The Melancholaholic

Towards Apprehension of the Incomprehensible.

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This is actually great advice for anyone doing creative/generative work who struggles with perfection paralysis, courtesy of the never boring Willem Dafoe:

There is very little that is more satisfying than watching your child prepare for something that causes them significant fear, face into it with courage, and succeed. I’m always proud of my daughter, but it’s a joy to watch her stepping into challenges and growing in confidence.

Freddie deBoer:

I have a niche, a narrow one but big enough for me - a leftist who maintains a commitment to civil liberties and procedural fairness, and who has serious criticisms of social justice politics, who’s nonetheless not willing to follow many “anti-woke” writers down a rabbit hole that leads inevitably to social conservatism. People want critical analysis of social justice politics that’s fair and accurate and which doesn’t presume a rejection of the basic left project of equality and shared prosperity, and that’s what I (intend to) provide.

Yes to “critical analysis of social justice politics that’s fair and accurate and which doesn’t presume a rejection of the basic left project of equality and shared prosperity.” More of this, please.

W. David Marx on what comes next:

In order to figure out what happens after the social media era, we need to break out from the binary of (1) the flavorless cafeteria buffet of online content versus (2) reactionary counterculture revival. The world is primed for a fecund offline culture, but it has to offer something other than retreat.

Emphasis added above. I think there’s real wisdom to rolling back some of the behaviours we’ve developed in response to our smart devices occupying a more and more central place in our lives. Having said that, Marx is mostly correct; we do have to offer more than retreat to an idealized past if we are going to move culture back towards embodiment in any significant way.

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