Sparks 👁️

Instead of a measurable, quantifiable thing that exists independently out in the world, we suggest that intelligence is a label, pinned by humanity onto a bag stuffed with a jumble of independent traits that helped our ancestors thrive.

The things we call intelligence have transformed us from small, slow, physically weak apes to the solar system’s most lethal apex predators. However, when we ask whether other animals are intelligent, we’re not usually asking what capacities or kinds of bodies were advantageous in their evolutionary past. We’re really asking whether they do things... See more

Work, in fact, is interfering with my work,

and I want to work less so that I can have more time to work.

I need another word.

— Eula Biss, Having and Being Had

But we don’t always have access to a retreat center, a monastery, or a library, what we do have is this place, a base camp, a landmark for thinking beyond thought.

The metaphor of the base camp is particularly apt for this kind of contemplative scholarship. Like the mountaineer’s base camp—a place of preparation and return, of gathering resources... See more

The easiest way to feel the absolute value of something is to imagine, as vividly as possible, its disappearance.

In a world that is completely without rituals and wholly profane, all that is left are consumption and the satisfaction of needs.