I don't share this for the "LOLs", this being the now-deleted tweet of an unwell man.
I share this for the Great Big Cultural Sad of our discourse having been driven in recent years by people who never had the chops for anything more than "thought-leading" by playing into fear and hatred.
How do we come back from an era of "public intellectual" grifters? How do we recenter dialogue that encourages better critical thinking, knowledge exchange, and democratic practices?
And can we do it online?
one thing we can do:
https://counter.social/@corlin/112074838103895919
and another:
We can nurture and grow public discourse, based around the humility of culture difference, and the interconnection of all life. Only if we teach this, over and over, at a young age. About the current generation? Change can happen, only if we socially incentivize it.
Ah, great minds, etc!
I was just reading Jessa Crispin's Substack reflection on Deresiewicz's piece! She notes the returning trend-cycle of hand-wringing around "elite overproduction": a broader point that doesn't detract from Deresiewicz's, but does note limits to solution-building from within such perennially concerned journalistic spheres.
https://theculturewedeserve.substack.com/p/culture-digested-elite-anxiety
@MLClark
@daniel
@thedisasterautist
You ask the elderly neighbor woman about this, and she just chuckles while hanging her laundry on the line. “Honey, don’t you pay no mind to all that.” and then just reaches for more wet clothes. So you try again to just get on with it. Ignoring the fact that your brain is rotting, that you feel stupider everyday. Lying awake at night thinking of tumors, and disability.
https://world.hey.com/corlin/the-howling-existential-smoothie-5505e021
@MLClark
Yep I like this, thanks.
"What this led to was “elite capture,” a phrase coined by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, where the top 1% of every marginalized demographic benefit from diversification efforts while the rest are supposed to be grateful for their “representation” in the culture"