Absurdity

Sure, the social interactions between people, between people and institutions, and between institutions themselves are absurd.

But pointing out the absurdity doesn’t mean that you’ve solved the problem. It doesn’t even mean you’ve accurately identified the place of trade-off and negotiation. It means you’ve observed like a child, using adult terms to describe your observations, and have decided that serious effort to address absurdity just isn’t in your emotional or intellectual makeup.

Pointing out absurdity is nothing. Presenting the trade-offs as alternatives to absurdity is everything.

Wandering Toward Old Age

“Not all who wander are lost” is one of those classic quotes from a movie you may have failed to watch. It applies in multiple contexts, including the context of aging. Wandering toward old age is the ultimate sign, not only of not being lost, but also a sign of getting ready for what happens next.

Warfare, Terror, Murder & Bloodshed

“…in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock…” - Orson Welles, The Third Man

Amygdalas Running Amoke

The story of technological adoption is a story of change. It’s also a story of amygdalas running amok, forgetting history, appeals to authority, and grifters and hustlers. It always “works out,” and the path of working it out is always hard, bumpy, and unpredictable. We can’t wish that journey away.

Category Errors and Their Discontents

If we are going to rebuild the American project, we all need to do some hard work on thinking about how we think. We’ve got the other categories of thinking pretty well covered (the 4Ws). But how we think always slips past us as humans, revealing our biases, our emotions, and even our deep (or shallow) understanding of human nature. Any social or cultural rebuilding project must start with reconstructing how we think.