The Post-Individual

The internet's infinite private worlds at times feel more like the clan-based societies that predated individualism. But where past worlds were bound by blood, today’s are bound by interests, desires, identities, and what the algorithms governing these spaces — helmed by capitalistic KPIs —nudge us to do.

This Tim Urbanism-Andrew Hubermanism is not the only nonpolitical ideology circulating. There’s a closely related variant that encourages you to get into massive debt buying crypto and bad art. There was one that prescribed moral self-improvement via polyamory, weight gain, and pop music; somehow, this managed to pass itself off as ‘leftism’ for th... See more

Under modernity, each person must be a piece in a jigsaw puzzle: completely unique but predictably so—a piece that is different from all those around it but still able to fit into a larger picture. We have more artifacts, both material and digital, than ever with which to enact our identities, yet we can never seem capable of staying unique for lon

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Another reason for all the division: the self itself is fragmented. As Yancey Strickler says, we are in the era of the post-individual. Strickler’s essay is deep and illuminating, but it is best summarized by a Sean Monahan quote he includes in the article: “Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Tod... See more