One of the chief emblems of Western modernity is the bureaucratic apparatus itself, in all its vast, clunky glory. One could even say that the inflation of bureaucracy is a rite of passage of empire decline. …
The ideal of one-has-an-obligation-to self-preservation endures
The realm of mental health has always had some running for the hills because something about it is akin to staring down the dark, ambiguous secrecy of the well. Who knows what is down there? Who’s to say what is wrong with me or why I am behaving the way…
Not long ago, debt inspired moral revulsion, or at least wariness. Generations used to agree on the merits of fiscal rectitude. Respect used to be paid to the hard laws of principled finance. So what happened?
The short answer is: the government stuck their fingers in the operation — distorting…
Hermann Goering, one of Hitler’s chief and notoriously cold masterminds of the Nazi regime, once confessed during a Nuremberg trial recess to the journalist Gustave Gilbert how pathetically easy it was to bring populations under control by fear. Excerpted from Gilbert’s Nuremberg Diary:
“Naturally, the common people don’t want war…
In the opening episode of HBOs Chernobyl a crackly voice cuts through, backdropped by a series of dim, domestic scenes. The voice belongs to none other than Professor Valery Legasov who spearheaded the scientific inquiry into the Soviet Union’s 1986 nuclear disaster.
His grim musings flow from an initial question:
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Since the early days of last March, thorny negotiations have waged between the opposing demands of public health and economic preservation. What has this essential dilemma boiled down to? For many it has meant a clash between freedom and security.
This has always eternally been a tricky, imperfect relationship for…
In the earlier stages of the outbreak and ensuing lockdowns, people chirped the well, it’s just the new normal bit to each other so profusely that it soon became a staple component of pandemic vocabulary. As the months marched on, the phrase soured, morphing from the amused chirp to a…
The humble, Vermont-hailing 1920s-era President, Calvin Coolidge, once bemoaned: “They criticize me for harping on the obvious . . .” This brief divulgence is a good crystallization of his legacy. In truth, advancing the obvious represents a dead mode of governance. …
The first time I learned about opportunity cost as a bolded vocabulary word in the pages of an economic textbook, it struck in me an uncomfortable psychological chord. This shamelessly pragmatic reality of life was epitomized so bluntly. It had a sobering feel. What did it amount to? …
Self-love is in fashion. This much is indisputable, though it didn’t used to be in vogue. Turn the clock back a century and self-love would have seemed an appallingly foreign notion. …
