provocations
provocative ideas, musings, and statements to mull on
sari and
provocations
The fork on your plate isn’t inevitable—it’s propaganda. Its design has been polished by centuries of iteration, yes, but also by centuries of forgetting. We stopped asking why a fork looks the way it does because it became too familiar to question. It’s not a tool anymore; it’s a dogma.
But supernormal isn’t about inevitability. It’s about normalization. When something becomes so ubiquitous, so embedded in daily life, it disappears from view. That’s not just true for objects—it’s true for the systems we live by. Markets, money, time.
“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.“ - Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Tro
... See moreNot all questions seek answers, some seek journeys.
This is the first and most important test of alternative values. Can you take your own exit, and stay on the road. If the answer is no, there's no there there.
Reggie James • SAVE THE INTERNET
In New York, people speak fast. In the American South, they speak slowly. Both of them are a form of politeness, understood in a different way. In New York, you speak quickly because you respect the value of the other person’s time and you don’t want to take up too much of it. In the South, you speak slowly because you want to respect the person by... See more
Adam Grant • Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent?
the opposite of a good idea is also a good idea
How to avoid cynicism:
Act in ways opposite to your instinct. If you hate something, find out more about it. Again ask 'What is this?', 'Who made this?', 'Who is this for?' Genuinely. Never stop doing this"
-via @being_on_line
Expanded supply creates expanded demand, which in turn feeds even more supply. Over time, people learn. They discover more about what's aesthetically possible and more about what they like. Exposure changes tastes.
Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style
If you want to be read in the future, make sure you would have been read in the past. We have no idea of what’s in the future, but we have some knowledge of what was in the past. So I make sure I would have been read both in the past and in the present time, that is by both the comtemporaries and the dead. So I speculated that books that would have been relevant twenty years in the past (conditional of course of being relevant today) would be interesting twenty years in the future.