Tag: betterplaces

What the Rhine Remembers

What the Rhine Remembers

She told us, and here her voice changed, that we should not let ourselves believe the people taken from this street were only Jews. They were also gay men and women. They were intellectuals. They were scientists whose research had become inconvenient. They were people, she said, and she touched, very lightly, the side of her own head, with red hair. Continue reading What the Rhine Remembers

THE CROSSING – Part Two of Two

THE CROSSING – Part Two of Two

This is how resentment reproduces itself. Keep people scrambling and they stay dependent on whoever promises to name their enemy and fight on their behalf. The resentment architects need your scarcity to keep you as a host. The moment you experience enough abundance, enough space, enough breathing room, you start to see through it. Continue reading THE CROSSING – Part Two of Two

Part One of Two: On self-determination, equality, and the feudal logic we keep having to fight

Part One of Two: On self-determination, equality, and the feudal logic we keep having to fight

The architects of resentment, of any age, share certain characteristics. They deal in enemies. They trade in scarcity, the sense that there is not enough, that someone else is taking what is yours, that the only answer is to fight. Their nationalism and their religion are transactional and tribal rather than transcendent. They don’t lift people toward higher ground. They plant people more firmly in the mud and tell them to be proud of it. Continue reading Part One of Two: On self-determination, equality, and the feudal logic we keep having to fight

Unpolished

Unpolished

This took some getting used to. In my experience growing up in America, changing your mind in public felt dangerous. It meant you were weak, or uninformed, or that you had somehow lost the argument. We treat conversations like competitions here, I think. Someone has to win. Someone has to be right. Continue reading Unpolished