not all of it can matter equally to you

 --- Meg Shields, in ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ And How to Survive Being Very Online, July 2022, pointing to (referencing?) a video essay by Thomas Flight

Excerpt

The internet is a place of endless curiosity and community. But it’s also overwhelming to be bombarded with a constant stream of information, political causes, and entertainment. The internet is silly, stupid, anarchic, tragic, and meaningful. And not all of it can matter equally to you. Our little monkey brains weren’t built for that. And part of what Daniels’ film is saying, as the video essay below underlines, is that determining what does and doesn’t matter to you in an attention economy is a life-saving step for surviving in the world post-Internet.

If you don't want to write propaganda, you write essays

--- psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips, in conversation with Hermione Lee, On Giving Up, The LRB Podcast, Wednesday, March 6, 2024, at time code 38:04

If ChatGPT can do it, and if the purpose is learning, it’s not worth doing

 --- John Warner, in On AI and ‘Meaningful’ Feedback, Inside Higher Ed, Feb 2024

... that great LEVIATHAN ... that Mortall God, to which wee owe ... our peace and defence

--- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) (on gutenberg.org), h/t David Runciman, The Handover (2023:34) for the reference.

Note the group agency implied by "or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will."

Excerpt

The Generation Of A Common-wealth

The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their owne industrie, and by the fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or Assembly of men, to beare their Person; and every one to owne, and acknowledge himselfe to be Author of whatsoever he that so beareth their Person, shall Act, or cause to be Acted, in those things which concerne the Common Peace and Safetie; and therein to submit their Wills, every one to his Will, and their Judgements, to his Judgment. This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is a reall Unitie of them all, in one and the same Person, made by Covenant of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, “I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner.” This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speake more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence. For by this Authoritie, given him by every particular man in the Common-Wealth, he hath the use of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is inabled to forme the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutuall ayd against their enemies abroad.

The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable

--- painter Robert Henri, quoted passim, couldn't find source

 “The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”

we control nothing but we influence everything

--- Brian Klaas, political scientist, in conversation with Russ Roberts on the Econtalk podcast, episode If Life Is Random, Is It Meaningless? (with Brian Klaas), Jan 22, 2024, about his book Fluke.

From the transcript:

But it's also something where it's derived from a sense, for me at least, that, if the world is intertwined in this way and if our lives can be swayed by forces seen and unseen, sometimes random, sometimes small, we have a little bit less control than we think we do. Right? And, I think we're sold this world where, like, you are in control. Right? So, the self-help industry is basically an industry that tells you, 'It's your fault you're not happy, because here's the recipe to being happy and wealthy and so on.' And, the world just doesn't work that way.

And I think it lets us off the hook a little bit. I think that's the other aspect of this that I find helpful, is--I repeatedly use this quote, and it's sort of this idea that we control nothing but we influence everything. And, when you start to think about it that way, combined with the aspects of what you just read, I think it lets humanity sort of be a little bit messy and be a little bit imperfect. And it's okay.

[Better] to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a résumé, a commentary.

--- Jose Luis Borges, Prologue to The Garden of Forking Paths, in Ficciones, edited and with an introduction by Anthony Kerrigan, Grove Press (New York), (1941, 1962:15)

The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a résumé, a commentary.

 

What is presented as a list of unimpeachable virtues and laudable goals is in practice a web of contradictions

 --- A.O. Scott, in The Word That Undid Claudine Gay, New York Times, Jan 3, 2024

Excerpt

“These last weeks,” Dr. Gay writes, “have helped make clear the work we need to do to build that future — to combat bias and hate in all its forms, to create a learning environment in which we respect each other’s dignity and treat one another with compassion, and to affirm our enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth.” This sentence echoes the Harvard Corporation’s gusty roster of commitments, improving the syntax and the prose rhythm. Those infinitives stack up nicely. It sounds like a lot of work, but how can anyone be against any of it?

The real question, though, is how one institution can be for all of it. Is this work the university is really equipped to do? Combating bias may involve constraining open inquiry; free expression is not always respectful or compassionate. The pursuit of truth may outrun everything else. This cascade of noble imperatives can be read descriptively, as a diagnosis of the causes of campus turmoil. What is presented as a list of unimpeachable virtues and laudable goals is in practice a web of contradictions.

Dr. Claudine Gay at a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony in Harvard Yard in December 2023.
Adam Glanzman for The New York Times