One of my (many) contrarian beliefs is that we do not have strong enough preferences. We often blame social media or the speed of information as the reason why we’re easily distracted, but the real reason behind our inability to focus has less to do with the sheer quantity of media and more to do with our laziness when it comes to distinguishing... See more
Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be... See more
I feel like there’s something so soulless about our culture—something deeply, deeply missing in people’s experience of life, a kind of superficiality. Life is so weird and awesome, and there’s so much depth to it, but people, particularly young people, but really everybody with technology and a phone, are sleepwalking through life. It disturbs me... See more
This shift towards a global sameness, driven by digital platforms' algorithms, challenges the very notion of personal taste. As these platforms prioritize content or products that resonate on a mass scale, they nudge us toward a homogenized cultural landscape. The result is a world where diversity of thought and creativity often gets drowned out by... See more