I might find the phrasing particularly harmonious, the choice of ... See more

What I’m in search of is maybe hard to explain in a neat sentence, but, maybe, it’s some sense of resonance. You know when you’re reading and you’re like “Oh, this person is saying this thing I’ve been thinking or feeling forever, but didn’t know how to express in words?” That’s a beautiful feeling when you can see yourself more clearly through som... See more