Saved by Gaia Soykok and
Meditations on Moloch
The one question rarely asked is whether there might be a way to ameliorate the dispiriting choice, to draw on the best aspects of consumerism on the one hand and high-mindedness on the other without suffering their worst consequences: moral decadence and profound poverty. Might it be possible for a society to develop that allows for consumer spend
... See moreAlain De Botton • The School of Life: An Emotional Education
Modern humans are doubly disadvantaged. We live in a world of excess but are built for an environment of scarcity. And we have built our economy on exploiting this disconnect. You are not going to think your way out of this dilemma.
Scott Galloway • The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Success
Machineries of reason, machineries of conduct, machineries of virtue. The machine that regulates instinct, keeps one’s hands free of another man’s throat, free of one’s own. These machines have all, as someone said, gone too long in the elements. Gummed now, rusted, bloodless. I forget who said it and I no longer care.
Ben Marcus • The Flame Alphabet
Philip Rieff’s The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) theorizes how modern societies undergo cultural transformation through moments of “engineered symbolic release”—structured breaks from normative social controls that absorb disruptive impulses rather than confront them. Every culture, Rieff argues, functions by organizing moral demands into symbo... See more