How did divinities emerge from prelinguistic societies? What does this suggest about the difference between their experience of the world and ours?

• Early humans likely had limited abstract vocabulary, making it difficult to categorise complex phenomena.
• Ideas of Gods may have emerged as broad notions meant to group related phenomena under recognisable patterns.
• For example, “Zeus” would have united thunder, justice, hospitality, and oaths through a perceived common essence. Zeus created meaningful connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena.
• Modern rational thought has separated nature from humanity, subject from object.
• We’ve gained scientific precision but lost the dense interlacing of meanings that connected us intimately to the world : an holistic relationship with the cosmos.

I reflect upon the world-building in Studio Ghibli’s “Kiki’s Delivery Service.”

• Director Hayao Miyazaki designed the film’s setting as a fantasy of 20th century Europe where world wars never occurred
• The aesthetic reflects this counterfactual history:
  • Preserved turn-of-the-century architecture
  • Modern amenities (roughly late 1950s level)
  • Complete absence of modernist buildings
• The author questions the realism of this utopian vision:
  • Could these conflicts truly have been avoided?
  • What technological developments might have been different?
• The essay explores what technology might look like in this alternative timeline:
  • Possibly less advanced than our reality
  • More artisanal and experimental in nature
  • More decentralized without a military-industrial complex
  • Driven by “humbler incentives” rather than arms races and security concerns

This counterfactual world invites us to imagine how technology might have developed “not out of arms races… but birthed from humbler incentives, awash in peace” – offering an alternative path for human innovation outside the pressures of global conflict.

The relationship between traditional books and modern internet content, particularly social media.

• Many find that reading a few “great” books makes most online content seem introductory, superficial, or repetitive by comparison
• Books represent a format refined over millennia that demands rigor, completeness, and depth
• Social media and internet content are still in their infancy or “wax tablet stage” of development
• The comparison shouldn’t be framed as winners vs. losers, but as different domains of communication and culture-making
• Current social media represents a culture of relating and identity construction in its early, unruly stages

Exploring the relationship between magic and technology. What are key points of convergence and divergence?

• Magic follows a basic syntax: intention + simple action with an implement = effect at a distance
• Three fundamental differences distinguish magic from technology:
  1. Causal discontinuity: In magic, implements produce effects unrelated to their physical properties
  2. Effect autonomy: Magic doesn’t require external “effecting machines”; effects manifest directly
  3. Simple resource singularity: Magic requires only one energy source rather than multiple technical components
• Technology is converging with magic through increasingly intuitive interfaces that simplify complex actions
• What kinds of future technologies might approach something like magic?

They might still be lines forever approaching but never crossing. Magic could represent an unattainable ideal that guides technological development

Is this single path of progress is inevitable? Are we truly limited to either fully embracing or rejecting modern technologies? Where might alternative or complementary visions of progress be found?

• I reframe nostalgia as a resource for guidance toward alternative futures rather than a desire to return to the past.
• Nostalgia often emerges from feelings that something valuable was lost in our rush toward technological progress
• Modern progress creates a false dichotomy:
  • Forward = global, rational, technological advancement
  • Backward = local, traditional, less efficient ways
• Current progress has three problematic qualities. For example, gradual but cumulative technological changes become nearly irreversible
• Nostalgia reveals what we truly value, which facilitates course correction. Today’s nostalgia for pre-digital life reveals desires for connection, presence, and simplicity

This essay explores the relationship between music and memory.

• About the fear of listening to songs attached to good memories during bad times, threatening to “tarnish” those memories.
• Sound is naturally connected to memory, with contextual elements enhancing these connections.
• Music can help “exorcise the demons of our past” in two key ways:
  • By allowing us to revisit painful memories with a more mature perspective.
  • By connecting negative past experiences with positive present ones.
• When revisiting painful memories through music:
  • Music can infuse dignity and beauty into difficult memories.
  • The song becomes a “totem” encoded with our renewed perspective, while intertwining past and present into denser binds.

A resonant song creates a bridge between artist and listener, allowing both to discover, express, and share the beauty within themselves that touches upon universal human experience.

• Music, like living beings, has universal qualities but endless variations that make each piece unique
• A song functions in multiple important ways:
  • As a construct that extends beyond the artist’s physical presence
  • As an ambassador representing the artist in the world
  • As a personal asset that makes emotions and stories durable
• For the artist the finished piece combines universal human experience with individual expression.
• For the listener, the song becomes a medium to discover and convey their own interiority.

What is an intrinsic pleasure in your craft? Musicians form a kind of communing with music as if it was an abstract entity.

• Practitioners of music can be motivated by an emotional experience of materialising music, and a desire to “make music proud” through mastery and authentic expression
• Intrinsic satisfaction in any craft can be understood as delighting this invisible entity by being a proficient channel for it to manifest in the world.
• Especially when mastery becomes second-nature, and we can manifest the craft in harmony with the world it will affect.

Our relationship with crafts like music transcends mere skill development—it’s a form of communion with something transcendent and evergreen that shapes our approach to life, and provides deep fulfilment independent of external validation.

I examine parallels between 19th century standardised education and modern algorithmic content curation.

• Stefan Zweig in his 1942 memoir “The World of Yesterday” contrasts two educational approaches:
  • The rigid pre-war system that forced standardised information on students
  • The interwar system that allowed children to express their “preferences and wishes”
• This historical tension mirrors contemporary debates about information curation
• Modern algorithms promise personalisation of content through adaptation to user’s “preferences and wishes”
• Yet, algorithmic curation remains a “cold apparatus” despite claims of personalisation.
  • Algorithms operate on calculated variables that may not reflect ourselves but the building blocks of algorithmic identities.
  • They create “modified moulds” based on behavioural echoes rather than true personalisation

Where does our evolving relationship with money and purchasing decisions evolve?

• Most people base purchasing decisions on three basic variables: affordability, comparative price, and perceived need/desire
• Maturity in our relationship with money involves recognising additional “invisible value tags” beyond the price tag:
• With self-understanding, we develop a “personal ledger” where money becomes just one of many value signals

True financial maturity means seeing beyond price tags to the full spectrum of personal value a purchase provides, aligning consumption with authentic self-fulfilment rather than manufactured needs.

An approach to learning that begins “in the middle of things” rather than with fundamentals.

• “In medias res” learning means starting with more complex, engaging elements instead of beginning with basics
• This contrasts with “cumulative learning” (mastering fundamentals before moving to complexity)
• The approach is “connective” because it requires connecting backward to basics and forward to mastery only as needed for a specific goal
• This approach creates immediate engagement and purpose, allowing learners to develop “good enough” skills quickly

By starting with challenging but engaging elements rather than basics, we create more motivating learning experiences that maintain enthusiasm while producing shareable results faster.

The concept of “value unearthers” – people who discover hidden value that others don’t see.

• Value unearthers identify a particular potential, questioning why others don’t recognise what they find extraordinary.
• They don’t merely discover value but cultivate it, creating systems that amplify and share it with others.
• Through deep knowledge of the systems they build, they become uniquely positioned to continue expanding that value
• Society eventually recognises their contribution, integrating their role into economic systems and compensating them accordingly
• Their work creates mutual benefit rather than coming at others’ expense.

I explore some of the fundamental points where a teacher’s role is affected as information technologies keep proliferating exponentially.

• When access and relationships with information spiral out of control in their variety and possibilities, teachers still serve multiple crucial functions. I list many of them.
• I ponder on whether “teacher” remains the right term:
  • Has it become too institutionalized?
  • Alternative terms (mentor, instructor, guide) capture only parts of the role
  • A recurring essential function must remain unchanged regardless of terminology
• The teacher’s role might be defined “negatively”:
  • What they prevent students from doing
  • Which obstacles they help students avoid
• Education remains vital and complex. It balances timeless human needs with evolving technologies, while deserving continual examination and reinvention

How can we establish, maintain and evolve our identities beyond the limitations of our minds?

• Our identities face constant entropy (“oblivion”) due to the limitations of individual consciousness
• We use various “anchors” to stabilise and extend our identities beyond our minds, such as external relationships that reflect aspects of ourselves and objects that embody our memories and values.
• We can see our identities as an “inner kingdom”, where we create infrastructure (relationships, artefacts, routines) that allows us to return to these settled areas of our identities and continue developing them

By anchoring our identities in the external world through objects, concepts, and relationships, we both preserve who we are and create the conditions for continued growth and self-discovery.

An exploration of the concept of personal identity and transparency.

• I distinguish between two fundamental aspects of self:
  • The “world within you” (inner world): ideas, opinions, memories, emotions, preferences, and other private elements.
  • The “identity” (persona): the gatekeeper through which others must pass to develop an idea of who you are.
• The persona/identity:
  • Functions like a mask (from Latin “persona”). It traditionally serves to protect the inner world from potential rejection or harm.
• “Living in transparency” means:
  • Creating a more authentic bridge between inner and outer worlds
• I list various metaphors for the idea of “identity” to set off a process of reflection

Our focus on efficiency often reduces activities to their outcomes while overlooking the value in the process itself.

• “Essentialising” activities means reducing them to just the outcome (like drinking coffee) while treating everything else (the journey, circumstances, discoveries along the way) as “accessory”.
• One can adopt a “witnessed methodology” as an alternative approach – being aware of our destination while remaining open to what happens along the path
• The paths we choose and how we witness them gradually shape our individuality – “the methodologies that we witness and make ours are the itineraries that slowly carve the essence of our individuality”

By treating journeys as essential rather than accessory to the goal, we open ourselves to human connection, unexpected discoveries, and a richer experience of life beyond efficiency.