weekly Go Flip Yourself

If we want to revitalize our neighborhood communities, we should ask: which factors explain why so many have declined in the face of technological change? I see four: changes in the physical landscape, decline in local institutions, individualization of religion, and shifts in our education and aspirations. Where these four factors have changed the least, community remains the strongest.

because we might be all status-seeking monkey anyway. and because “at the same time, taste games are supposed to be human nature.”

We do have a problem of stuff. which is why we’re building objet.cc

Change and growth cannot be bought, only earned through the difficult business of removing all of the dross and faulty thinking (that’s been imposed on us) and getting to the core of things:

Love, service, creativity, community, relationships, family.

what you truly really want is wealth; not money

When you talk like this you locate authenticity at the level of the identity. “This is my authentic identity; the rest are fake.” But I have a lot of identities! I’m a father, a husband, a writer, a coordinator at a gallery—which of these identities is the authentic one? It is more useful to think of authenticity as being about how you play your identities. There is a way for me to play husband authentically, and there is a way to play it that is not. And so on for every other identity I have—including the obviously fictional ones. Authenticity is not about the identity, but the way you use it.

Identities are interfaces. Pseudonyms are social technologies.