juliana ong
@julianaong
juliana ong
I used to believe in the adage, “If they wanted to, they would.” But now I think it’s more like, “If they’re open-hearted, and open-minded, and curious, and not too cautious, then, maybe, they might. Or they still might not.”
Humans are fundamentally conflicted. One of the foundational conflicts in psychology is between self-enhancement, or the desire to feel good about who we are, and self-accuracy, or having an honest, realistic understanding of ourselves.
We’re moving into an era where synthesis and judgment—not just execution—are the creative differentiators. AI will continue to evolve, and yes—it will replace certain tasks and even entire roles. But it won’t replace curiosity. It won’t replace intuition. And it won’t replace the ability to decide what matters.
Why taste matters now more than ever
Authenticity simply can’t survive this environment of constant performance – we become alienated from our own actions when every moment is filtered through the question of how it will be received.
Eugene Healey • Gen Z and gen Alpha brought a raw, messy aesthetic to social media. Why does it feel as inauthentic as ever? | Eugene Healey
We are very fluent in blunt, materialistic, capitalist questions: What? How soon? How much? What I hope that we can learn to do is add questions of moral imagination to that mix: questions like “Why?” and “To what human effect?” and “How much is enough?”
The On Being Project • Living the Questions
In early 2026, the phrase "Very Chinese Time" went viral on global social media platforms. Content centered around China's everyday life has been widely viewed and discussed, bringing the Chinese experience into the international public sphere in an extremely down-to-earth way. However, this phenomenon goes beyond mere online popularity - it is... See more
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Our super-safe environments may fundamentally shift our psychology. When you’re born into a land of milk and honey, it makes sense to adopt what ecologists refer to as a “slow life history strategy”—instead of driving drunk and having unprotected sex, you go to Pilates and worry about your 401(k). People who are playing life on slow mode care a lot... See more
Adam Mastroianni • The Decline of Deviance
Most of us have never experienced the kind of love that transforms you and expands your interiority, so we don’t realise it’s out there. But it is and it exists. Once you’ve experienced it, you can’t go back to the mimicry, because it feels like a sorry excuse for the real thing.
the key to love is understanding
Here’s something I’m very thankful I was told while I was still in my 20s: that the point of all this “hard work” is to recognize the person it makes you, not what it “gets” you