Our Times
“People will suddenly find obvious what is now evident to only a few: that the organization of the entire economy toward the ‘better’ life has become the major enemy of the good life.”
Ivan Illich
“Bad times! Hard times!” — this is what people are saying. But let us live well, and the times shall be well. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times.
—St. Augustine of Hippo, a sermon on prayer during the slow collapse of the Roman Empire
And I increasingly think our job, maybe our method of rebellion, is to be people who care, who have taste, who like and share and look for good things, who read and watch and look at those things on purpose instead of just staring slackjawed at whatever slop is placed between the ads they hope we won’t really notice.
A new movie taking on the tech bros
Der russische Philosoph Michail Bachtin (1895–1975) war der Ansicht, Menschen zu täuschen heißt, sie zu Objekten zu machen. Aber warum sollte ein Objekt glauben, das sei schlimm?
Timothy Snyder, Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) und Andreas Wirthensohn • Und Wie Elektrische Schafe Träumen Wir
The dawn of the third millennium is characterized by an enormous difficulty in imagining the future. We fear the worst. There is no longer expectation, or an opening to the future. Rather, the future seems closed: in the best-case scenario, it is destined to reproduce the past, reiterating it in a present that appears in the trappings of a future p
... See moreDonatella Di Cesare und David Broder • Immunodemocracy
Narratives may not be adequate for understanding the complex reality that confronts us, but they may nonetheless be necessary to get us to do act responsibly in the face of that reality. In other words, we’re now operating at a scale for which our most basic cognitive tool may no longer be adequate.