The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays

There are things I can’t stomach anymore—I never listen to NPR in the car now. I’ve replaced it with top-forty stations; vacuity seems preferable to pandering.

I don’t think most people are good, or bad, for that matter. I think people are neutral. From a distance, they look almost interchangeable. It seems to me that “good people” can become “bad people” when provided the opportunity within an existing power structure—to claim and exert power at a deadly cost to others and get away with it.

have noticed that people who take and post selfies on the internet tend to choose photos from the same angle and showing the same expression. I think we must choose the photos that look most like our self-image; that self-image is then reinforced by the photos.

Whether or not I personally keep up with everything happening everywhere all the time, I know it exists; that awareness alone is fatiguing. It’s very easy to succumb to fatalism, perhaps the logical extension of compassion fatigue—believing we’re “fucked” no matter what we do is mysteriously tempting.

A progress trap is a development that looks at first like a clear advancement but in time proves to actually deoptimize the system.

In creating new technology to address known problems, we unavoidably create new problems, new unknowns. Progress changes the parameters of possibility.

A crowded world, then, has a dangerous opacity, providing cover for cruelty and corruption.

In this light, compassion is a matter of aesthetics.

There’s no compassion fatigue without compassion: The caretakers at risk see somebody suffering, and they want to reduce the suffering. But they can’t always succeed. Compassion fatigue, then, is stymied compassion.