Category: ideas

“Research about REM/dreaming began in the mid-1950s and accelerated sharply with advances in neuroimaging. We now know that, independently of sleep – that is, of non-REM sleep – REM/dreaming plays an essential role in learning and memory, mood and immunity, as well as in creativity and artistic expression. Just as important, REM/dreaming stretches, expands and reshapes our very consciousness. From Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, REM/dreaming effectively morphs our fundamental sense of self.” – Aeon

“Like many of us, I talk to myself out loud, though I’m a little unusual in that I often do it in public spaces. Whenever I want to figure out an issue, develop an idea or memorise a text, I turn to this odd work routine. While it’s definitely earned me a reputation in my neighbourhood, it’s also improved my thinking and speaking skills immensely.” – Psyche

“As the 2020s dawn, it is crucial to understand the sources and contours of this skepticism toward science and scientists. We stand on the brink of revolutions in fields from biotechnology to robotics to computing, even as global warming accelerates. As a result, arguments over science underlie some of our most divisive and consequential policy debates.” – Boston Review

Some of these objects are troubling, a few are ridiculous, many are ambiguous (though some, to be sure, are delightful). These are the objects that caused us to see the world in a new way this year — or the objects that this singular year forced us to consider anew. – Medium

“No living artist I know of, however fervently activist, is renouncing art as a distraction from moral commitment, as the more extreme Constructivists did. But a good deal of recent polemical art suggests a use-by date that is not far in the future. Aesthetic judgment, based in experience, confirms differences between what is of its time and what, besides being of its time, may prove timeless. I feel that our present moment, marked by imbroglios of art and politics, forces the issue, even in face of tendencies a century old.” – The New Yorker

“For most of my life, I’ve been used to thinking of disabled people in the mainstream way – that is, in the third person. When I tick ‘yes’, I still can’t quite believe it. Even after eight years of paying close attention to disability scholarship and activism, when I picture disability, my mind still defaults to the stock images: the wheelchair symbol, the guide dog, the white stick, the prosthetic limb, the accessible toilet.” But… – Aeon

“Properly understood, liberalism offers an incomparably rich, four-century-long experimental history of a never-ending quest to find the best way for diverse people—and peoples—to live together well in conditions of freedom. It is a theoretical treasure trove and a practical experience bank. How telling, by contrast, that so-called “post-liberalism” cannot even come up with a proper name for itself; its very moniker reveals its epigonic character.” – Prospect

Humans are given to hierarchy—we measure ourselves against those around us and strive to better our relative position—but we are, at the same time, unhappy that this is true of ourselves. This predicament is the product of two drives. – Boston Review

“When space shrinks and time expands, we suddenly find ourselves traveling inward—binge-watching ’80s sci-fi, creating new online personas, studying Buddhism, covering our bedroom ceilings in cotton and LED strips so it looks like a thundering night sky and/or reflects our storm-tossed souls. Anything to rediscover ourselves. Macroculture may have been voided by 2020, but microcultures boomed. At the very least, everyone’s just a bit more interested in something as a result, and thus more interesting, as people.” – Wired

“There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen,” Vladimir Lenin supposedly observed. It can sound profound and ominous when you read it the first time, but when three books on the coronavirus crisis all quote the same line, it reflects something between an intellectual consensus and a lack of imagination. Still, in the authors’ telling, the crisis didn’t just compress decades of history into 2020; it was also decades in the making.” – Washington Post