Enjoying the view from Limbo
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 1, 2024
Lost in the Cloud.— We are all, today, in all our endeavors, at the mercy of everything we ever did, everything we ever said, and everyone with whom we ever interacted in any way, at any time, under any circumstances. In practice, this means that standing apart from others, or disagreeing in any way with current moral or political orthodoxies, no longer merely...
Phone calls and message alerts at any moment; one learns to stop in the middle of anything — and worse, to expect to have to stop. After all, the social rule in the age of ubiquitous digital communication is determined by our new understanding that not only is everyone immediately accessible at any time, but what is more, everyone knows that everyone is...
Here is a social media post from the White House, i.e., from the nominal leadership group of the entire free world: A “digital dollar” may seem far-fetched, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility. Today, the Biden-Harris Administration published policy objectives and a technical analysis for a potential U.S. central bank digital currency: https://t.co/VrwSs7hpNS — White House Office of Science &...
There is a natural breaking point in human connection, a borderline beyond which all goes slack, from which point the closer we are, the more distant we become. Intimacy is misunderstood as the elimination of all barriers and distance. In fact, it depends utterly upon the maintenance of natural distance. Intimacy exists in the tension between our need for distance and our willingness,...
I dislike surprises of the sort that are imposed upon one by other people — surprise visits, surprise parties, surprise invitations, and the like. The reason is simple: I do not waste time, and therefore experience imposed surprises not as welcome salvation from life’s tedium, but as an interruption of something I had previously judged to be essentially worthwhile or necessary in favor...
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, has tweeted “End the CCP” in response to a CNN report describing the digital “health” app that the Chinese government is using to track everyone in the country, to collect personal data on a daily basis, to assign arbitrary color-coded “health status” categories to each human being, to use this “health code” system to bar people from...
The human ego is a clever, skulking beast, always ready with a scheme to protect itself against the humiliations inherent in so much of human life, specifically by artfully reframing these humiliations as acts of will, and ascribing causality to what is in truth only an inescapable effect, distorted by imagination. Necessity is the mother of invention, and few needs are greater in...
The desire to be heard vs. the desire to be understood.— Heraclitus spoke for all time: “One is worth ten thousand to me if he be the best.” “‘Like a dog,’ he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.” Kafka thereby describes the condition of every one of us in the very late modern world, hounded, herded, and...
Today, America’s Lord and Master, “Dr. Fauci,” is making a plea for Americans to continue taking his word as gospel truth forever and ever, and to sacrifice every iota of dignity and self-government they ever thought they deserved, even though it is now ridiculously obvious that he has no idea what the hell he’s talking about, and has been dead wrong about every...
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