Epigraphs
“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” — George Orwell
But it is different in that ideas have weight. They have momentum. Once an idea starts, it spreads and grows and gets heavier and heavier until it can’t be resisted, even by the Divine.
Robert Jackson Bennett • City of Stairs
“Each new generation, indeed every new human being as he inserts himself between an infinite past and an infinite future, must discover and ploddingly pave it anew.”
Jenny Odell • Dear Future, Here’s the One Lesson I Want to Pass on to You
To exorcise a human problem, you must use a touch of naming magic.
Henry Oliver • Notes Towards an Applied Literature
“our politics…are shaped largely by writing and the stories we tell.” - Ta-Nehisi Coates
(CBS Mornings interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgWt-QcPYMo)
"Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear." — Hannah Arendt
But there remains also the truth that every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning; this beginning is the promise, the only “message” which the end can ever produce. Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically, it is identical with man’s freedom. Initium ut esset homo creatus est— “that
... See moreThe anthropologist David Graeber once wrote: “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” The same is true of the Internet.
Kyle Chayka • Filterworld
This is the problem beneath other problems because if we can’t agree on what’s true, then we can’t navigate out of any of our problems.”