Several months ago I knocked a bottle of water straight onto my phone, dumping liquid into its electronic heart and causing it a cardiac arrest. Whilst it was not completely unusable (I could answer calls) it turned my Samsung from a Smartphone to a Dumbphone, causing me to try surviving phoneless. In the modern era this is about as debilitating as losing an arm (or perhaps a more pertinent metaphor would be a neural network).…
First of all, thank you for your continued patience. Work on my book has been taking the majority of my free time. Consequently, I’ve not been focusing on my blog. That said, I recently sent the latest draft off to a proof reader and have some time to focus on writing this article about modern myth. My book is shaping up well, so keep an eye out some time in the not so distant future.…
All societies are premised on some kind of narrative; a story which works to push and promote certain factions’ power. Whether beliefs about equality in Stalinist Russia propping up a bureaucratic elite, or dehumanising ethnic groups prior to slavery’s abolishment in America, all cultures have these purposeful stories. Where Western arrogance creeps in is seeing ours as different. Much of our corner of Twitter’s discourse is – either consciously or unconsciously – railing against these…
Something has been growing inside me, bubbling away in my subconscious, for a little while now. I’ve been unaware that I’d been mulling it over, but yesterday the insight broke surface and popped into my conscious mind. What was it? The lack of importance the Western world attaches to symbolism. This trend of trivialising symbolism is linked to the demise of faith and pre-eminence of rationality within our culture; both of which I discuss here.…
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.” Tyler Durden, Fight Club I recently re-watched Fight Club – a great book which the film does a fantastic job of representing – and was, once again, affected by the poignancy of the themes within it. Dark and destructive with a penchant for mayhem, it strikes a chord with a certain type of man. What is…