What this is for
Long, messy, and rambling preoccupations
If you’re reading this, it means that for some reason you’re really interested in what I’m writing or at least why I’m writing all of this down. To answer: in a way, I always have, usually privately or only for my own consumption. But holding myself to a higher and more public standard for these thoughts, publishing them online as I am now, helps me think more clearly and get things off my mind and into the clarifying light of day. I’m grateful you’re taking the time to think with me.
I am preoccupied with a few loose themes to which I will inevitably return again and again as I write more posts. In no particular order, and with no particular agenda in mind:
The curious relationship between nature and culture and our tendency to ignore the ways they are co-dependent. I’m interested also in the real and deep implications of our attitudes toward nature and how upstream of life that attitude is.
What I’ll call the third, synthetic stage of modern life: first, humans just did things: lived, loved, fought, worshiped. Then, modern life arrested and chopped and ate these things up. And now finally, the blended bits are being repackaged into minimal viable products for us to consume again. I’m curious about the substitutionary/palliative/narcotic nature of these synthetic, atomic bits of life and the inchoate, instinctual longings we may still have for them in their previously-constituted forms.
On a related topic, I’m really interested in the ahistorical/unprecedented changes wrought by the 20th century (and so far, the 21st century) and the way our own concept of life, culture, and our own history is shaped by misconceptions about the way things are now and were before the eternal present.
Complex systems, the ways we talk and think about complex systems, the weird ways we interact with them, the equilibria and disequilibria that develop in them both on their own and because of outside intervention. I mean complex systems very generally here! Ecology and human culture are the two I puzzle about the most, but the dynamics are general-purpose.
The uses, misuses, scale, meaning, and disruptive qualities of technology on human life. I have a vested interest in this question because I’m making high-tech tools for design and construction, a disruptive practice in one of humankind’s oldest impulses and specialties!
Dialectics, the tendency for friction between competing concepts and ideas to create new, synthetic possibilities without resolving that tension.
Effectiveness, the quality of being able to accomplish things and get things done. I’m fascinated by the large and complex works undertaken by groups of people or individuals rising above the enormous inertia of the way things are and, through will and ingenuity and hubris and planning and, importantly, sheer luck, getting things done against all odds. I’m also interested in the persistent dissatisfaction and ‘sand in the craw’ that drives much of it.
The tendency for genius to induce crankery, myopia, and epistemic closure in its unhappy owners. Also the consistent presence of an eidetic memory alongside genius. (I have a pretty bad memory.)
Bioethics! There are a lot of things on the scientific, technological, and biological horizon, the implications of which most of us only consider in squishy, unclear, and inconsistent ways. We ought to sharpen the point of our approach to bioethics to give moral clarity where there currently is very little.
If you’re interested in any of these things, drop your e-mail in the box and stay tuned! It may be years before you receive something useful, but in the meantime, I am once again grateful that you are here.
And, to pre-register my allegiances, providing evidence for or against some hidden ideological motive for anything I write, I am an evangelical protestant Christian and regular church attender. My most recent vote for president was for the candidate put forward by the American Solidarity Party. And I hold most things loosely. If I’m writing something here, in this newsletter, it is probably because it’s something I’m very actively thinking through. Your commentary and criticism is therefore welcome.