for thinking people
October 29, 2018
Long-time readers of the blog might already know my attitude toward social media. If not, take a look at this article on Facebook, or my thoughts on Instagram. If you want the short version, here it is: I hate them. Now, the fact that I hate social media isn’t useful to anyone of you. But why I hate them might be. Today I want to tell you why writers and Twitter is a bad combination.
August 8, 2018
Some time ago, I read a bizarre “review” (more about it in a moment) of a book I had read myself. The reviewer had written something in the direction of “I kept reading thinking that it’d get better, but it never did. The story was left unresolved.” That was basically it, that was the review. I’ve talked before about reviewing books fairly, but today we’ll tackle another issue: that of misunderstanding books.
It goes without saying that this was not a review. You can’t spend two lines (or even two hundred) saying simply “I didn’t like it” and claim this is a review. Perhaps we could call it a “rating rationale” though semantics isn’t the crucial factor here. Rather, I’d like to focus on something far more serious. Something that has far-reaching consequences for the current state as well as the future of our societies.
August 2, 2018
Long-term readers of this blog will recognize that one of its themes is mediocrity. Perhaps the world has always been like that, but the digital revolution has exacerbated the problem. People become more self-centered (more idiotai in other words), and focus not on the long-term collective good but on temporary, meaningless personal gain. Some might think that, in such a context, being “elite” is the counterbalance. But just as “ham” and “hammock” are two vastly different things, so is being elite and being elitist. Elitism is mediocrity. It’s simply a different aspect of the same thing.
