“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
1 It’s been 16 years since I left teaching. As another retired friend said this week, “That feels like another life.” I don’t miss it. Nostalgia has always struck me as a dead end. Move or fade away I’ve always thought. But memory is different as long as one acknowledges one’s failures, as long as memory does not get mixed up with a dismissal of losses or regrets. I’m coming […]
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“Glyph” raises the ethical stakes even more. Set in a cultural moment defined by an unsteady relationship to reality — that is, right about now — it depicts people accustomed to scrolling by human atrocities on social media. Passive-voice headlines prop up the illusion that no one is responsible for them. Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid are shot for sport; asylum seekers are firebombed; journalists turn up in body bags. […]
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Maybe I’m making that terrible mistake of imagining I know something about the inner lives of our crew of national leaders and tech edge lords – Trump and Musk, Altman, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Andreessen, so many others in this American epoch of brutality and decay. Actually, I imagine emptiness, a zone of disinterest or worse, a generalized, free-floating contempt. Not a howling void, but a brightly lit, almost blinding echo […]
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To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, I measure every happiness I meet, and friendship is one happiness that helps mightily to keep despair away, especially now. My friends occupy a range of ages and genders and spectrums of affinity. They call forth several of my personas (not one of us is monochrome). Even when I have not seen them for a while, their loyalty to and influence on me hovers close by. […]
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