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The New Yorker writes on the doomsday preparation strategies of the super rich in America, preparing for survival and escape from the society they helped create.
Survivalism, the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort.
This fear could turn into positive actions, but as they write, a number of these people are simple looking for an escape strategy for when a (environmental or other type of) catastrophe would occur, or if there would be a public backlash against them.
Fear of disaster is healthy if it spurs action to prevent it. But elite survivalism is not a step toward prevention; it is an act of withdrawal. Philanthropy in America is still three times as large, as a share of G.D.P., as philanthropy in the next closest country, the United Kingdom. But it is now accompanied by a gesture of surrender, a quiet disinvestment by some of America’s most successful and powerful people. Faced with evidence of frailty in the American project, in the institutions and norms from which they have benefitted, some are permitting themselves to imagine failure. It is a gilded despair.
Happy to learn more about Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers. Learn more about her here in an introduction by Bruno Latour.
Isabelle Stengers has chosen to look for a touchstone distinguishing good science from bad not in epistemology but in ontology, not in the word but in the world.
If scientists are surprised by the ways she demarcates good from bad science, the many people who, from the ranks of feminism, ecology, leftism, think she is their allies should brace themselves for some hard lessons, more exactly, from the lessons she keeps drawing from hard sciences. Going from science to politics is not, for her, going from stringent constraints to more relaxed ones, but keeping exactly the same objectives with a total indifference to what is science and what is society. Domination in politics has many of the same ingredients it has in the laboratory, that is, the unability to let the people one deals with any chance to redefine the situation in their own terms. If this principle subverts so many disciplines from the inside, it subverts even more political stands from the outside, and especially so many of the “standpoint politics” where the outcome of the analysis is entirely determined from the start by the position of the speaker.
Just two things I noticed/read this week. Some of the most advanced humanoid robots and get a lot of attention are modelled as women (e.g. Sophia or Jia Jia). Tech shows such as CES where technology such as robots are showcased such as CES show a history of being linked with the sex industry and a lack of women in the industry.
Just love this picture of Moai at Rano Raraku, Easter Island by Horacio Fernandez, how they are just scattered seemingly randomly and half disappearing into the ground. Reminds me also of the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
It seems that some "literary elites" feel threatened by the approach of Marie Kondo to only keep books that “spark joy”. I agree that books don’t have to necessarily give you joy, and from my perspective you should only keep the ones that had an impact on you and you reach for regularly. But if you care so much about hoarding your books, is there not some part of you that simply needs them to keep up your profile as an intellectual? I have a few books myself that I want to keep, but most of the books that I have read and shaped me are also on the shelves of public libraries, or I have given away again.
Finished a second novel of Elizabeth Strout, "My Name is Lucy Barton". What a wonderful short novel full of heart and sincerity, I had to read it in one go! 📚 Elizabeth Strout is an exceptional writer I must say; there are some many lovely phrases I was underlining throughout this book. The book is written in a concise way, but there are a lot layers in this story about Lucy Barton who is recovering after a surgery (and who is also writer in the novel), and has an opportunity to reconnect with her mother through gossip. Which allows Lucy to understand more about her own and her mother’s difficult lives.
What a wonderful short excerpt from BBC documentary about Venice from 1969. I learned something new as well about the creation of “ghettos” in Venice: “physically isolating a society of people [Jewish refugees] that it simultaneously despised and needed”. It also has some nice images of daily and more quiet life in Venice in winter that since then most likely has disappeared. Have a look at the BBC Archive footage on Twitter.
📖 First time reading a book by Elizabeth Strout, finished "Olive Kitteridge". Very well written prose and amazing how she can give us such a detailed glimpse into all those different characters’ lives using only small stories. I didn’t get any special attachment to Olive Kitteridge herself though, and sometimes her character seems a bit forced in the story to make a link between the different segments. But overall I enjoyed it and found several stories quite memorable.
Great video essay on the channel ‘The Pop Detective’ on a trope that is used in the US television show The Big Bang Theory of adorkable mysogyny: “Adorkable misogynists are male characters whose geeky version of masculinity is framed as both comically pathetic and endearing. And it’s their status as nerdy nice guys that then lets them off the hook for a wide range of creepy, entitled, and downright sexist behaviors… These types of characters are shown engaging in a variety of harassing, entitled, and sexist behavior where women are concerned. They consistently stalk, spy on, lie to, and try to manipulate the women in their lives. They’re overbearing, they refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer, and they often ignore the basic tenets of consent.”. Also check out their other video on The Complicity of Geek Masculinity on the Big Bang Theory.
Leila McNeill at The Baffler writes on the mythos of the male scientific genius and the moral license given to them: “Feynman, who died in 1988, is only one of the famous male scientists now sparking heated debates over the question of whether it’s possible, or even desirable, to separate the science from the scientist. Even as several high-profile scientists have lost their jobs due to charges of sexual misconduct over last few years, #MeToo has not much altered the science professions, and it likely won’t until the culture of science is dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. Part of this process must include a serious reconsideration of how we’ve regarded abusive male scientists in the past—and how we have allowed such figures, in turn, to control the story and direction of science.”.