Jay Matthews

Through fantasy we repair, compensate, and transform. For a few moments, we rise above the reality of life and, subsequently, the reality of death.

This essay is a combination of personal reflection on the self and identity labels, the restrictions that label-based belonging imposes and the discomfort that freedom can bring. Included are good mental models, praise for values-based life navigation, and interpretations of popular culture.

"I always insist on my agency as a thinker. I have the right to read what I like to read. I think that is actually more radical: to insist that because I have my own mind, I will be influenced by whom I choose, and I will write what I choose." — Ocean Vuong

The experience alone is not enough for the learning to be valued. An understanding of the ways in which the learning is arrived at is integral. This does not mean that learning is predetermined, rather that t hose observing and/or evaluating the process need to be aware of and open to the variety of meanings that can be placed upon experience. It... See more

The upside is so powerful that it often masks the downside, which is why so many people find themselves in a state of automaton conformity:

• we gain a community that (superficially) makes us feel secure; we do not feel isolated or out of place or weird;


• we are provided with (and rewarded for taking) shortcuts for what to believe in, what to do, and

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Proposition 1. As rationalized institutional rules arise in given domains of work activity, formal organizations form and expand by incorporating these rules as structural elements.

Take, for instance, the dream-world in which time does not flow but sticks, adhering each town to a particular point in history and each person to a particular point in life. There is no shared stream of present in this world — only islands of neighboring solitudes, each suspended in a different moment of a different past: "The tragedy of this... See more