“The Real Crisis of Literacy—We’re Reading Too Much.” Kit Wilson describes how the flurry of words that bombarded him via podcasts, social media, and texts cut him off from reality, and he shares how getting rid of his phone reshaped his experience of the world: “Some days, the longest I’d go without engaging with language was a few seconds in the shower. Things are rather different now: I can happily take a long bus or train journey without having to find some text to hook my mind onto. This has taught me a couple of things. First, just how much language reshapes our sense of reality, by peeling us away from the here and now—very simply, we confuse the map for the landscape. Second, and by extension, that this confusion distorts our understanding of intelligence—and thus blinds us to how different human intelligence is from current approaches in AI.”
“Imagining Life Outside the Machine.” I review Paul Kingsnorth’s new book and identify its significance by comparing it to Christopher Lasch’s True and Only Heaven: “Both are written by disaffected leftists who probe beneath the superficial conflicts between left and right, and both unearth an often unconscious, fragmented tradition that offers a genuine alternative to the Progressive or Machine consensus to which both sides of this ostensible divide adhere. Where Kingsnorth parts course from Lasch is in his more explicit search for a poetic and spiritual core: Against the Machine is a work of cultural analysis written by a mythic imagination.”
“Growing Tobacco in Hell.” John-Paul Heil doesn’t like Wendell Berry’s new novel, but he also doesn’t read it very carefully. On the one hand, Berry has spent much of his life arguing against the division between beauty and truth with which Heil opens his essay. On the other hand, Marce Catlett itself explores competing visions for healthy community work: whereas Wheeler may overvalue the goods of work, Andy receives his family story as a lesson in the ultimate need for grace. As Andy reflects near the novel’s end, in a passage that situates him and his family as part of what Heil calls the “evil” group and recipients of the undeserved love of the creator, “It is a wonder to him that he and his people have been spared so far the just consequence of their folly. He thinks that a great patience and a great forgiveness must so far have been in force, and he gives thanks.” There’s plenty that Berry writes that’s worth criticizing and debating, but those discussions are more productive if they don’t begin with a strawman caricature.
“Wendell Berry’s Epilogue.” For a more perceptive response to Berry’s novel and imagination, see Nadya Williams’s response to Heil: “There is undeniable melancholy in this novel and its conclusion—and yet, as in *The Need to Be Whole*, there is hope and warning too. We have all been created for relationships, real roots, and stories to which we need to belong for our wellbeing—spiritual, intellectual, familial.”
“It’s Complicated.” Elizabeth Stice has some frustrations with Kingsnorth’s book, but she also finds it an important book that urges necessary action: “Against the Machine is an imperfect book—as are all books—but it is an intentionally bold and provocative call to take the threat around us seriously (even spiritually). Modern markets and technology are like a Moloch that we feed our children to, the children must consume, must be productive, must be the kind of citizen who is easy to track, and who increases share value. If the phones rot their brains and the AI steals jobs they might actually enjoy, so what? The Machine must be fed. And we are so dependent on the Machine that some of its own creators worry it is more likely to become independent of us than we are to maintain power over it. That should alarm us and move us to action. Against the Machine is, at minimum, a conversation-starter on the topic.”
“Want Homes? Tax Land.” Daniel De Varona Brennan draws on Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Henry George to consider how we might ameliorate America’s housing shortage: “Collectively, their insights into the economics of land use make clear that the reason we have a housing crisis is not because the United States has ‘run out of room’—a claim so ridiculous that it can be effectively refuted by looking at a population density map—but because our tax system actively rewards unproductive, speculative, and low-density land-use. The result of these perverse incentives are cities filled with low-density, vacant, and undeveloped properties; expansive suburban sprawl which has become increasingly un-commutable; and the loss of precious and irreplaceable agricultural land and the rural communities who live on it. Without correcting these incentives, it does not matter how much federal land is sold off to developers—we will never solve the housing affordability crisis.” (Recommended by Adam Smith.)
“Before We Make a Roux.” Brian Miller describes how he enjoys his chickens, from egg to gumbo: “My thoughts soon turn to how to make best use of the birds. The answer when it comes to the Sussex rooster is perfectly clear: a rich, deep brown gumbo done in Southwest Louisiana fashion. A true and proper gumbo can take years in the making. Like a coq au vin, a traditional gumbo is best made with a bird with plenty of age and muscle. While a six-month cockerel will do a serviceable job in the pot, it is the spent rooster that delivers the fullest flavor. (Flabby nine-week-old commercial birds need not apply.) There is still no rush. After all, from chick to breeder to old bird, the final dish has already taken years. This rooster will be honored in his own due time. We will wait for the perfect evening — an intimate gathering of friends or family — before we get down to the business of cooking the gumbo, that is, by making a roux.”
“The Screen That Ate Your Child’s Education.” Jean M. Twenge lays out the evidence showing that screens do not in fact improve learning: “Although it once seemed like a good idea to give every child his or her own device, it’s clear that those policies have been a failure. It may be possible to harness the power of school devices more judiciously, with little to no device use in lower grades, and high school students given laptops strictly limited to relevant apps. We could go further, creating completely device-free schools with rare exceptions for students with special needs. It would be back to the textbooks, paper and pencil of previous eras — when the most significant classroom distraction was students passing notes.”
“The AI Boom Is a House of Cards.” Niall Ferguson draws on a classic book of economic analysis to warn that a crash is on its way: “For those who have never had to read a bedtime story, allow me to explain. An irrepressible little creature, Sam-I-Am, spends the entirety of the book pitching green eggs and ham—on the face of it, an unappetizing dish—to a skeptical and increasingly irascible larger creature. With every page, the pitch grows more elaborate. Would you like them on a boat? With a goat? In the rain? On a train? Surely, there must be some context in which green eggs would be appealing fare. By the time Sam prevails, his hapless victim inhabits a scene of chaos. When you come to think of it, there is often someone called Sam trying to sell you something you don’t initially want.”
“Read Your Enemies.” David Mills urges us to read even those coming from a different political perspective with care and sympathy: “‘Know your enemy’ is always good advice, but knowing your enemy may include knowing in what ways they’re not enemies but allies. It requires reading more widely and sympathetically than is popular at the moment, on the possibility that people you think very wrong still might know something you don’t. Because they very often do.”
“Can You Believe the Documentary You’re Watching?” I don’t share Alissa Wilkinson’s faith that documentaries are an especially trustworthy genre to begin with, but her account of how AI-generated video erodes trust in all footage is spot on: “With the release of OpenAI’s video generator Sora 2 in September, the world irrevocably changed. Once the software is widely available, it will be possible for anyone to make a video of pretty much anything, and fast. Most people can understand the obvious consequence of this earthshaking moment. Every video is now Schrodinger’s video: it’s both real and not real. We can take the liar’s dividend one frightening step further. In this brave new world, no claim that a video is real will ever be fully persuasive.”
