Our Times
Trauma is a far subtler concept than many of us realise. It isn't just a word for something extremely stressful. It doesn't always come from short, sharp shocks like car accidents, terrorist attacks, or firefights. And, trauma isn't the same thing as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). What trauma is about is events and their effect on the mind.
... See moreEd Prideaux • How to Heal the 'Mass Trauma' of Covid-19
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
AI panic reveals our guilty conscience about the Enlightenment project.
We taught machines to think like us, and now we're terrified they'll act like us too.
Laura Londonsubstack.comI’m afraid many now have no capacity to even understand the concept of there being a simulacrum. The digiverse is effectually flattened out into what people see as reality. There are now so many ways we interact through screens and with pixels that the difference no longer seems to matter. Think, people really are willing to hand things over to... See more
Nicholas Smithsubstack.comAlong these lines, one recalls, too, Arendt’s warning in the prologue to The Human Condition: “The future man, whom the scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it
... See moretheconvivialsociety.substack.com • The Paradox of Control
Young people do not degenerate; this occurs only after grown men have already become corrupt,” wrote Montesquieu in the eighteenth century.1 Our children may take this statement to heart when they find that their elders are leaving them with a poorer future. Three-quarters of American adults today are not confident that their children will be
... See moreJoel Kotkin • The Coming of Neo-Feudalism
We feel paralyzed because we fear that our institutions and leaders are no longer able to operate and the solutions require many to act against their own immediate interests. We strive to make more people and communities capital-efficient and market-friendly even as the water level rises. The logic of the market has overtaken most of our waking
... See moreAndrew Yang • The War on Normal People
So floriert oberhalb einer relativ niedrigen Einkommensschicht fast überall da, wo beschleunigter Konsum zur Normalität geworden ist, eine nichtssagende Nettigkeit – und zwar nicht nur in bestimmten sozialen Schichten, Berufs- oder Altersgruppen. Paul Valéry glaubte schon in den zwanziger Jahren vorauszusehen, dass die technokratische Zivilisation
... See moreJonathan Crary und Thomas Laugstien • 24/7
The British writer Robert Colville says we are living through ‘the Great Acceleration’, and like Sune, he argues it’s not simply our tech that’s getting faster – it’s almost everything. There’s evidence that a broad range of important factors in our lives really are speeding up: people talk significantly faster now than they did in the 1950s, and
... See more