Thomas

The easiest way to feel the absolute value of something is to imagine, as vividly as possible, its disappearance.

Soon after I first posted this essay in a blog some 15 years ago, a young man approached me to ask if I minded him reposting it. I asked him where that would be. He and some others had launched a site called ‘Generation’. Its aim was to prepare for the coming war between the generations by assembling useful documents and providing a forum for... See more

You could say paradigms are harder to change than anything else about a system, and therefore this item should be lowest on the list, not second-to-highest. But there’s nothing physical or expensive or even slow in the process of paradigm change. In a single individual it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a falling... See more

And so I think when young people talk about what’s plaguing them— situationships, not getting on the housing ladder, even the climate crisis—what they are often getting at is the transience of everything. Everything uprooted. Everything unstable. They don’t feel attached to anything, anyone, anywhere. They don’t even feel like the Earth will stick... See more