the more we expect technology to do things for us, the less we pay attention.

In the last decade or so, a few iconoclasts have begun making roads more hazardous—narrowing them, reducing visibility, and removing curbs, center lines, guardrails, and even traffic signs and signals. These roads, research shows, are home to significantly fewer crashes and traffic fatalities.

In the old Mickey Mouse cartoons from the early and middle decades of the twentieth century, by far the most prominent source of hilarity is the capacity of material stuff to generate frustration, or rather demonic violence. Fold-down beds, ironing boards, waves at the beach, trailers (especially when Goofy is at the wheel of the towing vehicle, on... See more

“Those early cartoons,” Crawford writes, “present a rich phenomenology of what it is like to be an embodied agent in a world of artifacts and inexorable physical laws.” Then there’stoday’s Mickey Mouse Clubhouse:

And I think that one of the reasons that with more means, we seem to find less meaning, is that means give you permission to pay less attention .

The great run, where one exults in the strength of one's body, in the ease and the length of the stride, where nature speaks powerfully in the hills, the wind, the heat, where one takes endurance to the breaking point, and where one is finally engulfed by the good will of the spectators and the fellow runners.

Take running. In Simulation and Simulacra , Baudrillard decries it as a Disneyland-like simulacra: “They no longer walk, but they go jogging, etc.” Borgmann, on the other hand, includes running as an example of a focal practice: a sustained and engaging human activity that orients life by fostering competence, excellence, and a way of life that... See more

「神の活動は、『他のすべてのものよりも祝福に満ちている』が観想活動(theoretike)である」。観想活動とは、活動的な生(bios politikos)とは異なり、活動しない、つまり自らの外部に目的を持たない限りの、無活動、観想的な静寂、余暇(schole)である。その無活動、余暇において、生は自らと関係する。もはや生は自らから疎外されていない。したがって、アリストテレスはbios theoretikosを自給自足と結びつける。「そして、ここで語られる自給自足は、観想活動に最も属するものであるに違いない」。観想生活(vita contemplativa)だけが、神の自給自足と完全な祝福を約束する。

Crucially, how you look at running, how you pay attention to it, shapes how you relate to the world in that moment. If you view it as a vapid simulacrum of walking, you will find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer stupidity of it all every time you chance upon someone out for a jog. If you view it as a way for a human to focus his mind and body... See more