What’s this about?
“Government is not the solution to our problems, but markets? Oh yeah, no, markets definitely are.”
- Ronald Reagan, probably
Politics has become incredibly unserious. The socialists have never seen a revolution, the conservatives have no idea what they are conserving, and the liberals have no idea as to what comes after their ‘end of history’.
People will often say the fashion of the postmodern era is ‘disillusion’, but its reality is delusion. Our politicians tell us that to ‘take action’ can only ever mean to show support. Technology builds upon the cliché that the new must always replace the old. Academics try to convince us that the world of ideas matter more than the world of things. The market brings it all together, selling us on the illusion that to live is to consume.
The world it creates is one in which the solution to our problems comes not from ourselves but from entrusting our lives to middlemen. Commodities, technologies, political parties, spiritualities, and charities: the differences don’t matter when the interaction is the same. You give the money and they give you the antidote to the world’s problems.
But in this process, people lose sight of their own activity and the the world itself becomes less and less real to them. All social relations become transactions and the world of commodities begins to supplant the world of atoms. Despite our world being more connected than ever before, the feelings of isolation have never been stronger.
When we lose sight of other people, we also lose sight of our place in society. Individuals become more alienated, communities become less self-sufficient, religion decays to the point of blurring with “self-help”, culture recycles aesthetics stripped of their context, and the technology meant to “solve our problems” only seems to create more.
Political theory – normally the language by which we make sense of problems and define a clear path of resistance – has not been much better off. Countless words have been spilled towards performative struggles, searching for a hundred ways to rephrase the same basic idea, and relitigating historical squabbles.
The goal of this blog is to provide a perspective that’s meaningfully fresh. Not entirely new (as few things are), but still a genuine break from the status quo and our current assumptions about the limits of politics. A perspective that hopefully allows others to hone in on the issues most fundamental and give us an idea of what tools we have in the age of the internet. Theology, politics, philosophy, technology, media, doesn’t matter. I’m not interested in specializing but integrating these different angles into a unified critique.
Who am I?
I typically avoid discussing myself, since I want this blog to be about the ideas rather than the author. I’m pretty eclectic in what I draw from, both in terms of subjects (theology, politics, technology, etc.) and viewpoints. I’d say I approach things from a generally left-wing viewpoint, although one that’s very skeptical of the ways in which politics is currently approached.
My reading is very broad, but some of the writers I draw on include Barth, Kierkegaard, Marx, Ellul, Calvin, Lasch, and Adorno.
In the realm of tech, I try to maintain a commitment to the principles of UNIX design and promote the usage of free-software. I make it a point to explore not just how the existence of tech has come to impact society, but also the larger political context surrounding its production and evolution.
(Everything I write is under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0. license. Site background is Composition 8 by Wassily Kandinsky).
Where can you find me?
I usually make a point to keep my presence on federated social media platforms, as linked below. If you need to reach me via Twitter or YouTube, those are also there though.
- Videos get uploaded to PeerTube.
- Odd sketches I make get posted to PixelFed
- Random software/web projects end up on my GitLab
- General contact/updates is handled through Mastodon
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