Definition: Anti-Intellectualism: “The common strain that binds together the attitudes and ideas which I call anti-intellectual is a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life.” Richard Hofstadter, …

“The theater’s rich intellectual inheritance serves as a buffer to society’s recrudescent stupidity.” Charles McNulty, LA Times I’m thinking about having a t-shirt made emblazoned with “A Buffer to Society’s Recrudescent Stupidity.” Perhaps with, in parenthesis: …

Alan Jacobs on The Work Itself: It seems to be an Alan Jacobs day! His post called “The Work Itself,” about the difference between being an influencer and doing a job, is excellent. For me, it is coinciding with my current reading of Matthew B Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft and The World Beyond Your Head, _as …

Adam Smith on Vanity: [T]he desire of doing what is honourable and noble, of rendering ourselves the proper objects of esteem and approbation, cannot, with any propriety, be called vanity. Even the love of well grounded fame and reputation, the desire of acquiring esteem by what is really estimable, does not deserve that …

Alan Jacobs, Ross Douthat, Margo Jones, Tony Kushner and the Fate of (Pop) Culture: Alan Jacobs responds to Ross Douthat’s NYTimes question as to whether we can make pop culture great again with a blunt “Nope. Absolutely not.” His reason for this dour assessment is the “algorithmic culture,” which cannot be replaced by a more fragmented, individualized …

Interactive Theater In Person AND Online: I find that England, Ireland, and Scotland have a much greater amount of experimentation in how they make theater, whether it is where they perform, when they perform, how they perform, and how they relate to their audience. There also seems to be a certain cheekiness to British theater, perhaps …

I hate the post-Fed-announcement hysteria that hits the stock market every time the Fed cuts interest rates.

There are few things better than a good rant, especially if it is about the internet. Well done! phirephoenix.com/blog/2024…

He Who Is Without : “Christ’s rebuke of the Pharisees eager to stone the sinful may feel of little help today, living in a culture where the act of hurling stones—in cyber and public space—is the spiritual discipline by which we are relieved of our moral impurities. In a cosmic reversal of grace and sacrifice, it …

Saul Bellow on the News: “Our media make crisis chatter out of news and fill our minds with anxious phantoms of the real thing—a summit in Helsinki, a treaty in Egypt, a constitutional crisis in India, a vote in the UN, the financial collapse of New York. We can’t avoid being politicized (to use a word as murky as the …

So here’s a question I’d be interested in hearing you talk about: if we just stopped with social media, would that be enough to maintain our mental health? If we wrote on micro.blog but didn’t broadcast it, is it different? Why don’t we just write a private journal instead of …

If Rushton is really calling that “ingratitude,", it should serve as an illustration as to why artists should steer clear of nonprofit status–board members inevitably decide they know how to run things. Just because you have money doesn’t mean you have artistic sense.

One Size Doesn't Fit All: When you’re stepping outside the well-trodden path and trying to create something new, you often have to find inspiration outside of the discipline itself. I have found inspiration in unlikely places: books on local economics, environmentalism, small business practices, where I’ve found …

“Adaptive problems are embedded in social complexity, require behavior change, and are rife with unintended consequences. By way of contrast, technical problems (such as the polio virus) can be solved with a technical solution (the Salk vaccine) without having to disturb the underlying social …

“we have lost sight of any collective belief that society could be different. Instead of a better society, the only thing almost everyone strives for is to better their own position – as individuals – within the existing society.” Richard Wilson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level

Comps: No, I’m not talking about the freebies we give to family and friends who come to our show. I’m talking about the way book proposals use the term: “comparables,” books that are similar to what you’re writing, books that yours could be compared to. Theater has been …

”The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States: “to be different is to be indecent.” The mass crushes beneath it …

Diane Ragsdale Provides a Thanksgiving Pi: I recently stumbled up a thirteen-year-old blog post by the always-insightful arts thinker Diane Ragdale, who tragically passed away less than a year ago. (You could do a lot worse than to spend time working through her ArtsJournal blog Jumper from beginning to end.) The post I’m looking at …

“Murdoch believed we should cultivate a kind of ‘mindfulness’. By making a habit of focusing our attention on everyday things that are valuable or virtuous, we hone our ability to act well at decisive moments. ‘Anything that alters consciousness in the direction of unselfishness will do,’ she …

“Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable.” Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream I feel seen.

The winter begins!

A Time of Leisure and Freedom: “I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.” …

“The arts can turn a piece of banal knowledge into a truth that has the power to move us, when a hundred propositions leave us cold.” Susan Neiman, The Left Is Not Woke

“Although Goethe was intimately connected to the social and cultural life of his time, he also knew how to maintain his individuality. His principle was to take in only as much of the world as he could process. Whatever he could not respond to in a productive way he chose to disregard. In …

“Resistance is first of all a matter of principle and a way to live, to make yourself one small republic of unconquered spirit.” Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Charm vs Charisma: Ian Leslie, on his Substack site The Ruffian, wrote an interesting article entitled “Are You Charismatic or Charming?". It made me start considering my teaching and writing style. Leslie writes: In a new book, Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics, the sociologist Julia …