reading Malcolm Harris's good (go read it, really) review of Abundance, i wonder if we're stuck in an era of imprecise thinking - pseudo-intellectuals monopolizing periodicals, podcasts, books, and now our imaginative space
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yeahhh. and again i want to be positive about a couple of people (including Harris) who don't represent that. but it feels abjectly like the people actually intellectually reaching for something (and not just pretending to look busy) are outnumbered by a lot
i've also been sensitive lately about people dabbling in building out what they hope to be a comprehensive mode of thinking, seemingly without training, intuition, or motivation to follow through by asking things like "does this idea/theory actually unlock or dislodge anything?"
i think the reason this bothers me is making new theories is a little like making new hammers (to ref the review), except people are not even bothering to ask whether the new hammer designs are better at *anything*.
like we're drowning in poorly-designed, sloppily-built hammers.
it sounds like abundance is one of those pieces. which is a shame, because in addition to being juxtaposed next to these people when we talk about building a better future (but different from them in that we're motivated by a clear sense of purpose), we now have to swat away this
MrBeast-style political theory is the kind of textureless, vacuous, forced toothy grin of intellectual thought that you wake up to after falling asleep to youtube.
MrBeast-ish "if i was president, i'd just listen to experts" bullshit. it's noxious contentless drivel, passed off as nourishment.
(this isn't to say there's no good thinking going on these days. but we (they? 🥲) are fighting uphill against a bunch of fucking AI safety charlatans talking like they're retelling a bad dream they had after eating too much cheese and watching the terminator movies)
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a good framework should elicit textural differences that give us traction. it should sensitize us. it should bring something sharply into focus.
like we're drowning in poorly-designed, sloppily-built hammers.
MrBeast-ish "if i was president, i'd just listen to experts" bullshit. it's noxious contentless drivel, passed off as nourishment.