Erich Fromm’s insights in The Revolution of Hope, written almost 60 years ago, resonate today—probably surprisingly, or unfortunately not—with the same meaningfulness and a sound call for both actionable and intellectual optimism: “Hope is paradoxical. It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur… Neither tired reformism nor pseudo-radical […]
Oleg Komlik
Jeffrey Alexander, a prominent sociologist and social theorist: Inside the culture and structure of modernity, good and evil are tensely intertwined. We should not be naïve about the evils of modernity. Modernity’s contradictions cannot be resolved in some magisterial new synthesis. It is a dangerous delusion to think modernity can eliminate evil; new kinds of […]
The technological society… will not be a universal concentration camp, for it will be guilty of no atrocity. It will not seem insane, for everything will be ordered, and the stains of human passion will be lost amid the chromium gleam. We shall have nothing more to lose, and nothing to win. Our deepest instincts […]
Bruno Latour — a passage and an observation that only he could make: The French, it is well known, love revolutions, political, scientific or philosophical. There is nothing they like more than a radical upheaval of the past, an upheaval so complete that a new tabula rasa is levelled, on which a new history can […]
“There is criticism to which one responds, other criticism to which one replies. Wrongly perhaps. Why not lend an equally attentive ear to incomprehension triviality, ignorance, or bad faith? Why reject these as so many incidents, regrettable for family honor? Is one correct in believing them inessential to the activity of criticism? I wonder if […]
Whoever keeps posting Karl Marx quotes on the breakroom bulliten board needs to stop.– Management Engage yourself with consequential reflections about labor and class struggle in the 21st century with these (not just thought but also action-provoking) five superb books: — Anderson, Elizabeth. 2023. Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers […]
Paul Armer was a pioneer in computing technology whose work focused on the relationship between computers and society. He began his career at RAND Corporation in 1947 and was later appointed to head its computer science department, a position he held for 10 years. In the late 1960s he moved to Stanford University, where he […]
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points. […] Perhaps we shall […]
For the past three weeks, the ES/PE community is aghast and dumbfounded. On the early morning of October 7th, a Jewish holiday, the Hamas terrorist organization launched a brutal and unprecedented attack in the south of Israel. During this planned, heinous massacre Hamas terrorists intentionally, systematically and viciously murdered more than 1400 innocent people, mainly […]
In 1836, a twenty-seven years old Charles Darwin, came back from a five-year, extraordinary survey expedition around the world. In 1839, he published a book that was later given a title The Voyage of the Beagle, bringing Darwin considerable fame and respect. The book was a vivid travel memoir as well as a detailed scientific […]