ObliqueMedia
Stay curious and courageous. Change often arrives sideways.
Joined Apr 2022
A system infected with dominance -- even if it isn't the core -- when it values ideology over reality can push in any direction without any limitation/recourse.
It speaks with self-granted impunity about anything or anyone who it decides is other.
This is why our leaders need to have deep philosophical roots. Without the love of wisdom, there is no hope for us to use the power available to us well. There is boundless potential to see the problems we need to solve as small instead of huge.
We have only scratched the surface of how deeply dominance/colonisation has affected the trajectory of human history.
Perhaps the greatest threat to our collective survival is humanity's might-makes-right mentality: Someone who's strong deserves to express their strength in any way they see fit. They make the rules, and they oversee their enforcement -- or lack thereof.
Democracy and law are inventions to restrict this kind of power, yet don't perfectly solve this (majority privilege).
"Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology—but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise. The world-altering powers that technology has delivered into our hands now require a degree of consideration and foresight that has never before been asked of us."
-- Carl Sagan, The Pale Blue Dot
Expressing concern is a thing that humans are notoriously clumsy at.
I'm convinced it's far bigger deal during holidays, when (for a variety of reasons) people are most keenly feeling their affinities, and are perhaps least aware of their relational boundaries.
What's something you've discovered that makes expressing concern successful? Or at least less awkward?
If frying up an onion for a midnight snack is weird, I guess I'm weird.
I'm seeing a lot of people talking about Reacher online, but nobody's talking about how cheesy it is.
Perhaps it hides the cheesiness behind all the action? Like, hey, way back when that worked for the A-Team...sorta. (Unlike the A-Team in the 80s, Reacher has a body count.)
Sure, it's entertaining, but it is whole a lot sillier, and more obvious, than it seems to think it is.
Adobe just announced their most profitable quarter ever ($5B in revenue), and this year has also moved forward with price hikes for their software.
Y'know, just in case you're wondering how late-stage capitalism is going.
"You can't reason people out of conclusions they never reasoned themselves into." -- my paraphrase of a variously-attributed quote.
""Capitalism thrives on bad feelings" -- Astra Taylor
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." -- Hitchens' Razor.
The stranger, or more extreme the truth claim, the greater the need for sources to be cited.
Keep this in mind both as you read, and as you write.
I saw something this week I haven't seen in a while: a truck with a crudely taped lettering job on its back window that read "FREEDOM".
It reminded me how selfish the so-called freedom convoy's definition of freedom is, and how narrow a view of freedom it takes to be associated with gas-guzzling pickup trucks.
It made me think about hiring a graphic designer to make a bold-yet-elegant lettering design for my car's back window that reads "Responsibility".
Social media are designed to convince everyone using them that they're right. Any ideas which contradict an individual's prevailing narrative(s) are revealed in bad-faith "take-downs" because the algorithm knows that's what drives engagement.
CoSo is not wired like this, which is why we're here, and why we support it.
It is an anomaly.
There is a lot of money to be made by getting people mired in conspiracy theories, ruining their mental health, and/or destroying their relationships.
We're in a strange cultural epoch where a growing number of people are challenging the mind/body split which originated in antiquity, and a number of other people (or sometimes, even more bizarrely, the same people) are reinforcing it.
This is part of the interaction, experimentation and exploration of AI: what does it mean to be intelligence without a body?
Or potentially much more importantly: can consciousness exist without a body?
"I am large, I contain multitudes."
-- Walt Whitman
Curate your attention like it's the most important thing you have.
Because it is.
It really is.
Oof. This is a clear articulation of a clear, palpable, global problem, and awareness is a good start. But how do you fix a problem when the problem is pre-emptively breaking all the potential solutions?
Headline on Dezeen: 'Kohler's Anthem shower controls give users a "truly immersive showering experience"'
I don't know about you, but to me a fully immersive experience while taking a shower sounds unnecessarily dangerous!
Whatever the concern being discussed -- from economics, to politics, to social needs -- it's generally being argued only in opposition to its shadow(s).
It's less about candidly stating what an ideology stands for, and what it's doing, it's more about speculating on the nefarious plots it is supposedly preventing. As polarisation becomes more pronounced, an in-group's conjecture about an out-group's (ulterior) motives is given greater latitude.
Fixating on the shadows never reveals the light.
When I was a kid, leaf-blowers were much more simple, a lot quieter, and they expelled way less carbon into the environment.
They were called rakes.
I'm intrigued by Carl Sagan. Does anyone have a book of his you'd recommend starting with?
Mental health tip: if you're intent on comparing yourself to your heroes, choose lower-quality heroes.
😃
ObliqueMedia
Stay curious and courageous. Change often arrives sideways.
Joined Apr 2022