Walk into any shopping mall, fast-food restaurant, or social media platform, and you’ll see the same expression on people’s faces—a vacant, almost trance-like engagement with whatever they’re consuming. They scroll, they chew, they swipe their credit cards, all in a loop that feels automatic. It’s not hunger, not necessity, and…
Category: Social and Self-Help
Exploring things social, inspirational and motivational
“The Well-Connected Community” by Alison Gilchrist: Why Networks Matter More Than Plans
If you’ve ever been involved in community work—whether organizing a neighborhood event, running a local nonprofit, or just trying to get people to care about something beyond their own front doors—you’ve probably noticed a hard truth: good intentions aren’t enough. Some communities flourish, while others, despite funding and well-meaning policies,…
“Manufacturing Consent: by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman: A Propaganda Model for the Modern Age
In the nearly four decades since its publication, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media has solidified itself as one of the most incisive critiques of American journalism. Noam Chomsky, the linguist turned political dissident, and Edward S. Herman, the late economist and media analyst, do not merely…
The Currency of Showing Up
There’s a woman in my neighborhood who bakes extra muffins every Sunday and leaves them in little paper bags on doorsteps. No note, no fuss. Just something sweet and simple, a way of saying, “I see you.” There’s also a guy down the street—handy with tools—who once spent an entire…
Find Your Place in this World and Make Something of It
There was a man who waited. He waited for the world to tell him who he was, what he was, and why he was here. He waited for a sign. He waited for permission. He waited until the waiting itself became his purpose. And then one day, he looked in…
The Democratic Market: Balancing Freedom, Fairness, and Power
A truly democratic free-market society would not be a contradiction in terms but a balance of forces—economic power held in check by democratic accountability, individual liberty safeguarded by collective responsibility. It would be a society where markets serve people, not the other way around, and where democracy is not merely…
“The World Until Yesterday” by Jared Diamond – a review
There once was a world where disputes are settled with bows and arrows, not courtrooms. Where a child roamed freely, unburdened by the paranoia of “stranger danger.” Where food was neither purchased nor grown but hunted with patience and eaten with gratitude. This isn’t some utopian fantasy—it’s the way humanity…
The Tyranny of the Image
The world of ideas, like the world of the body, has its infections, its parasites, its cancers. Thought is not free merely because it moves; its motion can be directed, shaped, determined by forces that do not belong to it. A man believes he is thinking, yet he is merely…
The Simple Joy of Being Useful
A man spends his life chasing things. Money, maybe. Or power. Or fame. It depends on the man, but the chasing is always there. He runs after something because he thinks he must, because everyone else is running too, and because stopping feels like failure. But there comes a day…
Labor Aristocracy: Servitude Disguised as Prosperity?
Perhaps the illusion of the middle class was never an accident at all. Maybe it was a calculation, precise and cold, a grand maneuver in the service of a deeper order. That one might wake in a house they call their own – or the mortgage company’s, drive a car…