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Absit Omnia

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Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice. There are many vectors for control—we don’t need to hand them over.

Hydraulic Despotism

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If you control the water, you control the people: Karl Wittfogel’s theory of hydraulic civilisations gives us a tidy little insight I think is worth extracting. Today ‘water’ is many things: water, electricity, social media and it has some interesting implications. There are some better theories to get after this insight of ours, but better doesn’t mean interesting, and none sound nearly as sexy as Hydraulic Despotism. So I’m going to bring it back.
Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice. There are many vectors for control—we don’t need to hand them over.
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connection thought-architecture collective-architecture digital-architecture wealth-architecture on-politics-and-power on-leadership on-being-fruitful on-culture on-ethics

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Suicide is the interaction between personal despair and the failure of communities to provide reasons to live. We can’t answer Camus’ “one truly serious philosophical problem” for people, only they can. But we can provide an argument to live, by showing people where they fit.

Why do people kill themselves?

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We’ve always had a troubled relationship with suicide. In any given period of history, you can see roughly two perspectives living in tension with one another. The first, that suicide is an affront of some kind, and the second, that suicide is something somehow righteous or noble. What’s interesting about these two competing attitudes around the act of suicide is that they more-or-less capture the reasons people kill themselves, and that those reasons help us understand the rise in rates today. In all cases, it’s very clear that there is a point of failure that seems so, so easy to do something about.
Suicide is the interaction between personal despair and the failure of communities to provide reasons to live. We can’t answer Camus’ “one truly serious philosophical problem” for people, only they can. But we can provide an argument to live, by showing people where they fit.
Check it out

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connection somatic-architecture on-(un)happiness on-culture

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The utility of violence isn’t in the violence itself, but only in the threat of it. It creates immediate behaviour change, but only for so long as the threat is active.

The value of violence

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Violence is such an unavoidable feature of life that it tends to appear in any conversation that starts about half a bottle in. And in any given wine-fuelled conversation that broaches the subject of violence people usually assume that violence is necessary, or that it’s some kind of pathology. What these perspectives mean is that any conversation that circles the issue of violence will end in a fight between people who are for violence (or inured to it), and people who are against it (or don’t think it’s real). This isn’t really a very interesting conversation to me. A more interesting question to me, is when is violence actually useful? So, rather than asking questions about the necessity of it, we might be better served asking questions about the utility. Because looking at utility highlights something that would probably make us think of violence a little differently.
The utility of violence isn’t in the violence itself, but only in the threat of it. It creates immediate behaviour change, but only for so long as the threat is active.
Check it out

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betterment somatic-architecture collective-architecture wealth-architecture on-being-fruitful on-politics-and-power

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Social media use probably isn’t the problem. Social media use is probably just the most obvious manifestation of lots of problems. And in fact, social media could probably be a solution. It’s up to you.

It's not social media, life is just worse

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It has been pretty trendy for the last little while to notice that mental health problems are on the rise, and also social media use is on the rise, and so probably mental health problems are on the rise because social media is an attention sucking monster. But research on the topic doesn’t seem to find any obvious connection between the two. Lots of people are talking about this now, so I will run you through the ‘social media isn’t actually that bad’ thing then give you some other things to stress about instead.
Social media use probably isn’t the problem. Social media use is probably just the most obvious manifestation of lots of problems. And in fact, social media could probably be a solution. It’s up to you.
Check it out

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gratification somatic-architecture digital-architecture on-(un)happiness on-aesthetics on-culture on-thinking-and-reasoning

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The loneliness epidemic

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One in five people are lonely. This is not trivial. Loneliness is emerging as one of the greatest threats to physical and emotional health. And it shouldn’t be, because unlike many of our most intractable problems, this one seems so solvable.
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connection somatic-architecture on-love on-friendship on-culture
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