David Pennington

Simone Weil, writing in Oppression and Liberty (published posthumously in 1955):

“Never has the individual been so completely delivered up to a blind collectivity, and never have men been less capable, not only of subordinating their actions to their thoughts, but even of thinking.

Don’t even mention dating or — gasp — sex when the simple act of looking into someone else’s eyes provokes anxiety. But what could they do? Give up their phones and the corporate-controlled, like-driven culture, which is all they’ve ever known? Silent scream emoji!

Emil Cioran never had a real job. ‘I avoided at any price the humiliation of a career,’ he observed toward the end of his life. ‘I preferred to live like a parasite [rather] than to destroy myself by keeping a job.’

I now do drawings with no specific purpose to see what comes out. A blank sheet can be anything.

the internet isn’t some alien force that descended upon us.

It’s just us, but bigger.

THE POORLY DEFINED PROBLEM OF BEING ALIVE

Said differently, we try to measure what we value.

But we inevitably end up valuing what we measure.