The Monday Mix (26/07/2021)
Hey friends,
Not much to report this week, so I’ll get straight into the stuff I want to share with you all.
I’m going to share one of my more recent Medium posts this week. It’s been popular over the past few weeks and looks at some of the best quotes from the famous philosopher, Socrates. Check it out!
6 Quotes by Socrates That Will Challenge Your Thinking
His Name Was Emmett Till
It’s hard to describe how incredible this piece is in a paragraph or two. It’s a powerful piece of writing about a murder I’d never heard of before I read the article.
What it hammered home to me is how much resentment and strife there still is in America. 60 years after the civil rights movement came to prominence, the country is still struggling to come to terms with its past.
Pandora’s Vox
This is one of the most famous pieces of writing on the early internet, back when it was known as cyberspace. I first came across the writer of this article, Carmen Hermosillo while watching a documentary by Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.
The essay argues that far from disrupting established hierarchies, cyberspace has led to a commodification of the individual and the transfer of power to the individual. Here’s a quick passage from the essay:
Proponents of so–called cyber–communities rarely emphasize the economic, business–mind nature of the community: many cyber–communities are businesses that rely upon the commodification of human interaction. They market their businesses by appeal to hysterical identification and fetishism no more or less than the corporations that brought us the two hundred dollar athletic shoe.
What’s remarkable about this essay is that it was written in 1994, and reading this in 2021, it’s remarkable how on-point Carmen’s essay was.
How western travel influencers got tangled up in Pakistan's politics
As a travel blogger, this story is baffling and enthralling in equal measure. How you end up getting involved with the Pakistan government to the extent you effectively become a propaganda tool for them is beyond me.
This is a bizarre story and one which highlights the dangers of the web and social media in ways Carmen predicted in the above essay all those years ago.
Book I’m reading - The Utopia of Rules: I just started this today and I’m excited to see what I learn. David Graeber was one of the most original thinkers on the planet, his books are always a joy to read and challenge you in ways you hadn’t imagined.
Quote I’m pondering - “Humanity must seek what is not simple and obvious using the simple and obvious.” - Musonius Rufus
That’s all for this week.
Until next time,
Tom