juliana ong
@julianaong
juliana ong
The greater the systemic problem, the greater the individual’s responsibility to somehow fix it themselves. This hyper-individualism then also pushes people into the greedy arms of the capitalist consumer culture and its $6.8 trillion wellness market, which has — surprise, surprise — grown in parallel with declining well-being.
Who Gets To Be Happy in an Individualistic, Capitalist Economy?
We desire the world to be better, and yet we are deeply interested in notions of status, or success, and how it can be accrued.
Once, this may have been vanity. Now, it’s survival instinct in an economy where status directly correlates with security.
Post-Luxury status symbols #6: Quality Sleep
At the heart of it, each one of us longs for care, support, love, and generosity. What I have found, is how easy it can be to default into ideals of romance as the strategy to meeting these longings. Yet, the opportunity to creatively return ourselves to the wholeness of village life, is an act of defiant lovemaking to the spirit of our humanity.... See more
Romance: a function of privatization in Domination culture
Not all design disciplines are equally affected by AI. Those who work with material, scale, and space—book designers, muralists, sign painters, mosaicists—continue to operate through tacit knowledge and touch. Their work still resists automation because it’s rooted in place and presence—it has “aura.” But even in brand design, something similar... See more
Why taste matters now more than ever
I learned the phrase 三观不一致 - three values are incompatible, namely 人生观 (What are you looking for in life? What is meaningful to you?)，世界观 (How do you fundamentally view the world? How do you operate within it?), and 价值观 (How do you define justice? What’s your relationship with money?) It’s not a matter of lack of love, or different hobbies, or... See more
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
If you poll a group of strangers on their biggest fears, I imagine that you would hear a collection of answers like, “dying,” “public speaking,” “flying,” and “family illness.” But I think, for most people, the real answer to this question lies deep in their subconscious, and it only surfaces it when risks becoming a reality: the fear of not... See more
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Totalitarianism took freedom from people, Lifton noted. But it gave them something in return: It freed them from freedom.
For the ordinary person in a totalitarian system, facts and truth are all provided. Explanations for observations are provided. Meaning is provided. Everything is cut-and-dried. Clear answers. An important struggle between good... See more
For the ordinary person in a totalitarian system, facts and truth are all provided. Explanations for observations are provided. Meaning is provided. Everything is cut-and-dried. Clear answers. An important struggle between good... See more
My advice for travel is the same as it is for most things in life: question accepted wisdom and authority. Be open to disaster and strangers. Occasionally let your aloneness devour you. Shred the itinerary. You have to do interesting things to have interesting thoughts. Stop being so fucking safe.