“‘You rationalize, Keeton. You defend. You reject unpalatable truths, and if you can’t reject them outright you trivialize them. Incremental evidence is never enough for you. You hear rumors of holocaust; you dismiss them. You see evidence of genocide; you insist it can’t be so bad. Temperatures rise, glaciers melt––species die––and you blame sunspots and […]
“How do you say We come in peace when the very words are an act of war?” ––Blindsight, by Peter Watts, pg. 307 “To fully receive is to willingly put yourself in a position of obligation, either to the giver or to society at large. Gratitude and obligation go hand in hand; they are […]
“There was a model of the world, and we didn’t look outward at all; our conscious selves saw only the simulation in our heads, an interpretation of reality, endlessly refreshed by input from the senses. What happens when those senses go dark, but the model––thrown off kilter by some trauma or tumor––fails to refresh? How […]
“The goal of a compassionate economy, therefore, is not to provide ‘jobs,’ as most liberal politicians seem to think. Once work has become mechanical, it is in a sense too late––inhuman work might as well be done by machines. I cannot help but remark on the inanity of economic programs that seek to make more […]
“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.” ––On Writing: A Memoir of […]
“Another consequence of commons-based currency is that we would pay a lot more for many things that are cheap today because their prices would embody costs that we now pass on to other people or future generations. Goods would become more expensive in comparison to services, providing an economic incentive for repairing, reusing, and recycling. […]
“Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. Anything at all…as long as you tell the truth. The dictum in writing classes used to be ‘write what you know.’ Which sounds good, but what if you want to write about starships […]
“Really the only security is to be found in community: the gratitude, connections, and support of the people around you. If you have wealth now, I recommend, as your investment advisor, that you use it to enrich the people around you in lasting ways. In the meantime, before the collapse of the current system, anything […]
“The commoditization of social relationships leaves us with nothing to do together but to consume. Joint consumption does nothing to build community because it requires no gifts. I think the oft-lamented vacuity of most social gatherings arises from the inchoate knowledge, ‘I don’t need you.’ I don’t need you to help me consume food, drink, […]
“Unlike physical goods, the abstraction of money allows us, in principle, to possess unlimited quantities of it. Thus it is easy for economists to believe in the possibility of endless exponential growth, where a mere number represents the size of the economy. The sum total of all goods and services is a number, and what […]