There was a time when finding your way required more than a signal. In the early years of my military service, I used a PLGR, a Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver. The name suggested something more refined than the device itself. It was large, deliberate, and slow to orient. Acquiring a signal could take time, and … Continue reading The Machines That Verify Us
Category: Cultural Essays
Reflections on the customs, moral assumptions, and social habits that shape everyday life. These essays explore the traditions, virtues, and institutions that quietly organize society.
How and Why Do Myths Arise
I have noticed that modern people speak about myths with a certain confidence, usually while participating in them. The word itself is often used dismissively, as though a myth is merely a falsehood displaced by more rational understanding. We contrast myths with facts as though the distinction resolves the matter cleanly and permanently. And yet … Continue reading How and Why Do Myths Arise
The Company One Keeps at the End of the World
There is a particular kind of question that appears harmless on its face and yet carries more weight than intended. The “zombie apocalypse” prompt is one of these. It is usually asked in jest, often answered quickly, and almost never revisited with any seriousness. Who are the three people you'd want at your side in … Continue reading The Company One Keeps at the End of the World
Three Lenses in a Noisy World: Building a Personal Method for Understanding the News
There is a quiet habit many of us carry without much thought. We wake, we check the news, and we assume that in doing so we are becoming informed. It feels responsible, even virtuous in a modest civic sense. A person who keeps up with events is, after all, a person who cares about the … Continue reading Three Lenses in a Noisy World: Building a Personal Method for Understanding the News
Xenophanes and the problem of human gods
Ancient Greece produced many memorable philosophers, but few left behind an observation as quietly unsettling as that of Xenophanes of Colophon1. He did not set out to dismantle religion, at least not in any modern sense. What he did instead was notice something that others, perhaps, had grown too accustomed to see. To a Greek … Continue reading Xenophanes and the problem of human gods
Borrowed Armor
I recently finished Stephen Fry’s retelling of the Trojan War1, and as often happens with old stories, one episode lingered longer than the rest. It is the moment when Patroclus puts on Achilles’ armor. Achilles, in a fit of pride and grievance, has withdrawn from the fighting. Without him, the Greeks begin to lose ground. … Continue reading Borrowed Armor
The Puppets Still Dance
Some music ages like milk. Other music ages like iron. I am not entirely sure which quality I expected when I returned to Master of Puppets after all these years, but I suspect I did not expect to recognize myself in it. In 1986, when the album was released, I was ten years old and nowhere near … Continue reading The Puppets Still Dance
