The 21st century is likely to be the most eventful century in human history. This coming decade will set many of its long-term trends and determine whether we thrive as a planet or collapse into ruin. Either way, a new world is about to be born.
We spend days, months, even years looking for answers. People who find the answer are celebrated as geniuses, prophets and inventors. The world beats a path to their mousetrap. In contrast, we don’t spend much effort looking for questions.
Why stick to linear arguments thick with text? Can we make sense of the world by skipping from word to song to figure? Why not connect the new when the old world is collapsing of its own contradictions?
Introduction I have written a few hundred essays over the last five years, with a year and a half in the middle being devoted to a single text, the Mahabharata. I might start the Jayary again this fall, prompted…
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash Today is the 1st of February. Let’s just say I took January off and am now ready to take on a year long writing project. What’s it going to be? No surprise, it’s the same…
Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash I want to say that the single greatest development in human affairs in the post war period (i.e., after 1945) is the entry of the nonhuman. In fact, we could say that the period starts…
Photo by Joshua Brown on Unsplash TL;DR: Anthropocene = Ponzi Scheme. Slightly longer version: The Anthropocene is the culmination of liberalism and it’s a Ponzi scheme. I started writing this essay as a way of understanding the term “Anthropocene” and its…
Photo by Bibhu Behera on Unsplash When we think of the ABCs of the future, we usually think of western dystopias and utopias. I have myself commented on Musk’s oscillation between the earth and Mars. The animal rights/welfare movement starts…
There’s something about Elon Musk that really bothers me — I can deal with your ordinary robber baron without any problems, but a robber baron who occupies the summit of human imagination seems too much for a species to bear. I am…