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A batch of the best highlights from what Stefan's read, .
Given that some of the big political visions of the twentieth century led us to Auschwitz, Hiroshima and the Great Leap Forward, maybe we are better off in the hands of petty-minded bureaucrats. Mixing godlike technology with megalomaniacal politics is a recipe for disaster. Many neo-liberal economists and political scientists argue that it is best to leave all the important decisions in the hands of the free market.
Homo Deus
Yuval Noah Harari
We want to be ready to act in a crisis, but it’s hard to stay vigilant and keep an edge when nothing ever seems to happen that calls forth our abilities. The motivation to stay sharp atrophies, and we’re lulled into apathy and complacency. As a result, men’s standards, self-respect, discipline, and all-around hardihood get soft.
Idleness kills manliness.
Idleness Kills Manliness
Brett and Kate McKay
I am thinking of something I saw on the subway in the early 80s, maybe 1982. I was sitting at the end of the last car on an express train and saw three or four African-American boys (in my memory they were 11-13 years old, maybe younger), grouped around the back window, staring out of it with pure absorption. Curious, I stood to look over their shoulders and saw what they were so raptly taking in: the piercing combination of speed and density as the train gathered momentum and hammered through the massive concrete and metal tunnels, our view herking and jerking with the cars, snatching bits of burning light in metal casement, underground signage, the track flashing and going dark as we clangored through stations, past dozens of waiting humans, personalities firing off bodily messages that our eyes saw before our minds could read them. It was beautiful and the boys were radiant with it, this wordless amazement of things.
The Hidden Life of Stories
Mary Gaitskill
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