weekly Go Flip Yourself

The process of writing a manifesto, at its core, is the process of clarifying your desire. In a world that's constantly distracting us with digital noise and shiny objects, keeping us running on a mimetic treadmill of manufactured desires, getting clear about what you want, deep down, is a radical act. Exploring and articulating what matters most, then committing it to writing, is a bit like waking up to your own humanity after a deep slumber. It kicks off a journey of coming home to yourself.

Culture's positive effects on the brain: Aesthetic experiences enhance the quality of human life through (1) providing a cure for boredom, (2) broadening an individual's ability to perceive the world, and (3) preparing the individual to deal with future contingencies.

• the royal society impact

• long lasting cultural impact

An ode to magazines:

• you're entering a universe that's only there

• convey a feeling, an amplitude, a point of view

• it's an opportunity for meaning-making

• what if Taylor Swift has a magazine?

• all this is hard (an essay, a song) it takes time

• the inward search for emotional truth; connecting with the source -- it's not about the money

• doing it for yourself is underrated these days

• celebrate the source, the art

• a deeper definition of music journalism: to do that well means: really caring; be in it; in that scene

That can explain why things always seem bad and why things always seem like they’re getting worse. Which is exactly what we see in the data: every year, people say that humans just aren’t as kind as they used to be, and every year they rate human kindness exactly the same as they did last year.

If I’m right, people’s colorful theories of the End Times come second. What comes first is the conviction that the world’s problems are brand-spanking-new. And that conviction is stunningly consistent across time.

“Happiness is all gone,” says the Prophecy of Neferty, an Egyptian papyrus from roughly 4000 years ago. “Kindness has vanished and rudeness has descended upon everyone,” agrees Dialogue of a Man with His Spirit, written at around the same time. “It is not like last year […] There is no person free from wrong, and everyone alike is doing it,” says the appropriately-named Complaints of Khakheperraseneb from several hundred years later. And some unknown amount of time after that, the Admonitions of Ipuwer reports that actually things just started going to hell. “All is ruin! Indeed, laughter is perished and no longer made.” Worst of all: “Everyone’s hair has fallen out.”