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.”
Here is something I wrote years ago about ~creative despair~ (I wrote it a couple years before I started Strange Planet) I am reposting this again - Creative despair is an emotion that I feel sometimes. It is not a place devoid of creativity. ❤️
instagram.comJulia Galef refers to ‘high-entropy thinkers’. When you ask a high-entropy thinker for their views on some political or social issue it’s hard to predict what they’re going to say because they approach every question afresh through the lens of a very individual sensibility. Most us aren’t like that. We offer up predictable opinions which come... See more
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
i love u bc u exist
tiktok.comI 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
From one of my favorite Hacker News comments ever, by @Jonathan_Blow: https://t.co/uJgib4x6El