culture

mostly of the internet kind

A lot has been written about how the internet radicalizes people. But the same dynamics that turn a slightly lonely young man into a seething misogynist—recommendation algorithms; social contexts that concentrate and intensify discourse—are also the dynamics that turn a young person who “likes reading” into someone who spends a year reading Proust,... See more

Celine Nguyen • In Praise of Writing on the Internet

Money and health are nothing more than the means by which we build a meaningful existence. Yet, in the grip of a neoliberal culture, these means have become ends. Money and health, instead of supporting a life of purpose, have become the ultimate purposes of life.

Omar F. Najjarine • Why modern life feels meaningless

Yes. I think my detachment from my health has been downstream of a lack of meaning in my life.

Historically, work looked very different. In the 1700s, approximately 90% of Americans were self-employed or engaged in family-owned trades or agriculture. Even by the early to mid-1800s, around 80-85% were independent artisans or farmers, continuing the tradition of self-employment. This dynamic began to shift dramatically with industrialization,... See more

Omar F. Najjarine • Why modern life feels meaningless

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

Omar F. Najjarine • Why modern life feels meaningless

So the loss of autonomy, of self-reliance, is the primary driver of the meaning crisis. Work itself is not the problem, it’s 'wage' work: work we don’t care about, work we’re forced to do for the majority of our lives. Everything else follows from this. When we are alienated from our labor—when our best creative energies are spent on meaningless... See more

Omar F. Najjarine • Why modern life feels meaningless

How many of us actually identify the public good with our own good? For most of us, the outside world exists for our income and our enjoyment. We have a using-based relationship with the world, not a caring one. Again, this is not entirely our fault.

Omar F. Najjarine • Why modern life feels meaningless

Anywhere from 90 percent to 97 percent of vanilla-flavored products are made with vanillin , a substance found in small quantities in natural vanilla but made synthetically for processed commercial foods. Real vanilla contains hundreds of different components that contribute to its nuanced taste and aroma. It is as different from vanillin as sugar... See more

Amanda Fortini • How Vanilla Became Shorthand for Bland

On the richness and complexity of real vanilla. Vanilla is not vanilla.

I ultimately think that the people who are histrionic about safety in San Francisco—they just hate cities! They hate the fact that they have to interact with other people, people who are visibly poorer than them and different from them, when they go out into the world. They hate the fact that homeless people exist and that they have to see them, in... See more

Celine Nguyen • In Defense of San Francisco

Philosophy is bad because you think thoughts that you think are your own thoughts, and you think you’re in charge of those thoughts, and you’re figuring things out.

But the reality is, our thoughts are almost entirely drawn from the soup in our culture of thoughts that people have had before. And all we’re doing is repeating them. We think we’re... See more

David Chapman • Myth, adult developmental stages, and entrepreneurship

I’ve said this many times before. Most people don’t actually know what thinking is. Instead they have thoughts. Thoughts occur to them. What David adds here is the perspective of where thoughts come from, which is basically our environment, our culture, all of our conditioning. Everything is a remix, as Visa likes to say. What does recognizing this do for us?