Americanism
‘In the technocracy, nothing is any longer small or simple or readily apparent to the non-technical man’, wrote Roszak. ‘Instead, the scale and intricacy of all human activities – political, economic, cultural – transcends the competence of the amateurish citizen and inexorably demands the attention of specially trained experts’. Technocrats might... See more
Studies have found that when people spend more time on social-media platforms, they are more likely to buy more things and to do so impulsively—especially when they feel emotionally connected to the content they watch. This is, perhaps, one of the more insidious effects of McVulnerability: It helps encourage a self-perpetuating cycle of materialism... See more
People often, for example, oppose the actions and belief systems of billionaires, but take jobs at companies that increase the power and influence of those same billionaires. It’s not because these job-seekers are bad people, but because we are all operating in a system that makes aligning our values and our everyday lives seem impossible.
This... See more
This... See more
Why it’s so hard to align our work with our values, and how we justify not trying.
The subtitle of James Pethokoukis’s recent book The Conservative Futurist is ‘How to create the sci-fi world we were promised’. Like Peter Thiel’s famous complaint that ‘we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters’, the phrase captures a sense of betrayal. Today’s techno-optimism is infused with nostalgia for the retro future.
internal IBM training in 1979
Theodore Roszak, who coined the term counterculture in his 1969 book The Making of a Counterculture, later defined its unifying characteristic as ‘the rebellion against certain essential elements of industrial society: the priesthood of technical expertise, the world view of mainstream science and the social dominance of the corporate community’.
Often we fail to improve our lives simply because things don't get bad enough. If your new job is hell, you’ll leave it, but if it’s just unsatisfying, you’ll likely grind it out. Thus, small problems often threaten our quality of life more than big ones.
Gurwinder • 25 Useful Ideas for 2025
Liana Finck, https://www.instagram.com/share/BAH3jPX0WY
Loneliness, flakiness, isolation, canceling