Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Francis Fukuyama • The Origins of Political Order
“I have to say, you’re wrong. Natural selection is a universal principle, which applies to all living things, but it can take all sorts of forms. It exists even in the plant world, where it’s a matter of access to nutritious soil, to water, to sunlight … Man is an animal, as we know, but he’s not a prairie dog or an antelope. His dominance doesn’t
... See moreMichel Houellebecq • Submission
The same trends are now coursing through most of the world’s developed and emerging-market nations: growing economic inequality; declining generational and social mobility; tighter national borders; and intensifying ethnic and religious tribalism, weaponized through portable social media. Electorates are demanding, and getting, more authoritarian g
... See moreNeil Howe • The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End
The American-led Order (big O) did more than change the rules of the game; it institutionalized order (little o), which in turn allowed industrialization and urbanization to spread everywhere. That shifted the global demographic from one of lots of children to lots of young and mature workers, generating a sustained consumption and investment boom
... See morePeter Zeihan • The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization
Le premier risque des démocraties reste toutefois, comme l’avait prédit Tocqueville, leur décomposition intérieure sous la pression de l’individualisme, de la corruption de l’information, de la démagogie, de la fascination devant les hommes forts et la violence.
Nicolas Baverez • Le Monde selon Tocqueville: Combats pour la liberté (French Edition)
The new harms we face entail challenges to the sanctity of the individual, and chief among these challenges I count the elemental rights that bear on individual sovereignty, including the right to the future tense and the right to sanctuary. Each of these rights invokes claims to individual agency and personal autonomy as essential prerequisites to
... See moreShoshana Zuboff • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
The theme of this book is the new revolution of power which is liberating individuals at the expense of the twentieth-century nation-state. Innovations that alter the logic of violence in unprecedented ways are transforming the boundaries within which the future must lie. If our deductions are correct, you stand at the threshold of the most sweepin
... See moreJames Dale Davidson, Lord William Rees-Mogg • The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
However, once the heretical scientific insights are translated into everyday technology, routine activities and economic structures, it will become increasingly difficult to sustain this double-game, and we – or our heirs – will probably require a brand-new package of religious beliefs and political institutions. At the beginning of the third mille
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