culture war dynamics

The only way to help people rise above undignified behavior is to teach them that they are dignified. You cannot fight shame with shame.

When we mistake spreading ideas for taking real action, we overlook a crucial asymmetry: ideas and actions distribute their consequences wildly differently across time and space.

A stupid idea—one that seduces with utopian dreams—can viralize for months or years, infiltrating millions of minds long before it ever collides with reality through... See more

Men become monsters by convincing themselves they're saints.

a successful malignant ideology will promise to make your life better while actually sabotaging it and making it worse in ways that seem to prove the ideology correct. the more you follow it, the worse everything gets, while you become more and more devoted to it. demonic even.

If you can only advocate for your ideology by shaming your opponents, you will inevitably be defeated by the most shameless people in your society

what is the relationship between ideological commitment and status seeking? is an ideology a particular status game you've opted into? do people select the highest status ideology they can get away with? are they just two independent drivers of social behavior?

I first wrote about Breach in 2020, and again in my book. It’s the idea that the internet has become our externalised collective unconscious, capturing and then amplifying a swirling ocean of our projections, hopes, fantasies, and violent urges. Some of these become archetypal, turning into myths and memes that evolve to take on a life of their... See more

That's not why we come to Twitter. This place is the digital Colosseum and we want to see blood. But it's increasingly obvious to me that we spend our time fighting here about sensational stuff that no one can do anything about, because we feel impotent to make real change in our own lives.