Cultural Observations

“A selection is now taking place among the forms and habits of higher morality, whose goal can be none other than the downfall of baser moralities.”

An avant-garde needs a scene, and the cities are too expensive for scenes now. An avant-garde needs an excess of time, and that’s in short supply nearly everywhere.

rationality is a method of dealing with uncertainty by devouring information and making simplifying assumptions about the outside world until you can convince yourself that you understand it

Physics may try its damnedest to instill in us existential dread at an incomprehensible universe, but biology will always be the most offensive science. For physics merely deals with the nature of reality, whereas biology contends with our own nature, and so it repeatedly runs up against wishful thinking about who we are. Biology forms the paramete... See more

Both those who try to write, paint, compose, etcetera, and fail decisively, and those who after tasting the elation of creativeness feel a drying up of the creative flow within and know that never again will they produce aught worth-while, are alike in the grip of a desperate passion. Neither fame nor power nor riches nor even monumental achievemen... See more

if you don’t have a Black woman on your board, I better not see a Black woman on your billboard.” –Aurora James,

the current epidemic of attention disorders is being exacerbated by each of us being expected to do the work of an entire community.

Artists cannot simply ignore his charge that our failures are uniquely volatile threats to the social order.