Matt Little

This is an idea that Nietzsche would have found sympathetic - he said that we are artists of our own lives, and that art requires illusion. The illusion here is preemptive belief: the ability to act from a place of imagined inevitability, to say, “I will meet this standard,” and to let that belief shape your behavior as if it were already true.... See more

On role models: “I remember there was this quote Ocean Vuong said in an interview where he likened the rules of life to a guardrail where if you’re driving down a road and you’re following the guardrail, you’re just going to end up somewhere that’s already discovered on a map. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes you sit down and... See more

hese are all displacements, though. The real and unconquerable addiction is to our phones. This fact is made all the more uncomfortable in that we don’t really have a choice. Just try holding down a job without a phone. The radiation in your pocket might slowly be giving you cancer, but without it – in America at least – you won’t have healthcare.... See more

We are no longer so sure materialism defines the good life; that meritocracy is attainable. The world has gotten so big, fairness is purely theoretical. Modernity is so old, we no longer believe consumerism will solve our spiritual problems. The conceptual supports for the American Dream are up for debate.

And by engaging in this debate, we... See more

is not the end of the world, but the end of a world.

As Ernest Hemingway notes, citing Ecclesiastes, the sun also rises.

In the same epigraph, he quotes Gertrude Stein: ​“You are all a lost generation.” There is some sense that the party is over. Peter Pan Syndrome is dissipating. Everyone is 14 going on 40. I’m reminded of a pre-pandemic quote by... See more

There is no longer a meaningful distinction between human preference and algorithmic curation, between authentic self-expression and platform-optimized content, between organic social connection and network-mediated relationships. The media we consume shapes us, and we shape the media through our engagement, creating a feedback loop where human and... See more

Let's take a moment to consider the conveniently limited definition of “political violence” I'm seeing everywhere today. I have already written a short, probably too-flippant thing about this, so let me say it more deliberately: It is assassination when civilians and journalists and doctors are blown up in Gaza. It is politically-justified torture... See more

Ordinary life doesn’t lack meaning. We lack the attention to see it. We skim past what’s always in front of us, looking for something more impressive, and then wonder why life feels so shallow, so scraped thin.