Tuesday Links 5/25/21
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Ever since I read Robert Caro’s magnificent book The Power Broker, I’ve been fascinated by any biography that demonstrates how a leader acquired and wielded power. This write-up on Jean Monnet, the Guerrilla Bureaucrat absolutely fits the bill.
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I have been reflecting for days on this 2003 journal article by Bruno Latour, Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. He defines a few powerful distinctions and heuristics, and his condemnation of the sterility of a certain strain of deconstructionist criticism is more pertinent now than ever.
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The Rise and Fall of Online Culture by Scott Alexander is a new follow-up to my previous recommendation, New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed. Both excellent pieces.
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In That’s Not a Personality, Sweetie, John Ganz attacks the modern obsession with testing and tracking all manner of “personality metrics”:
We constantly seek ways to flatten ourselves onto some two-dimensional grid. When we don’t do it, our employers will do it for us. It’s easier that way… But everything that seems to give us a location, an identity, a self, I believe is potentially deforming. And the more we insist on jamming the world into awkward and crude abstractions that appear to give things shape and meaning, the more of its actual shape and meaning we will lose.
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Barrett Swanson went undercover in a TikTok influencer house so that you don’t have to. His findings here: Anxiety of Influencers. Pairs well with Justin EH Smith’s On the Job. Bonus: Have any of you heard of TikTok Marketplace? Apparently TikTok has a backend brand portal where their corporate customers browse and purchase influencers. Gross.
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I listened to a podcast interview with Malcolm Gladwell about his new Military History Lite book The Bomber Mafia and was disconcerted by his flippant lack of moral consideration about the strategies and consequences involved in his story. So this torching of the book was a pretty satisfying read (this thread is an even more detailed takedown by a historian of that era).
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I do not ordinarily link to the NYT, however I really liked this piece by Agnes Callard on the impossibility of truly changing our own minds without other people:
“Thinking you’re right about something isn’t a sign of arrogance — it’s a sign of thinking. Changing your own mind isn’t your job; it’s the job of other people, of those who disagree with you. That’s because, unlike you, other people are free and able to think you’re wrong. Likewise, it’s ultimately your responsibility to change other people’s minds.”
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Earlier this month I was blown away by Marilynne Robinson’s beautiful novel Gilead. I haven’t read the recently-released Jack (or the other sequels) yet, but I was impressed by this essay about the series. While I disagree with the author’s overarching political conclusion, her reading of the novels and their theological influences is impressive.
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I learned the term “elite capture” from this article in the Boston Review. While the author focuses on the hijacking of identity politics from an attempt to build coalitions of the oppressed into an elite status game, I think the concept is far more widely applicable. As institutions are created and begin to drift, they can devolve into forces diametrically opposed to their founder’s intentions. One example that comes to mind is the Forest Service devolving from 19th century reform effort to foremost enabler of clear cutting.
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Let me introduce JG Ballard, an eerily prescient science fiction writer of the last century.
Thank you for reading. If you have a friend who you think would enjoy this, please feel free to forward it along.
Alex
These books, and those from previous lists, can be viewed or purchased here.
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