Culture Studies

In short: The first half of the twentieth century was about mastering the physical world, the first half of the twenty-first has been about escaping it.

This shift has moral as well as economic consequences. When a society pushes its citizens to take only financial risks, it hollows out the virtues that once made collective life possible: trust,... See more

The decline of deviance is mainly a good thing. Our lives have gotten longer, safer, healthier, and richer. But the rise of mass prosperity and disappearance of everyday dangers has also made trivial risks seem terrifying. So as we tame every frontier of human life, we have to find a way to keep the good kinds of weirdness alive. We need new... See more

Our super-safe environments may fundamentally shift our psychology. When you’re born into a land of milk and honey, it makes sense to adopt what ecologists refer to as a “slow life history strategy”—instead of driving drunk and having unprotected sex, you go to Pilates and worry about your 401(k). People who are playing life on slow mode care a lot... See more

in the past, our social lives were primarily dictated by rules, duty, obligation, and commitment. And in the other parts of the world, it still is. That is how social living is organized. You don’t go to see your grandparents because you feel like it. You go because you have to, because it’s what you do. We have replaced commitments with feeling,... See more

And just as emotional language has entered the business world — where we talk about psychological safety and vulnerability — business language has seeped into romantic relationships. We want “return on investment” and to “hedge our bets” and “this is not a deal I signed up for.”

There is widespread confusion between something trending vs. a trend that is worth thinking about in a strategic context. Momentary microtrends and passing fads are not the same as trends that indicate long-term cultural shifts and changes in consumer behavior.

“Yearning has been showing up in pop culture, with the succession of films like Netflix’s One Day , Bridgerton and the recently concluded The Summer I Turned Pretty all depicting the sweet torture of pining and longing for someone. And it goes beyond the media industry to manifest in the types of content we see brewing on social—people are... See more

Gen Z are experimenting with something new: meta-sincerity; embracing earnestness in full awareness that it may look cringe. Rather than a naïve return to sincerity, it is a conscious choice to care, try, or feel despite knowing that detachment is the safer cultural posture. Nowhere is this clearer than in their embrace of hobbies: roller-skating,... See more