It was easier to write when no one was reading; with audience comes a nagging self-consciousness; with trolls and critics comes a seasickness and anxiety.
Weds night. Rehearsal all day (from about noon to 8) interspersed with tutoring (which ended at 9), and afterwards, returned to Manhattan where my day started to catch the tail end of an old friend’s band album release party at Bowery Ballroom. This is a friend I used to hang out with about 7,8,9 years ago—and he is just really starting to have a little bit more success and visibility; though in a sense he always carried himself like he was notable or famous (and I suppose in a sense I did too). Posture first, popularity later—taking credit out on your own talent.1
I enjoy being caffeinated late at night more than I enjoy being drunk; I’m writing this on the Q train around 1:30am after a few Caffe Reggio espressos. I’ll get home, make steak, workout, fall asleep around 3:30—wake up at 930 for rehearsal.
Heidegger writes that “all created beings need to be produced and sustained.” God is the idea of a substance that doesn’t need to be created—the human substance must stream from somewhere.
This got me thinking that, ontologically, the unsettling thing about AI is the possibility that it will at one point have enough human inputs that it will not longer require production or sustenance; it will be in the way that God is, theologically speaking.
Culture & criticism. Criticism of ideas has largely gone away; all criticism of ideas must be attached to a person. Ad hominem is the vehicle for all kinds of thinking to its great discredit. If you don’t have an interesting thought, just attack someone—
At a certain point, what you see online is that personas are become as sensationalistic as possible just so that the person behind the person, and the screen—I hypothesize here—can feel alive.2
Sociopathy is being produced at scale; our phones are factories of dehumanization; what comes out of the conveyor belt is a violent, disassociated animal, stripped of its soul.