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it's like a river flowing in the opposite of the culture. it's very important to participate in the counterculture and participate in public because the culture is a toilet but the counterculture is pure and true. anything can be the counterculture if it's countercultural. i believe the fast casual bowl restaurant to be one of our greatest countercultural institutions today simply for the fact that so many of our countercultural warriors are eating fast casual grain or salad bowls in order to fuel up for their day jobs.
Dec 19, 2023
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the first is Becca Rothfield’s book of essays all things are too small — really beautifully written with intriguing ideas about contemporary culture and consumption and excess and minimalism. mildly esoteric at times, but I’m a sucker for aesthetic and affective analysis so….
the second is from the book 21st Century Yoga: Culture, Politics, and Practice, which is a FABULOUS collection altogether. The specific essay that I legitimately have not stopped thinking about since I read it 5+ years ago is “Modern Yoga Will Not Form a Real Culture Until Every Studio Can Also Double as a Soup Kitchen” by Matthew Remski. 10/10 recommend as a yogi but also as someone fascinated by collectivity, compassion, and contemporary culture.
Sep 30, 2024
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We love looking backwards to try to get in touch with ourselves, our history, traditional ways of doing things. I think this is a noble pursuit but the pace of cycling through eras in the trend cycle for example has grown increasingly rapid to the point that it feels like we’re endlessly regurgitating everything all at once, without context.
Rediscovering the past can look like going back to pre-industrial ways of living which is a beautiful thing to strive toward. In a lot of ways, we’ve also abandoned a lot of traditional ways of doing things in favor of methods that are easier, faster, and simpler, not necessarily better.
On the other hand, one of the three essential elements to fascism identified by Jason Stanley is invoking a mythic past to manufacture nostalgia for a more traditional, patriarchal, and racially pure past, which is I think what we’re seeing with a lot of people who romanticize 1950s Americana as some kind of utopian traditional society.
Carl Sagan said:
“In general, human societies are not innovative. They are hierarchical and ritualistic. Suggestions for change are greeted with suspicion: they imply an unpleasant future variation in ritual and hierarchy: an exchange of one set of rituals for another, or perhaps for a less structured society with fewer rituals. And yet there are times when societies must change.”
“As a consequence of the enormous social and technological changes of the last few centuries, the world is not working well. We do not live in traditional and static societies. But our government, in resisting change, act as if we did. Unless we destroy ourselves utterly, the future belongs to those societies that, while not ignoring the reptilian and mammalian parts of our being, enable the characteristically human components of our nature to flourish; to those societies that encourage diversity rather than conformity; to those societies willing to invest resources in a variety of social, political, economic and cultural experiments, and prepared to sacrifice short-term advantage for long-term benefit; to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.”
So I think we need forward-thinking transformational change, though it may not be as comfortable as nostalgia…
Jan 15, 2025
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Jan 5, 2024
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Just met Woody Allen IRL and saved his life. There was a big scary spider about to bite into him. Luckily I was there to stop anything bad from happening. The spider was huge. Almost as big as the spider from the lord of the rings movies or other movies about big spiders. Soon-Yi was also there. She says hello and that she was moved by my act of selfless bravery.
Dec 27, 2023