Selfhood

“A different view into this, a more optimistic one which i choose to adopt, has to do with what being online helps people do. The original piece in The New Consumer talks about how "younger consumers are also more likely to say they feel “more valued for their talents” online than offline, feel “more appreciated” online, and feel “more creative” online." Which suggests to me the problem isn't necessarily how addictive being online is, it's how unappreciated people feel in the offline world. The internet helps us find our people.

I recently heard a great quote about what is the opposite of depression. It's not happiness. It's expression. And so when you have people say they effectively feel more expressive online, and can bond with others more attuned to their needs and points of view, then this gives me hope that there is a net positive effect of all this time we spend online.

Looking at it this way, i see great news in the idea that people have places where they can feel more like themselves, even if it may not fit into our current worldviews of what personal and collective flourishing looks like. When i grew up, playing video games was going to be the ruin of us all, and yet statistically speaking the vast majority of our generation turned out well enough (if anything, the lack of an economic and social safety net fucked us up later).

So it's entirely possible that a whole generation who feel better online than offline will turn out somehow ok as well. Better or worse than us? Impossible to tell. Different? Most likely.”

I can move through pain, but I have an intolerance for a life that doesn’t sparkle.

cruel optimism: Lauren Berlant’s seminal coinage for “when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing.” In Berlant’s usage, optimism is “the force that moves you out of yourself and into the world” in search of something—some sense of self or state of being—that you can’t generate on your own. This optimistic relation can feel... See more

— Rayne Fisher Quann

Martha said to me, very quietly: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your... See more

Choreographer Agnes de Mille

In Pasadena, California, photographer Gregg Segal embarked on a project capturing individuals from diverse backgrounds and ages within his garden. Utilizing three distinct settings - water, beach, and forest - Segal juxtaposed each subject amidst a week’s accumulation of their waste. Participants were tasked with gathering and preserving all their... See more

instagram.com

People often, for example, oppose the actions and belief systems of billionaires, but take jobs at companies that increase the power and influence of those same billionaires. It’s not because these job-seekers are bad people, but because we are all operating in a system that makes aligning our values and our everyday lives seem impossible.

This... See more

Vincent Sanchez-Gomez • Why it’s so hard to align our work with our values, and how we justify not trying.

“In my old life, I believed, I had ascended to the top of a mountain and there was a throne there where I used to sit, and now here I was ten years older, in the valley of beginnings, in a ditch on the floor, just me and my butt and the ground beneath us.“

Leandra Medine Cohen, Founder of Man Repeller

Why it’s so hard to align our work with our values, and how we justify not trying.

Elizabeth Lepro vsanchezgomez.substack.com

Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.

Gary Snyder — poet, anthropologist and ecological steward