Ashley Frawley

One of the (many) downsides of therapy culture's insistence on continued internal subjective monitoring is the way that we are enjoined to forget that most of the time, nothing particularly interesting is going on.

Just read a paper suggesting wellness apps can give people 'a sense of purpose'. Wow! 'End your existential dread for just £3.99!' Is it really necessary to say (let alone print the opposite) that, if anything, these things offer a diversion from our persistent lack of purpose?

"On both sides of the Atlantic, ordinary people seem more rational about whiteness than does Shriver. “White declinists” are using working-class white people as alibis for their own prejudices." @kenanmalik on point, as usual. https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/05/to-be-truly-british-the-country-needs-to-stay-largely-white-really-lionel-shriver?__twitter_impression=true …

The new activist's enemy is mass society itself. They are political not because they want to make life better for the masses, but because they want to distinguish themselves from them.

Confess! Confess! Remove the stigma! Feed the algorithm!

I think some progressives championed extreme pandemic measures hoping they were also an opportunity to radically transform societies desperately in need of change. But they should have realised who currently holds the power to change things. Hint: It's not us.

It's weird that the communitarian turn on the Left is upheld by people who feel zero loyalty to others. So many times I've seen people I thought were allies or even friends throw each other under the bus over some small political disagreement. Totally bizarre.

Don't get me wrong. If my mediocrity was at least hyper productive, I'd be pretty pleased with myself.

I've just come across the phrase "hyper productive mediocrity" and it perfectly encapsulates everything that's gone wrong with HE.

Now of course, as with anything these groups are going to be right/wrong depending on the issue. But I just had to review something by a self described punk rocker and it made me laugh at how completely the viewpoint had flipped.

20 years ago: Gosh, people are so stupid. They all believe what corporations, the mainstream media and governments tell them. Now: Gosh, people are so stupid. If only they would believe what corporations, the mainstream media and governments tell them.

Most of the time it's better to seek the 'true' than it is to seek the 'good'. As a society we've got this pretty much backwards.

Obviously not all sci-fi, but for example while Star Trek still had money, it seemed out of place and anachronistic in a world with replicators and without companies. Then take some horror film like Passengers and see that capitalist expansion is central to the plot.