Month: September 2011

• September 30, 2011

  The ‘great speedup’ reconsidered: Being at wits’ end and beyond

  Abstract The following paper clocks in at around 2500 words. If you’d like to read it in its entirety, it might be easiest to click on the title of the post above. Here’s an abstract: Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffer, in the July/August issue of Mother Jones, write about the grave social impact of what they term “the great speedup”–essentially,…
• September 29, 2011

  Of craving and its supersession

  I You are caring for your children while thinking of the work you’ve yet to finish. You are in the middle of a conversation and longing for release. You meet another and already you are making plans for the next. Your book is in hand, you thumb its pages, your ambition for all the rest…
• September 28, 2011

  On starting a way of life business: Making good on good plan B’s

  More Formal Training: Just Say ‘No’ Our bleak economic situation has led many young persons to consider job retraining, advanced degrees, and Plan B’s. But might all these actually be distractions and dead-ends? Thankfully, some sharp entrepreneurs and creative organizations have started asking big questions and envisioning bolder projects. They’re not endorsing retraining, only serious…
• September 27, 2011

  The end of the career: A long view

  Abstract I argue that we may be witnessing not the stopping and stalling of some careers but the more far-reaching conclusion that the very idea of a career may be coming to an end. In what follows, I tease out the social implications of the end of the career and then provide some prima facie evidence in support of this…
• September 26, 2011

  An invitation to the reader to join me in a philosophical conversation

  A Cordial Invitation I’d like to invite you to have a philosophical conversation with me. If you’re living outside of New York City, then the conversation would take place over Skype. If you’re in the City, then we’d take a stroll through Central Park. The economy we’d be engaged in would be a gift economy.…