Conceptual Tree Thinning

Morning Thoughts #134

Buying life in bulk is an unequal exchange. The cost of too much comfort is the loss of sensitivity. That being the case, lacking the depth of feeling, what can it all mean?

We're being sold what we're being sold because we're giving up more in return. Nothing mass-produced comes without strings (and levers) attached. It's going to take more than fashionable resistance to restart humanity. Our daily satiation is a cheap trick, with family and close-knit community being priced out of the market. And like a fashion show, these digital networks of ours have devolved into runways for self-important activists to parade the latest industry-approved opinions. Ahead of the times (maybe), but still following yesterday's bad directions.

Here's an easy journalistic trick in 2024: spend half your time worshipping modernity's hallowed conceptual trees, and the other half relentlessly criticizing the fruits of these trees. It's a good living if you can manage it, situating yourself (in your Sunday best) within reach of one of their needling branches. Never connecting the two, of course, and monetizing each outburst at every poison apple, hugging the parent tree all the closer.

Enough already. Come, ye lumberjacks. Good soil is in need of better (conceptual) trees.