Many years ago the philosophy honors society at my university asked me to deliver a "Last Lecture." I did, calling it "How Entertainment, Efficiency, and Numbers are killing us." One of the premises of my argument was that efficiency is what we seek when we're doing things we don't want to be doing. Thus, the more efficient we become, the more we can do that we don't want to be doing, and that is killing us. In my online, official, faculty biography, I conclude, "Despite every well-meaning attempt to reform him, he remains hopelessly disorganized and defiantly inefficient." -- P.S. I loved Seven Deadly Sins. Thank you.
Great article expressing one of the biggest problems of the world we live in which predominantly values and rewards efficiency and convenience over beauty, love and sacredness. Cheers for the scenic route!
I've been thinking for some time about how many of the ills we currently face can be blamed on human over-attraction to three things: convenience, comfort and efficiency.
The (sincere) irony in the relationship between the title, the article and the admission at the end of experimenting with shorter posts did not escape me. In fact, it gave me a (welcomed) chuckle to an otherwise serious day. However, to answer your question, Jonathan, I enjoyed this shorter post because the subject matter suited a "punchy" format. However, I also highly value your longer posts because they challenge me to engage in deep thinking, an art that we risk losing in this day and age. In my opinion, both styles are appreciated.
I like the shorter personal posts. I like swearing. And actually I think you cut really deep here.
Exuberance is beauty as Blake told us. The view from the extreme end of (conscious) waste and inefficiency we embrace at Church of Burn is glorious!
As your talk of vice and virtue indicates there is some secret connection between these themes of inefficiency, inconvenience - or more broadly 'waste' - and the moral ideologies of Capital.
I'd love to see you counterpose your embrace of inefficiency to the ascetism that seems so popular in much eco-spiritual discourse (esp on Substack).
I am more or less housebound at present as home health care partner to my wife of 44 years: the internet is essential. The art of using it for personal contact and expression is to avoid the cliches of efficiency and convenience by which it wants to achieve scale. Hand written and personally posted notes do not scale. In fact, real people do not scale. Might I put it that the desired interpretation and response is already written in the code?
Many years ago the philosophy honors society at my university asked me to deliver a "Last Lecture." I did, calling it "How Entertainment, Efficiency, and Numbers are killing us." One of the premises of my argument was that efficiency is what we seek when we're doing things we don't want to be doing. Thus, the more efficient we become, the more we can do that we don't want to be doing, and that is killing us. In my online, official, faculty biography, I conclude, "Despite every well-meaning attempt to reform him, he remains hopelessly disorganized and defiantly inefficient." -- P.S. I loved Seven Deadly Sins. Thank you.
Great article expressing one of the biggest problems of the world we live in which predominantly values and rewards efficiency and convenience over beauty, love and sacredness. Cheers for the scenic route!
I've been thinking for some time about how many of the ills we currently face can be blamed on human over-attraction to three things: convenience, comfort and efficiency.
The (sincere) irony in the relationship between the title, the article and the admission at the end of experimenting with shorter posts did not escape me. In fact, it gave me a (welcomed) chuckle to an otherwise serious day. However, to answer your question, Jonathan, I enjoyed this shorter post because the subject matter suited a "punchy" format. However, I also highly value your longer posts because they challenge me to engage in deep thinking, an art that we risk losing in this day and age. In my opinion, both styles are appreciated.
I like the shorter personal posts. I like swearing. And actually I think you cut really deep here.
Exuberance is beauty as Blake told us. The view from the extreme end of (conscious) waste and inefficiency we embrace at Church of Burn is glorious!
As your talk of vice and virtue indicates there is some secret connection between these themes of inefficiency, inconvenience - or more broadly 'waste' - and the moral ideologies of Capital.
I'd love to see you counterpose your embrace of inefficiency to the ascetism that seems so popular in much eco-spiritual discourse (esp on Substack).
I am more or less housebound at present as home health care partner to my wife of 44 years: the internet is essential. The art of using it for personal contact and expression is to avoid the cliches of efficiency and convenience by which it wants to achieve scale. Hand written and personally posted notes do not scale. In fact, real people do not scale. Might I put it that the desired interpretation and response is already written in the code?
Re elsewhere, many happy returns!
Re here, may I ask if you intend to continue 'leading from confusion'?
Dear Jonathan, YES: the WWW is: inefficiency by the speed of light. Feeding on Agnostic Intelligence AKA AI.