Thoughts on design, art, media and philosophy
In “The Origins of Totalitarian Order,” Hannah Arendt presents the idea of ideology as a self-fulfilling process. Suppose that Stalin says that the Moscow metro is the greatest in the world. It would not be a problem if the Bolsheviks were to discover that the Paris metro was greater still because Stalin’s totalitarianism is a process, which means that if whatever is posited is not true right now,…
Decius Most mighty Caesar, let me know some cause, Lest I be laughed at when I tell them so. Caesar The cause is in my will: I will not come; That is enough to satisfy the senate. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar In “Notes from the Underground” Dostoevsky explores the idea of acting against one’s “best interests” simply from a desire to express one’s will, which can be greater than any rational…
Do you know this tale? A hunter was lost in a deaf forest; tired, he sat down on a stone above a wide, turbulent stream. He sits there staring into the dark depth, listening to a woodpecker drumming and drumming into the bark of a tree. And the hunter’s soul grew heavy. “I am lonely in my life, like in a forest,” he ponders, “I have strayed from the path a long time ago onto the various little…
Society is a dynamical system, its constitution, the interrelationship between all of its members, is always changing, always evolving, which means that a political system of governance can never settle down to a static set of rules. Atop a fluid world of men an ideal state is impossible, for as long as men live old formations must become obsolete. Almost Intransitive Systems and Strange…
Three types of creative work: ephemeral, timeless, eternal . Ephemeral work is all around us: it’s the stuff that doesn’t last, breaking or going out of fashion within years, months, or even less—the product of the consumption age. Timeless work is a reaction to the former, an attempt to strip away any elements of transient style in order to make the work impervious to changes in…
A feedback loop: when consuming media people follow the path of least resistance (i.e. the least amount of effort needed to get the most perceived gains), which is why a short, sensationalist article will get more views than a long essay—the former satisfies the reader’s curiosity in a few seconds (though never satiating it) while the latter requires considerable effort and time for an unknown…
Have you ever happened to take a walk in a graveyard? These enclosed, quiet corners, overgrown with succulent greenery, so small and so greedy, have a peculiar and eerie poetry of their own. Day after day the newly dead are brought into them, and already the whole of the living, huge, noisy city is carried there, and already a new city is born and is awaiting its turn—and they stand, just as…
I “Do come round to see me,” asked Senista for a third time, and for a third time Sazonka hastily answered: “I’ll come, I’ll come, don’t worry. How could I not, of course I’ll come.” And once again they fell silent. Senista, covered up to his chin with a gray hospital blanket, lay on his back and stared fixedly at Sazonka; he wanted for Sazonka to stay a while longer at the hospital and to confirm…
On that terrible day when a universal injustice was committed and Jesus Christ was crucified among bandits at Golgotha—from the very early morning of that day a Jerusalem trader Ben-Tobit was afflicted by an intolerable toothache. It began on the eve of the previous day: the right side of his jaw began to ache slightly, and one tooth, the one at the end before the wisdom tooth, seemed to have been…
I The Almighty summoned an angel in white robes and said to him: “Turn your ear towards the Earth and listen. And when you hear something, tell me.” The angel listened for a long time and answered: “I hear something weeping. The Earth is weeping. I heard something crying out, screams and groans, children’s voices. The Earth is suffering. And I heard mocking laughter, squeals of lust and killer’s…