Sublime

Outdated Institutional Designs Our political systems have little capacity to take the long view: both representative democracy and nation states are geared towards short time horizons and responding to near-term interests rather than long-term risks. There is an absence of institutional mechanisms that give voice to the interests of tomorrow’s gene

This is what our thinking has been reduced to: essentially a neoliberal analysis and judgment of the neoliberal situation.

Straightforward objectives of where we need to be can help us separate marginal action, political showmanship, and feel-good aspirations from measurable progress.

Deconstruction posited that all texts are unstable and irreducibly complex and that ever variable meanings are imputed by readers and observers.

Now, instead of emphasizing the harmonization of present and future needs, as in the Brundtland Commission report, sustainable development is now described as meeting the triple bottom line of economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.

Sensing that the price of failure is permanent marginalization, partisans on each side are girding for a crisis in which they are ready to break any guardrails to prevail. Everything is now on the table: gerrymandering, tilting election rules, subpoenas, impeachments, nuking the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, and—in extremis—mobilizing mobs

For such a large economy, it is oddly unsure of its purpose—even in conflict with itself. As is the case with so many of our inherited legacies, we participate in this enormous social system yet remain unfamiliar with its history, naive to the conflicting values at play, and disengaged from the cultural battle for its future.

one of the most troubling trends in architecture, a steady reduction in the authority of the architect as a consequence of the increasing complexity of the construction process.