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Mass Tourism Needs to Die

September 16, 2024

Society

capitalism, ignorance, social masses, social media, society

Greece has many beautiful places, and though I’m Greek and I spent the first 20 or so years of my life there, I of course haven’t visited its every corner. I recently spent a few days on Crete, and let me tell you, it was an eye-opening experience. Mass tourism needs to die, yesterday!

You might have recently seen how Spanish citizens in Malaga and other places have protested mass tourism. If you live in any remotely touristy location – let alone a place like Rome, Paris, or Venice – you surely know first-hand how damaging mass tourism can be.

I was so affected by my own experiences – which I’ll talk about more in a while – that I decided to write this post. I was always against mass tourism, but now I am absolutely adamant: Mass tourism must die!

mass tourism needs to die. image of tourists in Louvre
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Conscientious Workers: Meaning of a Dying Breed

June 17, 2024

Society

capitalism, experiencing, ignorance, society

What’s the first word coming to mind when you hear conscientious? Though it might be objector (an interesting topic for another day), in this post I’m focusing on conscientious workers and why, as a concept, it’s highly revealing of the rapid societal transformation we’re experiencing.

Inspiration for this post came from a remarkable interview the French-Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis gave in 1991. Castoriadis is not very well known in the Anglophone world – he wrote in French – but his societal analyses are remarkably prescient. If you haven’t done so, take a look at my post on the collapse of criteria – based on this very interview I’ll be examining today, too.

In a nutshell, Castoriadis makes an intriguing argument regarding conscientious workers as a dying breed. According to him, to work conscientiously is meaningless in capitalism from a systemic point of view. Capitalism relies on conscientious workers, but does not produce them; they are remnants of older societies.

It goes without saying that the repercussions are monumental – and dystopian.

conscientious workers; image of woman packaging
When you have to work long hours at relentless speed (and with the threat of being fired if you don’t), quality becomes a meaningless sidethought
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Shame Will Save the World

February 5, 2024

Society

capitalism, meaning, society

“Shame will save the world” – often translated as “Shame, the feeling that will save mankind” – is what the character of Kris Kelvin utters near the end of Solaris, the film by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Can shame save the world?

For Dostoevsky, it was beauty that would perform that miracle. However, as a Greek blogger has said, beauty will save those who can see it. I tend to agree with this variation much more readily.

In any case, there is a point in selecting shame as the better candidate. I realized it going through a list of freelance jobs with ridiculously underpaid remuneration – think of $5 to produce 1500 words of text. Reading this I said out loud: “I would be embarrassed to offer that”.

And that’s when I realized the role of shame in saving the world.

Shame will save the world - image of Tokyo at night
Our societies are large, faceless, cold… There is no time for shame when there’s money to be made.
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