The current political era's gleeful rejection of norms and self-discipline is creating a cultural backlash. The next winning political movement will likely swing back to a public desire for virtue and statesmanship, but it must be a modern, 'sexy' version that still has a captivating 'aura.'
The discourse on AI is overly focused on preventing harms like existential risk. A more productive approach is to also define a public agenda for what we want AI to *achieve*—the public 'goods' it can create, such as solving orphan diseases or simplifying government services.
Citing media theorist Marshall McLuhan, the argument is that the medium itself (e.g., Twitter) is more impactful than the content it carries. These platforms reshape your cognitive processes—like shortening attention and altering how ideas feel—which degrades long-term, deep work.
Our collective attention should be viewed as a shared public resource. In a crowded digital sphere, entities compete for it with increasingly extreme tactics. This creates a 'tragedy of the commons' where the entire information environment becomes degraded, irritable, and less productive.
Donald Trump collapsed the GOP's purity tests into a single dimension: personal loyalty to him. The Left, lacking a single leader, has a plurality of ideological tests (e.g., wokeness, Medicare for All). This creates fundamentally different coalition-building challenges for each party.
Dominating Twitter creates an echo chamber that deranges a political group's perception of reality. Progressives dominated in 2020 and their extreme online takes became liabilities by 2024. The Right is now in a similar position, which will likely hurt them electorally in the future.
Public figures and creators risk mental harm by internalizing their public persona ('front stage'). It's crucial to intentionally maintain a private, authentic 'backstage' self, separate from the world's perception of you, to preserve your independence of mind.
The political Left began to view individual self-improvement as a denial of structural problems, becoming hostile to it. This created a vacuum, particularly for men, which was filled first by virtue-focused figures and later by vice-focused figures as the mainstream abdicated the space.
In 'Amusing Ourselves to Death,' Neil Postman argued 'Sesame Street' was more dangerous than TV trash because it subtly taught children that education must be entertainment. This changes their fundamental expectations and shows how well-intentioned media can have insidious, long-term cultural effects.
AI and digital tools create a seductive 'simulacra of productivity.' However, deep, creative work often arises from seemingly unproductive activities like walking without headphones or reading a physical book. We must fight the illusion of constant, machine-like productivity to do our best work.
The fear of criticism can be more influential than the desire to please an audience. Creators often preemptively change their work to defend against potential attacks or react to existing ones, a phenomenon called 'criticism capture' which can be more deranging than simply chasing popularity.
A counterintuitive defense against the online mob is to be purposefully boring. By keeping your private life mundane and not discussing it publicly, you make it less consumable for drama-seeking audiences. They will eventually move on to easier, more interesting targets.