We must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
“When we are given an apparent solution to a systemic problem, that solution also shapes the way we think about our values. If you are able to buy a gun and keep it in your house, you may do so and feel safer. You may start to say you value gun ownership when what you originally valued was safety.”
Rather than confronting the systems that create our problems, technosolutionists zoom in on a single friction point and deploy a product. To illustrate this, Sanchez-Gomez offers a great example: imagine a company developed a numbing ointment for the wounds of children working in factories rather than abolishing child labour. The ointment treats the symptom, might even be reported as ‘helpful’ by those using it, but it does nothing to address – and arguably helps preserve – the underlying harm.
“Easy reading is damn hard writing”
— Maya Angelou
"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal"
―Jane Austen
I heard the old, old men say,
“Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.”
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
“All that’s beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.”
—W.B. Yeats
Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners.
– Laurence Sterne
I once heard a combat vet say: “We offer poor folks socialism to become soldiers to go abroad and defend Capitalism. They give us free housing, lodging and food to diminish others access to the same thing.” That always stuck with me.
I once heard a combat vet say: “We offer poor folks socialism to become soldiers to go abroad and defend Capitalism. They give us free housing, lodging and food to diminish others access to the same thing.” That always stuck with me.
Korean-born German writer and philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues we’ve shifted into what he calls an achievement society, where the constant pressure to perform and the promise of positivity have replaced old forms of external discipline – and this self-driven ratchet of achievement is leaving people exhausted, anxious and disconnected. “A sharp and unsettling reflection on how our obsession with productivity and self-optimisation quietly drains meaning, rest and genuine connection from modern life.”
“If you create things for the public, you will get yelled at by dumbasses. Indeed, this is the primary experience of being the sort of writer that I am. If you make a joke, they won’t get it. If you use sarcasm, they won’t detect it. If you exaggerate for effect, you will be taken literally, and if you try to be understated, you will be accused of a contemptible lack of urgency. If you make a reference, it will not be understood; if you choose one topic, they will wonder why you didn’t choose another; if you try to focus on one thing, they will ask why you didn’t focus on something else.”
George Harrison and I were once in a car and the Beatles song “You Can’t Do That” came on, with that great riff in the beginning on the 12-string. He goes, “I came up with that.” And I said, “Really? How?” He said, “I was just standing there and thought, ‘I’ve got to do something!’ ” — Tom Petty
We don’t choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences. Even when we think about the future, we don’t think of our future normally as experiences. We think of our future as anticipated memories.
—Daniel Kahneman
“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Fall in love and stay in love. Explode. Don't intellectualize. Get passionate about ideas. Cram your head full of images… Stay off the internet and all that crap. Read all the great books. Read all the great poetry. See all the great films. Fill your life with metaphors. And then explode.
—Ray Bradbury
