Intro
Health problems, specifically the one caused by my spine, are not going anywhere, and I have no idea when the hospital will call for the physical therapy appointments. As a result, I had to minimize my office time to calls and recordings only because sitting on my desk as usual only makes things worse.
In other news, NBA playoffs are going way more exciting and fun than I was expecting. And I got way happier for the 76ers eliminating the Celtics because I was feeling even more sympathy for Joel Embiid than before.
Greetings from Sangarius. Hope you’re all doing well.
Mission Control
Inbox: 88
RSS Reader: 1531
Upcoming Events/Travel in Next 30 Days: 1
- I have so much I want to do, but my health issue is not going away, so I don’t know how much I can get done this week.
- One thing is clear: we have to record and publish the new Tuhaf Gelecek Podcast episode.
- I’m trying to use this slower recovery period to redesign my workflow and routines, so this might end up being the main theme of the week.
Check my Now page if you want to see what I’m up to in a more detailed way.
The Need for Anti-Dystopias
Since I finished reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, I wanted to write about it. But having so many interesting and impressive things about the book I think worth mentioning, I never managed to write something worth publishing here. Like how the book starts by punching you in the face.
But another major thing about the book I wanted to talk about was also the reason I couldn’t write about it. It’s a story that’s neither utopian nor dystopian. It doesn’t really give you a clean way out, forces you to accept the messy reality, and shows you why we need to deal with that mess if we want to make things better. And that’s what you get at the end, things just getting better. And I didn’t have the words I needed to explain it.
This paragraph from the final chapter explains it really good.
“He was definitely saying something. That we could become something magnificent, or at least interesting. That we began as we still are now, child geniuses. That there is no other home for us than here. That we will cope no matter how stupid things get. That all couples are odd couples. That the only catastrophe that can’t be undone is extinction. That we can make a good place. That people can take their fate in their hands. That there is no such thing as fate.”
This feeling and approach has been brewing in my brain for a while — and you can see the signs of it in my earlier posts. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Johannes Kleske published a newsletter and made everything click.
“Anti-dystopia promises nothing. It does not say, “Do X, and everything will be fine.” It says something much more modest and much more honest: only if we do something is there even a possibility that things could get better.”
The promise part is the most critical one. Utopias and dystopias not only promise us something but that promise also creates what I call the agency trap. Your agency is limited by that promise because the future is limited by them. Anti-dystopias, and The Ministry of the Future, doesn’t fit into these categories because it doesn’t limit the future and leaves the door open to many possibilities.
Which is what we need these days because getting stuck in this duality might be one of the main reasons why most people are having trouble imagining any kind of better futures for themselves and people around them. We need to accept that there won’t be a dystopia or a utopia ahead; it’s just things being and either getting better or worse. Usually both at the same time. We’ll always live in an anti-dystopia, and we have to focus on making the best out of it.
Based on my experience with and observations of younger people, that’s definitely the case for them. They need to know that the future is not a black-and-white choice and they can actually have agency over their futures. That was the energy during my time at the high school I visited the week before. This is why I always try to say yes to any kind of work that creates a chance for me to work with them.
Sometimes you feel like something tries to get out of your brain and all it needs is that specific password. Finding those passwords is probably one of the most cathartic moments in my work. It’s like you finally have the tool/material you needed to finish the things you wanted to work on for a long time and now is the time.
Song of the Week
Sure, some artists upload concert records or release live albums. Some even put out their setlists too. But only a madman like Fred again.. will say “fuck it, I’m going to upload my whole tour as a single video on YouTube” and release a 108-hour-long video (and doesn’t put any ads according to the comments).
This video plus sharing of all the tour media via Dropbox is a clear sign that Fred knows how to play this game in the 2020s better than the most. Especially the ones who try to buy themselves hype online.
Reading Log
“They assume that what is being automated is creativity itself. A more careful reading suggests something more precise: that what is being automated is a particular historical form of creativity, one shaped and constrained by the conditions of industrial society. If that is true, then the real question is not how to defend creativity from machines, but how to re-understand what we have been calling creativity all along, and what might lie beyond it.”
Rewilding Creativity – Indy Johar
“The result is a cognitive trap. Faced with uncertainty, we tend to narrow our thinking, rush to conclusions and cling to simple explanations. In extreme cases, this can manifest as anxiety, rigid beliefs, or even susceptibility to conspiracy theories – frameworks that impose order on a confusing world.”
How to train your brain to see possibility instead of doom | Neuroscience | The Guardian
“Every new situation, or even the prospect of a new situation, transforms our ideas about history, and indeed our way of narrating history. One thing is for certain: today, the old historical narratives, both of progress and revolution, have collapsed. We need to find a new way of thinking about the present – and about the past.”
Chartbook 441 The Two-Faced Present – A conversation about the “short twentieth century” – and the paradoxical twenty-first with Wang Hui (in collaboration with Equator magazine)
Outro
And that’s a wrap for this week. I know it’s Tuesday evening, but since I missed the last week’s post, I wanted to make sure I’m not missing two weeks in a row, no matter what.
Take care, and I’ll see you around.
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