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Time is always running out
I got briefly obsessed last year by the observation that at a rate of one book a week between the ages of 5 and 80, it will only be possible to read 3,900 books in a lifetime. This is a little over one...
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Why does the iPhone matter to us?
My initial impressions of Bernard Stiegler were far from positive, largely ensuing from the sheer incomprehensibility of his writing. However this essay by Mark Featherstone (HT Emma Head) has reminded...
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Harmut Rosa on the logic of acceleration and the good life
His argument chimes with what I was trying to say here about the iPhone. Rosa argues that the prevailing concept of the good life in contemporary society is one which seeks to maximise our access to...
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An existential analytics of speed
Integral to Harmut Rosa’s Social Acceleration (all references are to this book) is an understanding of cultural responses to acceleration and the role they play in intensifying the acceleration of the...
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The gaps in which being human happens
I’m currently reading Vincent Deary’s How We Are. It’s the first book in a planned trilogy exploring how people change. For the last few months I’ve had a vague idea that at some point I’d like to...
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The Lure of Minimalism
What is ‘lifestyle minimalism’? To a certain extent it depends upon whom you ask. It’s often talked about as a ‘tool’ to live a simpler and more meaningful life. It’s often framed in terms of reducing...
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The businessman and the fisherman
From Paul Dolan’s Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life, though it’s also included in the introduction to the English language version of Harmut Rosa’s Social Acceleration:...
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You must change your life!
I was introduced to this Rilke poem via a book by Peter Sloterdijk: We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside,...
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Towards a Sociology of the Good Life
What is the good life? It’s a question which preoccupied me in my past life as a trainee political philosopher and it’s one which still concerns me as a sociologist. It’s rarely addressed within the...
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Overcoming your modernist training for constant improvement, advancement,...
Overcoming your modernist training for constant improvement, advancement, development and accumulation. That’s what the social psychologist Kenneth Gergen advocates in the new introduction to his...
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