weekly Go Flip Yourself

In my past experiences publishing, I sought public success assuming it would lead to feelings of private satisfaction. It’s only now, observing this expectation clearly for the first time, that I can see how misguided this was.

In this experiment I took the agency and time to define success. It wasn't an open-ended search for approval. The goal was to express an idea, its full context, and for them to be seen and understood. That has happened, adding up to maybe the most enjoyable publishing experience of my writing life to date. Those 250 collectors satisfied my entire Maslow’s hierarchy of writerly needs with their support.

relationships are stories.

One of the things I’ve discovered with buildings, particularly your so-called “high-road buildings” is they can become more amazing as time goes on. As that process proceeds, they are buildings that come to be loved. And once they’re loved, they’re safe, by and large. So the quality of mastery can be in the quality of the materials and crafting of a thing that invites that kind of caring, that will keep the thing going.

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.

culture is the operating system of society.

Like any well-designed operating system, culture is invisible to most people most of the time. Hidden in plain sight, we make use of it constantly without realizing it. As an operating system, culture forms the base infrastructure layer of societal interaction, facilitating communication, cooperation, and interrelations. Always evolving, culture is elastic: we build on it, remix it, and even break it.

As more and more spaces for meeting in real life close, we increasingly turn to digital platforms for connection to replace them. But these virtual spaces are optimized for shareholder returns, not public good.

Instead, art and culture have been safely neutralized as interchangeable commercial objects just like everything else.

At its best, cultural criticism is love and art that exists to give love to other expressions of art. It’s beautiful in its indulgence. A positive feedback loop that gives everybody exactly what they desire. Gods, scribes, muses, an audience, a culmination. This is what we want out of art. Something that feels grand, meaningful, connected to the ages. That doesn’t happen on its own. It needs context, dedicated space, deeper knowledge, appreciation.