Pinboard (robertogreco)
https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/public/
recent bookmarks from robertogrecoFeeding on Illusions - by L. M. Sacasas2026-07-08T05:46:28+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/feeding-on-illusions
robertogrecolmssacasas mandybrown ursulakleguin ursulaleguin 2026 ai artificialintelligence hannaharendt generativeai humannaess human friendship community process howwewrite chatgpt calligraphy friction matthewbattleshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1dbdeaccb434/Italy's Radical Solution to Extreme Inequality - YouTube2026-07-05T05:51:03+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQMZR64G_eM
robertogrecoeconomics cooperatives emilia-romagna emiliaromagna reggioemilia labor work hierarchy 2025 moreperfect union inequality workers ownership power equality production italia italy verazamagni business consolidation billionaires socialism mussolini benitomussolini fascism control grassroots governance resistance corporations corporatism legcoop law legal profits history coops wealth social socialcoops socialcooperatives decisionmaking finance snupotapinassi privateequity firenze florence marcora marcoralaw francescoborgomeo struggle solidarity globalization johnrussell democracy ilariabertinelli rural farming farmers agriculture stefanocacchioli paolobarbieri cplconcordia sharing cooperation community society danielemontroni wealthhoarding manufacturing collaborationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4f8fbdffb840/Academia: The Answers We Don't Offer - by Timothy Burke2026-07-04T12:22:27+00:00
https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-the-answers-we-dont-offer
robertogrecotimothyburke covid-19 pandemic coronavirus isolation alienation remotework labor work workfromhome affordability us policy bosses precarity psychology whitecollar robertputnam bowlingalone 2020 2021 2022 2023 2025 2026 offices economics socialscience socialsciences institutions government governance maha workplace workplaces social autonomy surveillance billbishop division diversity mixing sociality interpersonal friction pluralism otherpeople others neoliberalism civics belonging rfkjr robertkennedyjr emmaharrington enataliaemanuel partisanship anomie espair adamgrant marissashandell middlemanagement management administration narcissism ego supervision power control employment direction exploration tolerance community communitieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:aa3287c1ee14/Descolonización del patrimonio en Puerto Rico con Rafael Capó García y Javier Arbona-Homar • Sur-Urbano2026-07-03T22:56:24+00:00
https://open.spotify.com/episode/53hnMibTVpbKx7C0OfvhAi
robertogrecorafaelcapógarcía javierarbona 2026 puertorico decolonization coralmurphymarcos sanjuan memoriadecolonial history colonization colonialism memorials memory erasure analysis abstraction 1952 1492 2020 monuments patrimony narrative abolition viejosanjuan slavery laperla war race racism repression heritage antiracism myth myths explosivity memorialization power bayaread geography explosions culture memorytourism tourism architecture past blm blacklivematters future imagination imposition civilwar us revival confederacy holocaust appropriation design genocide romani europe germany mayalin nationalparkservice howwethink gender reimagination women collectivememory storytelling vieques gentrification touristification community collective collectivism dispossession violence silencing infrastructure obstruction labor indenturedlabor walking tours josélee-borges freeways spanishrevival georgianrevival greekrevival publicschools schools schooling catholicchurch imperfection discourse debate discussion roberteleehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3f0658d10726/SF City FC Fans on the Local and Global Forces Tarnishing the Beautiful Game2026-07-03T09:40:46+00:00
https://bayareacurrent.com/sf-city-fc-fans-on-the-local-and-global-forces-tarnishing-the-beautiful-game/
robertogrecosports football futbol soccer sanfrancisco 2026 athletics community worldcup kezarstadium goldengatepark oaklandroots kezarunion kezarpub sfmta muni sfsu daniellurie goldencityfc bilalmahmood myrnamelgar geoffoltmans privateequity inequality grassroots johnyork leedsunited capitalism ownership labahiadefrisco queerlifespace sanfranciscocityfc sfcityfc sfcfchttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7073bbfbe6f7/"WALKING IS SO SIMPLE YET SO DEEPLY COMPLEX": IN CONVERSATION WITH ALISA OLEVA2026-06-29T03:13:26+00:00
https://www.fetch.london/post/walking-is-so-simple-yet-so-deeply-complex-in-conversation-with-with-alisa-oleva
robertogreco2025 walking alisaoleva psychogeography art performance situationist listenting senses sensory transience ephemeral ephemerality documentation movement parkour community everyday audio resistance productivity london walkshopshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:744d547c342b/AI Can’t Fix the Student-Motivation Problem - The Atlantic2026-06-27T06:26:04+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/ai-tutor-education-human-investment/687678/
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence jennyanderson mikegoldstein teaching howwteach edtech technology chatbots llms schools schooling motivation salkhan salmankhan khanmigo openai samaltman learning howwelearn children students khanacademy kristendicerbo laurenceholt tutoring inequality ronferguson achievementgap criticalthinking rolandfryerjr maryburns social justinreich coopeartion care caring community condusion attentionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:061d6da24c04/Pope Leo XIV's 'Magnifica humanitas' (with Jack Hanson) - Know Your Enemy - Apple Podcasts2026-06-26T08:30:11+00:00
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pope-leo-xivs-magnifica-humanitas-w-jack-hanson/id1462703434?i=1000773716438
robertogrecomagnificahumanitas 2026 popeleoxiv rerumnovarum popeleoxiii jackhanson donnaharraway cyborgs ai artificialintelligence humanism humanity reinholdniebuhr catholicchurch catholicism nature destiny human humans workers work labor augustinianism augustine staugustine saintaugustine society michaeloakenshott knowyourenemy war greed religion popefrancis us michaeloakeshott commonweal charlespéguy modernity profit capitalism privateproperty property authoritarianism democracy jdvance donaldtrump samadler-bell matthewsitman poverty augustinians sharing theology stevebannon latinamerica perú vaticanii vatican tradcatholicism globalsouth thirdworld humanrights global liberaldemocracy religiousfreedom freedomofreligion popebenedictxvi scripture thomasaquinas justice humandignity economics democraticsocialism politics adrianvermeule 1891 1937 1983 1985 discernment darioamodei anthropic antoniospadaro peterthiel towerofbabel language english audience desire homogenization tension growth friction mortality time placehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e0ae7f0359ad/AI's Social Scene Is Shifting to Curated Offline Events, Dinner Parties - Business Insider2026-06-26T01:15:39+00:00
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-social-scene-curated-offline-events-dinner-parties-2026-6
robertogrecoHosting an intimate dinner in sf for lore builders.
Founders, narrative architects, writers, world builders. Humans at the intersection of storytelling x culture x craft x storytelling x philosophy x design.
Keeping it to <10. Who should be in the room? 🫶
— Joumana (@JoumanaElomar) June 23, 2026 [https://x.com/JoumanaElomar/status/2069509402437222482 ]
Many of these curated events follow a similar blueprint: a promo that looks like an A24 film poster and grainy, film-like photos that make it feel more like a 90s-era house party than a tech founders' event.
"I think trusted (human) curation is so important now, even more than ever," said Michelle Fang, who leads Stripe Startups, a program offering financial support and resources to early-stage, venture-backed companies, and has a weekly newsletter that rounds up in-person tech events in San Francisco.
Fang said that when she first started the newsletter in 2023, she posted an average of 20 to 30 in-person events a week. That number has now risen to 70 to 80 a week.
"There's been a noticeable shift in both the frequency and types of events happening in SF, especially over the past year," she said.
AI has accelerated this trend dramatically, she said, as the AI boom brings an influx of talent who want to establish their community in the city.
While some of the events Fang has listed are traditional building workshops and hackathons, others include Pilates classes, peptide tasting parties — the latest self-optimization craze — and "intentionally curated" dinners.
It's a vibe shift from the large happy hours and networking events that defined post-pandemic tech socializing, said Fang. These smaller events don't require a big budget or venue, and with the speed of AI growth, people want to make sense of new concepts and the changes happening in real time, she said.
[image: "Dinner table with bowls of sushi and edamame at an event hosted by coworking and tech events startup Verci's / Verci, a coworking space and events startup, hosts monthly dinners and workshops for members. Ami Yoshimura/Verci"]
'Taste is a new core skill'
The taste conversation kicked off earlier this year when Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham wrote in a post on X that, as AI democratizes building, "taste will become even more important."
Two days later, OpenAI President Greg Brockman cemented the catchphrase on X, writing that "Taste is a new core skill." Since then, it's led the tech world to hyperfocus on AI companies and founders who are winning the taste battle.
Alongside the taste discourse, being offline has become a status symbol. Having the ability to de-digitalize is seen as a luxury and a way to connect with people more authentically, with in-person events being a means to achieve this, especially for those whose working lives already revolve around AI.
peak bengaluru and bangerlore pic.twitter.com/1imEhjhCBX
— prerna (@Prerrrrna_) June 7, 2026 [https://x.com/Prerrrrna_/status/2063545613632037129 ]
An event "only for hot people and nerds" in Bangalore, which appeared to be in collaboration with the early-stage Bangalore-based consumer tech company Faff, made the rounds on X earlier this month. The vibe is artfully arranged cheese boards, trendy cocktail menus (with AI puns), and grainy photos.
Ami Yoshimura, the 23-year-old cofounder of Verci, a members club and coworking space in New York, hosts events such as rooftop parties and multi-day retreats for founders and creatives. "Relationships, aesthetics, and telling a story" have become crucial ways to stand out in the hyper-competitive AI industry, he said.
Small parties, big bucks
It's not just San Francisco that is seeing this event boom.
new york tech week highlights:1. went blind into an event hosted by @join_ef and successfully met a group of really cool people with 0 degrees of mutual connection2. met/made some really good friends from url ➡️ irl shoutout fonzi and corgi team3. ended off the week with a… pic.twitter.com/CA3h0mwmLe
— sara kong (@saraknggg) June 8, 2026 [https://x.com/saraknggg/status/2064047927702782454 *]
Katia Ameri, a partner at A16z who spearheads Tech Week in San Francisco, LA, and New York City, wrote on X last month that New York was so far the largest Tech Week in history by events and attendees. The LA and San Francisco equivalents are coming up later this year.
Eliza Wu, cofounder of Corner, a social mapping app that describes itself as "Google but social," wrote in a post on X that there were over 600 RSVPs for a panel she was hosting at New York Tech Week.
Leading AI companies are also taking note. In April, Anthropic posted a brand events lead role in San Francisco, with a salary of up to $400,000.
There are four open marketing events positions at Anthropic, while OpenAI has two open positions for events, commanding over $200,000 salaries with options to gain equity too.
Anthropic is paying up to $400,000 a year for an events role.They're looking for someone to own the execution of brand experiences that translate Anthropic's values into physical moments.This person will produce everything from intimate thought-leadership gatherings to… pic.twitter.com/SWvmSarclY
— Andrew Yeung (@andruyeung) April 26, 2026 [https://x.com/andruyeung/status/2048545188608364593 ** (archived: https://www.are.na/block/47316282 )]
Andrew Yeung, an ex-Google and Meta product lead turned event host and angel investor, wrote on X in response to the job advert that it shows Anthropic understands that "they need to create visceral, unforgettable IRL experiences that make complex technology feel accessible and human."
"The massive opportunity now is offline, analog, in-person," he said.
But while the taste that goes into hosting a party is human, we are living in an AI world — and as with your job applications, an AI screener might still be standing between you and an invitation.
Wu, the cofounder who hosted a New York Tech Week event with 600 RSVPs, said she turned to Claude to winnow down her guest list.
She said she prompted the chatbot to scan through potential attendees' social posts to identify "markers of excellence" and to suss out the "quality of their thoughts."
With the help of Claude, only 300 people made the cut."
[* full text of https://x.com/saraknggg/status/2064047927702782454:
new york tech week highlights:
1. went blind into an event hosted by @join_ef and successfully met a group of really cool people with 0 degrees of mutual connection
2. met/made some really good friends from url ➡️ irl shoutout fonzi and corgi team
3. ended off the week with a bang at vega (shoutout ben & maddie)
i think when it boils down to WHAT constitutes a good event, it varies based off what your specific persona is trying to get out of it.
for me, events with well-catered hospitality that are more intimate (without just randomly throwing people together sloppily) call out more to me because you make more solidified relationships.
likewise, it’s good to put an online face to a name because that alone can unlock so much trust and future opportunities.
see you soon nyc!
** full text of https://x.com/andruyeung/status/2048545188608364593
Anthropic is paying up to $400,000 a year for an events role.
They're looking for someone to own the execution of brand experiences that translate Anthropic's values into physical moments.
This person will produce everything from intimate thought-leadership gatherings to large-scale industry activations.
The top AI research lab in the world recognizes that to cross the chasm and reach everyday consumers, they need to lean into hospitality. They need to create visceral, unforgettable IRL experiences that make complex technology feel accessible and human.
They understand that digital channels are getting increasingly saturated. Every feed is flooded with AI content... every inbox is overflowing.
The massive opportunity now is offline, analog, in-person.
The companies that win in the next decade won't just have the best product but the most emotional in-person presence and the most compelling storytelling.
If you're in events, experiential marketing, or brand activations, this is your moment. The biggest tech companies in the world are betting on you.
[two images of the job posting]
]]]>ai artificialintelligence siliconvalley technology 2026 royashahidi small humanities liberalarts culture taste anthropic claude aislop paulgraham elizawu corner saraking amiyoshimura joumanaelomar michellefang stripestartups social events community aibubble gregbrockman openai status offline online socialmedia internet katiaameri a16z andreessenhorowitz andrewyeung google meta nytechweek sanfrancisco society analoghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7c5d13ca6f52/Anarchism, Again • Ill Will2026-06-17T09:49:02+00:00
https://illwill.com/anarchism-again
robertogrecojoseprafanelliorra 2026 anarchism community others other society migration knowledge mutualaid plurality identity france ulfhannerz deleuze guattari deleuze&guattari gillesdeleuze félixguattari gustavlandauer michelfoucault foucault davidlapoujade cities communities everyday situationist migratory insurrection anarchy borders boundaries difference uprisings interdependence attachments interconnected interconnectedness threshholds cartography countercartographies ungovernable spectacle reputation reputationeconomy economics entrepreneurship entrepreneurialism identitypolitics representation humanism refusal sharinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e3b08ed067c9/The Ownerist Society | Commonweal Magazine2026-06-11T21:39:35+00:00
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ownerist-society-ian-marcus-corbin-economics-polanyi
robertogrecoianmarcuscorbin 2026 ownership property economic secularism modernity history economy society ownerism oglalasioux blackelk land karlpolanyi transactionalism liberalism policy politics aristotle accumlation friendship relationships cruelty indigeneity indigenous allotment dawesact resistance nafta us mexico europe existence purpose colonialism colonization settlercolonialism money danielcohen cooperation jamesburroughs aricrindfleisch materlaims well-being wellbeing community families religion status statussingaling signaling narcissism consumption consumerism capitalism danielbell acquisition karlmarx herbertspencer owners byung-chulhan maxweber burnout exhaustion wealth materialism values metrics humannature privateproperty loyalty generosity dislocation socialcollapse migration settlercolonlialism exchange obligation affection autonomy control power possessiveness possessions insecurity anxiety utility thomasaquinas benevolencehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a003227dbf49/Opinioni | Educare è un atto politico | Corriere.it2026-06-09T07:15:18+00:00
https://www.corriere.it/opinioni/26_maggio_22/educare-e-un-atto-politico-8a22c14f-d58c-4a60-b3cf-807949c16xlk.shtml
robertogrecoschools schooling education democracy francescoprofumo 2026 politics reggioemilia society covilsociety civics politicaleducation polarization war fragmentization cohesion complexity difference differences diveristy conflict dialog citizens publicspace socialmedia reactionaries reflection simplification purpose inequality collaboration respect community inclusion inclusivity pedagogy howweteach teaching lorismalaguzzi ai artificialintelligence empathy criticalthinking cooperation responsibility culturalcriticism culture socialcohesionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0e68dd3bd533/Detroit Music, Creativity, Capital, & the Working Class with Hanif Abdurraqib - YouTube2026-06-03T20:27:18+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vinqz2Fs0zA
robertogrecodetroit labor gentrification music 2026 hanifabdurraqib motown hiphop techno djs docuseries tv television documentary cities us art artiists musicians spaces infleunce culture culturemaking greatmigration curiosity creativity bluecollar work workers workingclass class midwest musichistory musicalhistory jaredware makc livemusic community performance venueloss musicvenues affordability urban urbanism olympia washingtonstate lineage legacy punk underground undergroundresistance place gatekeeping audience audiences radio collegeradio mentorship mentoring undergroundradio guerillaradio generations knowledge knowledgesharing intergenarational waajeed craft communalism mtv care caring bobseger atlanta sterlingtolles guiltysimpson nickspeed jdilla boldyjames maps mapmaking ethnography landscape soniclandscapes anthonybourdain memphis houston boston rap gregtate learning howwelearn solidarity politics radicalism radicalpolitics trust artmaking absurdity iloveboosters bootsriley thecoup tonimorrison dialecticalmateriahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:32e3861c6683/Living for the City - YouTube2026-06-03T20:27:05+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsjRzm4m1SLECMzBb96XQLA
robertogrecodetroit labor gentrification music 2026 hanifabdurraqib motown hiphop techno djs docuseries tv television documentary cities us art artiists musicians spaces infleunce culture culturemaking greatmigration curiosity creativity bluecollar work workers workingclass class midwest musichistory musicalhistory livemusic community performance venueloss musicvenues affordability urban urbanismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4df3b29ef103/Why are we addicted to standing in line for treats?2026-06-03T07:55:36+00:00
https://www.blackbirdspyplane.com/p/why-we-stand-in-lines-for-treats
robertogrecolines generations genx generationx geny generationy millennials genz zoomers generationz queues qtbat consumptions consmuperism meaning community gatherings social pilgrimages fellowship religion churchgoing blackbirdspyplanehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d6e222cf6276/On Warren Farha, Cultural Renewal, and the (Too Few) Bookish Places Where They Happen - Front Porch Republic2026-05-28T23:20:28+00:00
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/05/on-warren-farha-cultural-renewal-and-the-too-few-bookish-places-where-they-happen/
robertogrecorussellarbenfox 2026 warrenfarha books reading eightdaybooks localism christianity religion bookstores booksellers wichita kansas eightdayinstitute ecumenism connectivity community donfossum lindabrummetthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e126332e86e7/Stupidity Is the Greatest Sin by Peter Mommsen2026-05-28T07:05:03+00:00
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/community/education/stupidity-is-the-greatest-sin
robertogrecoWe should be ready to spend several hours each day (provided we are in good health) doing physical work. Intellectuals, in particular, would discover the wholesome effect this has. Daily practical work allows each person’s special light, his or her gift, to be kindled. This spark in each one, though maybe hidden, gives a glimpse of various gifts – possibly in scholarship, music, the use of words, creative art in woodwork, sculpture, or painting. Or simplest and best of all, a nature-loving person may have a particular gift for farm or garden work…. Idleness and tedium are symptoms of death. Where there is life, people have alert, creative minds and are ready to serve and help one another. This is not mere fantasy about an unattainable future; it is a present reality in a growing community.
Such lifelong educational community, whatever the varying forms it may take, is the goal of the liberating arts. It’s the way that we can remember our purpose as human beings possessing bodies, minds, and souls. And it’s an effective answer to the stupidity that continues to afflict our world."]]>liberalarts 2026 petermommsen eberhardarnold education fascism nietzche stupidity magazines small smallmagazines plough thebaffler commentmagazine commonweal firstthings thehedgehogreview jacobin thelamp localculture mereorthodoxy mockingbird thenewatlantis thepoint gatherings local truth community kierkegaard dostoyevsky buderhof christianity educationalcommunities altgdp partisanship truthseekinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8b407bd123b1/A Discussion on the New Novel 'Palaces of the Crow' (with Ray Nayler) | The Chris Hedges Report2026-05-23T05:19:01+00:00
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/a-discussion-on-the-new-novel-palaces
robertogrecoraynayler chrishedges war poland wwii ww2 crows corvids humannature humans human caring community fiction literature togetherness interconnected interconnectedness ussr nazigermany germany cooperation nonviolence mutualaid survival peterkropotkin totalitarianism williamgolding rootlessness evil trauma childhood human-animalrelations human-animalrelationships 2026 lordoftheflies danielberrigan faith birds siberia morethanhuman multispecies krasnovodsk resurrection manchuria turkmenistan leesandlin hitler adolfhitler society civilization children communication interspecies relationships thomasnagel experience perception pathology donaltrump hannaharendt karma poverty nourishment scarcity abundance socialism equality writing howwewrite reading howweread legacy death generations culture learning howwelearn inscription individualism extraction extractiveindividualism environment corporations corporatism disconnection history interdependence sesnes sensory waysofknowing blindness sound sensing senses modernity humahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:476a028d3fb1/Faro Cafe2026-05-05T15:48:33+00:00
https://thefarocafe.com/
robertogrecocambridge cafes coffeeshops slow leisure artleisure leisurearts productivity resistance connection attention presence consumerism repair community art deliberateness conversation local neighborhoods laptop-freecafes thoreauhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:68bbabae0edd/Vicky Osterweil on Disney, Intellectual Property and Storytelling - YouTube2026-05-03T19:43:34+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StrpSp8anQM
robertogrecovickyosterweil ip intellectualproperty culture film disney 2026 entertainment technology medicine popularculture imagination howwewrite writing howweread reading anarchism storytelling looting law legal policestate police policing filmmaking characters marvel monopolies music books covid-19 coronavirus pandemic vaccines pharmaceuticals consolidation markets capitalism innovation constitution us pirating literature copyright productivity creativity suppression francises nintendo matel videogames sequels hegemony ideology nuclearfamily individualism politics propaganda china homogenization finance financialization franchises merchandising ows occupywallstreet fandom freddiegray 2000s 2018 2012 thailand 2014 censorship hungergames guyfawkes resistance revolution davidgraeber stuarthall art artworld commodification gamegate starwars fans fanculture johnboyega daisyridley labor work workers power control socialfabric fanfiction communities community mutualaid 2020 philadelphia losangeles waltdisney mccarthyism sonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5393b930b1ac/Learning? Yes, of course. Education? No thanks.2026-04-26T08:05:02+00:00
https://patrickfarenga.substack.com/p/learning-yes-of-course-education
robertogrecoIn 1982, a British interviewer asked John Holt how he defined the word “education.” He responded: “It’s not a word I personally use. … The word “education” is a word much used, and different people mean different things by it. But on the whole, it seems to me what most people mean by “education” has got some ideas built into it or contains certain assumptions, and one of them is that learning is an activity which is separate from the rest of life and done best of all when we are not doing anything else and best of all in places where nothing else is done–learning places, places especially constructed for learning. Another assumption is that education is a designed process in which some people do things to other people or get other people to do things which will presumably be for their own good. Education means that some A is doing something to somebody else B. I guess that, basically, is what most people understand education to be about” The interviewer pressed John further: “Very well, but what is your definition?” John replied: “I don’t know of any definition of it that would seem to me to be acceptable. I wrote a book called Instead of Education, and what I mean by this is instead of this designed process which is carried on in specially constructed places under various kinds of bribe and threat. I don’t know what single word I’d put [in its place]. I would talk about a process in which we become more informed, intelligent, curious, competent, skillful, aware by our interaction with the world around us, because of the mainstream of life, so to speak. In other words, I learn a great deal, but I do it in the process of living, working, playing, being with friends. There is no division in my life between learning, work, play, etc. These things are all one. I don’t have a word which I could easily put in the place of “education,” unless it might be “living.”3
Children and adults have lived and learned successfully in the flow of community and family life throughout human history without compulsory schooling. We know that people who are talented or knowledgeable can share their wisdom with others in a variety of settings, not just in special places reserved for professional teaching and learning. But our laws, customs, and mind sets have been directed away from our heritage of learning towards the regime of instruction.
John Holt’s book Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better provides not just an analysis of the limits of schooling but also examples of other places, institutions, people, and experiences that exist or could be created for children and adults to learn and grow throughout their lives. What also makes this book interesting is how it ends with a call for people to take their children out of school and teach them in their homes and local communities if the schools are not helping their children. This statement led people from around the world who were already teaching their own children to contact John, and this became the impetus for him to found Growing Without Schooling magazine in 1977.
John was certainly influenced by Illich’s work and book Deschooling Society (Harper & Row, 1971) and he moved his own work from theory to practice when he founded Growing Without Schooling magazine in 1977. 49 years have passed since GWS was founded and homeschooling has grown from the 25,000 estimate John used in 1981 to an estimate of 3.5 million children taught at home in the United States in 2026.4 John hoped school, like a business seeing it’s sales decline, would alter its course and let families that want to use school on an as-needed basis to do so.
Holt wrote about children learning in their communities, in play, sports, projects, and theatrical efforts, from neighbors, friends, and family, and places like the Peckham Center in London—a combined medical research and health support program with a lively community center/cafeteria/gymnasium for working class adults and children. Rather than try to incorporate these and other ideas that expand what education can be, our government and school policymakers continue to double down on the existing structure: more tests, more instruction, and more after-school tutoring to make sure students stay focused on task.
One thing most school administrators and teachers agree upon is that children need more time in school, which became terribly clear during the pandemic. Few educators thought to provide children with social or learning opportunities outdoors during the pandemic, in a schoolyard or public park. Instead they decided to keep students glued to their computer screens while they were being marched through the school curriculum in their homes. This shows how devotion to theories of education subsume common sense about what engenders learning, self-esteem, and social activity, which are entwined.
I’m reminded about all this due to a provocative education policy paper I read in NORRAG, the Global Education Center of the Geneva Graduate Institute: Fighting Against Education: No Alternatives Within the Educated Mind. The authors are united as “Le Goliard: A collective, nomadic, de-professionalized intellectual who wanders erratically on the fringes of dominant certainties and institutions.” It is a strong polemic, as these quotes show:"]]>johnholt education learning howwelearn children society deschooling unschooling ivanillich 2026 plagiarism highered highereducation academia colleges universities schools schooling admission inequality deymoursarason change instruction pedagogy howweteach teaching bronsonalcott asneil mariamontessori rudolphsteiner aaronfalbel institutions adults life living community covid-19 coronavirus pandemic growingwithoutschooling play sports projects self-esteem social patfarenga gwshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:616aa987c7a9/Lessons from the fairness of African fractal societies | Aeon Essays2026-04-22T03:41:24+00:00
https://aeon.co/essays/lessons-from-the-fairness-of-african-fractal-societies
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https://placesjournal.org/article/the-disappearance-of-the-public-bench/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK5y9N1kuNk
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https://nautil.us/theres-no-homunculus-in-our-brain-who-guides-us-237709
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https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/04/prophetic-possibilities-a-few-words-on-david-w-orr-and-a-healing-vision-for-america/
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https://anarchive.fo.am/silver/community_and_coalition_building/
robertogrecojustinpickard 2025 community communitybuilding coalitions coalitionbuilding method workshops édouardglissant lcproject openstudioproject alexmclean nickcollins algoraveshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c2fc020fc44b/An Open Letter to LaRussell2026-04-06T19:51:15+00:00
https://www.coyotemedia.org/an-open-letter-to-larussell/
robertogrecorockrivera larussell 2026 hiphop music donaldtrump jeffreyepstein martinlutherkingjr mlk behavior christianity performance rocnation vallejo bayarea accountability reckoning feedback community adolfhitler culture mistakes jay-z blackcapitalism capitalism criticism hitlerhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d4cd745f1f6a/Millennials Are Killing Capitalism: The Revolt Eclipses Whatever The World Has to Offer with Idris Robinson2026-04-04T18:20:59+00:00
https://millennialsarekillingcapitalism.libsyn.com/the-revolt-eclipses-all-the-world-has-to-offer-by-idris-robinson
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yl6JpVZTdM
robertogrecoemmaholten unlearningeconomics feminism economics 2025 economy society gdp austerity care caring carework careeconomy health healthcare childcare gender hobbes adamsmith johnlocke illness thomashobbes reality humanism relationships social bodies embodiment politicaleconomy sickness unemployment labor work workers culture culturalhistory history quantification numbers statistics data information neoliberalism markets capital capitalism power lobbying influence socialscience socialsciences ideology sexism truth women understanding exclusion aging prices pricing efficiency simnplification methods method inequality diversity externalities coherence disabilities disability predicitons conservatism stabilization predictability equilibrium equilibriumtheory climate climatechange globalwarming change climatecrisis nurses nursing publicsector healthworkers rachelreeves essentialworkers values pandemic covid-19 coronavirus marketvalues qualitative purpose profit profits carecrisis nature environment sustainability uk ehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:55bf219e4032/A Free Home for San Francisco Artists, From Dave Eggers and Friends - The New York Times2026-03-26T06:32:48+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/arts/design/dave-eggers-jd-beltran-art-water-san-francisco.html
robertogrecojdbeltran daveeggers art studios sanfrancisco 2026 via:javierarbona artists community education altgdphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:94350904f2c2/Being in the World (full, award winning, Heidegger/Hubert Dreyfus documentary) - YouTube2026-03-26T03:11:45+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcCRmf_tHW8
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https://nautil.us/the-internet-has-not-killed-reading-or-attention-spans-1279171
robertogrecokevinashton attention internet web online howweread reading kristenfrench 2026 smarthphones internetofthings technology print printing human humans stories marshallmcluhan democratization novels fictions writing howwewrite essays ai artificialintelligence thinking howwethink class longform socialmedia youtube tiktok memory vocabulary cognition twitter communication persuasion narrative narrativeconstruction amyorben andrewprzbylski well-being wellbeing bedtime lannguyen video children criticalliteracy cognitivebiases community transrevolution photography radio television tv computing personalcomputers paulofreire bankingmodelofeducationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:6d3eced0f0f9/Reclaiming the Road: Mobility Justice beyond Complete Streets, by David L Prytherch (2025)2026-03-22T01:46:49+00:00
https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517916459/reclaiming-the-road/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9mlNt_8ocA
robertogrecoivanillich sajaysamuel dougaldhine 2026 religion modernity society tools technology systems medicine education healthcare hospitality convivialtools conviviality institutions deschooling schools schooling life living slow small community economics economy cybernetics philosophy rules christianity catholicism catholicchurch valueshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:709df0eec48b/Take a Walk Around the Block With Me2026-03-13T22:51:44+00:00
https://nextcity.org/features/take-a-walk-around-the-block-with-me
robertogrecowalking everyday cities communities community 2026 gabriellebendiner-viani labor work place placemakinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e8c182659c22/America and Public Disorder - Chris Arnade Walks the World2026-03-10T07:31:00+00:00
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/america-and-public-disorder
robertogrecochrisarnade 2025 publicdisorder disorder us cities public publictransit sharedspace mentalhealth stability community trust behavior drugs society mentalilliness seoul korea individualism addiction drugaddiction freedom crime safety policy pubictrusthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:60d825791c1a/3,000 languages are dying, but more are being invented2026-03-09T23:12:20+00:00
https://asteriskmag.substack.com/p/3000-languages-are-dying-but-more
robertogrecokarsonelmgrenn 2026 language languages diversity culture communication grammar jargon slang esperanto jamesflynn russian chinese mandarin english hindi civilization society hermanmelville eskimo oldirish change humanities psycholinguistics online internet web spanish español tevfikesenç caucasuses ubykh johncolarusso memes communities welsh finnish suzetteelgin johnquijada ithkuil ethnolingusitics cicero linguistics community french conlangs margaretransdell-green invention creativity orkish elvish adamaleksic tokipona hopi kinyarwanda quenya tuyuca turkish sonjalang culturaldiversity metaculus guuguyimithirr tzeltal romanjakobsonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:593024dc6f3b/Rebecca Solnit Says Trump's Strongest Foil Has Been Here All Along | The Interview - YouTube2026-03-09T19:15:32+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOJ_uaffG5s
robertogrecorebeccasolnit davidmarchese 2026 donaldtrump resistance change democracy news media power feminism civilsociety society buddha buddhismn thichnhathanh sangha cheguevara care caring caregiving war community collectivism collective queer environment us cleanenergy climate climatechange globalwarming sustainability couternarratives narrative racism homophobia humanrights minneapolis mutualaid politeness truth progressive progressivism eadweardmuybridge climatecrisis storytelling whitesupremacy misogyny zohranmamdani gavinnewsom algore hillaryclinton joebiden kamalaharris politics elections 2028 2024https://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8b1947624b36/Opinion | How We Resist ICE: Car Pools - The New York Times2026-02-27T07:34:30+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/opinion/minneapolis-ice-resistance-minivans.html
robertogrecowillmcwrath resistance 2026 minnesota ice dhs minneapolis fun community joy solidarity organizing toiderricotte us twincities reneegood alexpretti chicago losangeles charlotte northcarolinahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:485085a79b73/Homegrown Youth Collaborative2026-02-23T03:54:13+00:00
https://homegrownyouthcollab.com/
robertogrecosandiego tijuana lcproject openstudioproject skillshares studygroups education schools schooling homebuilding activism us learning howwelearn organzing politicaleducation congo puertorico palestine iran philippines freedom liberation youth antiimperialism policing border borders displacement anti-imperialism deschooling sound anacossíogarcía danielasandovalargüelles borderlands socialjustice history indigeneity indigenous community labor militarization demilit decolonization colonialism colonization settlercolonialism prisonabolition resistance self-determination sanysidro projecyyano grades garding storytelling roleplay strugglehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:867ed31da5b8/The Broken Record2026-02-22T00:59:38+00:00
https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-broken-record/
robertogrecoaudreywatters 2026 edtech alphaschool altschool rocketship children democracy agency teaching howweteach chatbots opeanai artificialintelligence ai community optimization curiosity contemplation optimism productivity efficiency openness transparency moocs michaelpershan danmeyer emanuelmaiberg markzuckerberg reidhoffman marcandreessen learning howelearn pedagogy schools schooling samkriss roylee meta facebook cameras privacy surveillance highered highereducation colleges universities academia automation technooptimism chunginlee mooc technolgyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2d78fa8c2787/Achieving independence for the sake of mutual interdependence2026-02-16T01:37:22+00:00
https://connectivetissue.substack.com/p/achieving-independence-for-the-sake
robertogreco2026 conviviality ivanillich society lewismumford hanaharendt jacquesellul technology institutions convivialtools freedom modernity hospitality humanism scale imagination autonomy independence interdependence mutualaid burial death dying deschoolingsociety deschooling education schools schooling unschooling competency tools gps navigation place local scalability memory flourishing celebration conversation life living craiggray values neilpostman marshallmcluhan walterong agency existence simoneweil philosophy witness thomashughes ai artificialintelligence generativeai inevitability efficiency optimization productivity josephweizenbaum amish ecosystems luddism neoluddism luddites neoluddites community individualism communitarianism gkchesterson turingtest humans human humannature skill depth capacity douglasrushkoff neigborliness trust lmsacasas genaihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2dcf68a54905/How to vote early and often • Buttondown2026-02-16T01:15:11+00:00
https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-vote-early-and-often/
robertogrecomikemonteiro 2026 voting elections consumption consumerism oligarchy resistance electoralpolitics politics capitalism timcook apple aipac ice usaid elonmusk tesla sanfrancisco dei pride minneapolice uline fascism ubereats community local decency jkrowlinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:42b43d56c45f/Alasdair MacIntyre’s Philosophy in Practice | Acton Institute2026-02-14T22:33:31+00:00
https://www.acton.org/religion-liberty/volume-36-number-1/alasdair-macintyres-philosophy-practice
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https://www.joanwestenberg.com/communities-are-not-fungible/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8dcFhF0Dlk
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https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/02/the-time-is-right-for-stanley-hauerwas/
robertogrecostanleyhauerwas dennisuhlma 2026 society community communities neighborliness patrickdeneen liberalism us adrianvermeule virtue change cgangemaking adamsmith homeschool individualism collectivism christianity marktooleyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fcbf200e2ec8/The intimacy of social distances - The Malta Independent2026-01-25T07:19:21+00:00
https://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2024-11-03/newspaper-lifestyleculture/The-intimacy-of-social-distances-6736265402
robertogreconoahfabri malta literature memory belonging identity maltese 2024 pandemic covid-19 coronavirus communityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b1a219f266a2/It-Togħma Morra taċ-Ċiċri (Noah Fabri, 2024) – The Maltese Reader2026-01-25T07:18:38+00:00
https://themaltesereader.wordpress.com/2025/10/11/it-toghma-morra-tac-cicri-noah-fabri-2024/
robertogreconoahfabri malta literature 2025 memory belonging identity maltese 2024 pandemic covid-19 coronavirus communityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:df4f53c41fa0/Noah Fabri | I am drawn to realism as a genre and form2026-01-25T07:18:22+00:00
https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/arts/books/137763/noah_fabri__i_am_drawn_to_realism_as_a_genre_and_form
robertogreconoahfabri malta literature 2025 memory belonging identity maltese 2024 pandemic covid-19 coronavirus communityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c7c38d476cab/What Is the University For? - Comment Magazine2026-01-24T22:18:58+00:00
https://comment.org/what-is-the-university-for/
robertogrecomargaretsullivan universities colleges highered highereducation academia purpose education 2026 vision dignity embodiment care caring love transcendence agency hope ai artificialintelligence employment technology community communities humility hospitality truth relationships curriculum efficiencyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5683a414b221/The yearnings that take young Europeans into the far Right | Aeon Essays2026-01-23T05:36:46+00:00
https://aeon.co/essays/the-yearnings-that-take-young-europeans-into-the-far-right
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https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/decolonizing-the-world-w-amin-husain
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu-5Qqr2Ss0
robertogrecosouth oraltradition storytelling 2026 music us documentary culture history memphis jeremysimien bryanrobertson yobreezye appalachia creativity pride community louisianahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:44dba776e3d4/We are living in a time of polycrisis. If you feel trapped – you’re not alone | Well actually | The Guardian2026-01-15T20:52:16+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2026/jan/14/new-year-polycrisis-psychology-feeling-trapped
robertogrecofuture psychology theresamacphail progress 2026 polycrisis stevehimmelstein overstimulation news economics instability politics creativity hardship thinking howwethink meaning meaningmaking viktorfrankl crisis halherschfield emotions behavior imagination geopolitics environment climate climatechange globalwarming socialscience predictability danielgilbert danielknight greece 2010 community timeframe time greatplague compassionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f3058b9084bc/US is better than Europe! - Chris Arnade Walks the World2026-01-10T20:43:08+00:00
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/us-is-better-than-europe
robertogreco[Marko Jukic, @mmjukic]Europeans aren't poor. They are illiquid. Much of Europe's wealth is stored in safe streets, nice parks, public transit, "free" healthcare, etc. which, it turns out, are too socially expensive for Americans to maintain. Americans take the money instead. The rest is only natural.
[Flo Crivello, @Altimor] Americans severely underestimate how dirt poor most Europeans are.
They go spend their American wages there and are amazed at the "quality of life," not realizing that they're taking the equivalent of a trip to Disneyland, and everyone around them is the staff.
[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome] Median size of a dwelling in every US state vs the same thing in Europe. [presumably a map or chart]
[Marko Jukic, @mmjukic]The EU has triple the population density of the United States and doesn't believe in "suburbs," just "cities." Given how much more space there is in America, it's surprising that the numbers are so close, if anything. [maps]
Or, as I’ve written before [https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/why-the-us-cant-have-nice-things-a6d ], it’s about a communitarian versus individualistic lifestyle, with the US having chosen a policy path emphasizing self-sufficiency and convenience, and Europe being more focused on the communal good and restraint.
The tweet also highlights the two most striking, easy-to-measure differences between the US and Europe — the US is wealthier, at least in material terms, and has a lot more space, and so US homes end up being large enough that Europeans get either jealous, or see them as wasteful — You mean, you don’t live with your parents and grandparents in a fourth floor walk-up? You mean you have separate rooms to cook in, eat in, and even store your junk in? Wow.
There are so many other easy-to-measure differences between the US and Europe, like life-span, crime, pollution, car ownership, and so on, that makes it close to impossible to adjudicate which is better on data alone, even if you wanted to go that way.
Then there are all the hard to measure very subjective differences, like aesthetics, food, nature, and so on, that highlights that it’s a very personal decision.
Or, asking which is better is a deeply silly and flawed question, since it’s asking someone if they prefer the culture they grew up in, or a different one, and with a few notable exceptions3 the majority of people will vote for their own culture because it’s core to their identity. Humans are cultural animals, groomed from birth by the society they grew up in, to value the society they grew up in.
I’ve alluded to this cultural essential-ism before, in my essay on Thick Travel [https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/thick-travel ],
We humans are cultural animals, imbued at birth with “the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life” but who generally end up “in having lived only one.”
That one life we end up living is largely determined by what culture, and place in it, we are born into.
As Geertz writes,
“As culture shaped us as a single species so too it shapes us as separate individuals. This … is what we have in common.
Oddly enough, many of our subjects seem to realize this more clearly than we anthropologists ourselves. In Java, for example, the people quite flatly say, “To be human is to be Javanese.”
To be human is to be American, or Danish, or Japanese, so it’s not surprising the majority of people are more comfortable in the culture they’re born into4.
So, why am I writing this essay, and why did I title it the way I did, other than as click-bait, especially given how often I write about what the rest of the world does better than the US, like the whole being happy thing. [https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/walking-the-world-hanoi-part-1 ]
Because while the majority of the world does like where they live (again, with the big caveat of destitute places), a minority does indeed reject the culture they’re born into, and choose to move, and an even larger minority dream of moving, and almost all of those who do, imagine themselves in the US.
As I tweeted in response to the above tweet, again somewhat provocatively,
[screenshot:
Don't necessarily disagree with this framing (would say it differently), but I believe a large percentage of Europeans would swap their tiny apartment three miles from downtown Brussels, or Marseille, their tiny car, for a ranch house in Jacksonville beach with three cars & a yard for the kids to play in.
Not sure many Americans would take up the opposite offer, other than grad students wanting a quaint experience
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my sense.
]
Now there are things I would change with that tweet, which was attempting to compare the modal (or most common) European experience to the modal US experience. For instance, I would switch Jacksonville Beach to Jacksonville, or Houston, and Marseille to Bucharest or some other Eastern European city.
Yet, I stand by the intended larger point, culled from years of talking to people all over the world, which is, what the US is selling (space, freedom, meritocracy), has a lot of buyers across the globe, including in Europe. Or to put it another way, the rest of the world (other than academics) really really love the US. Or, at least they love the idea of the US.
Why do I feel the need to point this out? Because I don’t think it’s well understood on twitter, and certainly not in the “smart” discourse.
The reason it’s not well understood is because the people who find the US brand the most appealing are not people you hear from a lot, because they don’t have lots of money, or lots of education.
There is a big educational divide in how the world views the US, and it’s lifestyle, with the less educated being largely positive towards it, while the highly educated generally favor a more European lifestyle (walkable urban environments with smart regulation), including those in the US, who cluster in the most European parts of the US5.
That’s partly why I went to Phoenix, which in many ways represents the pinnacle of what the educated hate most about the US — its sprawl, its dependency on cars, its disregard for the natural elements, its ugly wastefulness, its shortsightedness that places immediate convenience above a focus on the longer term and greater good.
Now, I also famously hated Phoenix, loathed it so much that I’m still getting yelled at on Reddit, but Phoenix is growing rapidly, which shows that while I don’t like it, and you might not like it, a lot of people really do like it. Or at least what it represents to them.
As I wrote then,
Phoenix is a large grid, of mile-long four-lane sides, with shopping plazas at the corners, and an inside of twisting single-lane roads and simple ranch homes on half-acre plots. Those residential insides are the nice parts, and showing that they’re nice is partly why I’d come to Phoenix: to highlight a version of the American Dream, which, while I might not love and isn’t necessarily “walkable,” is still very appealing to lots of people. It’s what I wrote about last week, when I cautioned that walkability doesn’t necessarily translate into livibility. [https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/so-what-makes-a-city-more-walkable ]
This weekend I made a personal trip to Miami, where I did a ten-mile walk through the least fancy parts6. When I mentioned this on Twitter, I got a now very familiar push-back telling me all that’s wrong with Florida: That it’s going to be underwater soon. It’s hot. It doesn’t have any culture. Basically, it’s an unlivable gross shit-hole with a wrong approach to everything, including politics.
Yet, people are moving to Florida. In droves. And they’ve been moving there in droves for the last fifty years.
I grew up in central Florida, not the fancy part, and back in the 70s our school system was so overwhelmed with an influx of new residents from Michigan, New York, Ohio, and the rest of the north, that they shifted to an absurd system called 45-15. Each student was assigned one of four tracks (mine was B) that went to school year round, but alternating between nine week stints, followed by three week breaks, so that at any time only three quarters of the students were attending.7
Since college I’ve been moving further and further north, and at each stop people keep telling me I’m going in the wrong direction. Just this morning, at my local upstate NY McDonald’s, the old man table, when they found out I was originally from Florida, did the usual, “So, why in the hell did you leave?” thing.
All of this is a very long way of saying, people’s actions reveal a lot, and one of the things they’ve revealed to me over the last four years of travel is that while I might be very critical of the US, especially places like Phoenix, I’m beginning to understand that I’m in the minority. Which is helpful to remember.
The American lifestyle I’m so critical of, the lack of public transport, the selfish lifestyle, the gross materialism, the shortsightedness, the paper thin intellectually vapid bling, is very appealing to a large percentage of the world, and that should matter. How large a percentage? I’m not sure, but while it may not be a majority, it’s not far from it.
The smart push-back against this, which is something I’ve written a little bit about before, is that ok, people think they like the US, think they want to move to Phoenix or Florida, but that’s them responding to an image being sold. It isn’t reality.
Or, the people who tell me, over beers in Hanoi or Ulaanbaatar, or coffees in Belgium or Bucharest, that they want to move to the US don’t really know what they’re getting themselves into, deluded by glossy images from TV. Or it’s the grass is always greener effect.
There is certainly a lot of that going on, but the more time I spend walking the world, the more time I spend talking to people, I think the deeper answer is that the image the US projects and represents to a lot of the world, and in many ways provides its residents relative to other places — opportunity, material wealth, safety, independence, space, convenience, and lots of immediate pleasure — is a lot more appealing than what I’ve believed before, or want to believe. So appealing it breaks across cultural boundaries and life-long preferences.
That is, maybe most people really do want an American style transcendent-free lifestyle, especially if it comes with the conveniences of a huge dyer, powerful AC, two large cars, and a ranch house on a plot of land that couldn’t ever hold a heard of animals larger than rats.
The US has a lot of problems, but people not wanting to move here, isn’t one of them, and that shouldn’t be forgotten.
[footnotes]
1 - There is a whole meme dedicated to this, called “The American mind cannot comprehend this.” Google it.
2 - There is something called Godwin's law, which states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
I would like Arnade’s law to be, “As an online discussion over Europe versus US grows longer, the probability of someone posting that picture of Breezewood approaches one.”
3 - Very destitute places are a clear exception. Like Senegal.
Also, as I address further down in the essay, highly educated people (like myself) are less products of their culture. One of the attributes of modern education is an emphasis on valuing new experiences, and different cultures.
4 - Or to put it another way, our cultural provides us our utility function and that is what we use when we decide what array of variables is most important.
5 - Upscale neighborhoods in big cities, and any neighborhoods around elite colleges.
6 - For Miami knowers, I walked up 441, from downtown to Opa-Locka
[map]
7 - They both couldn’t, and didn’t want to out of cheapness, build new schools fast enough to deal with the demand. "]]>2024 chrisarnade us cities livability walkability walking florida phoenix europe jacksonville houston marseille bucharest culture cliffordgeerttz communitarianism community society entrepreneurship entrepreneurialism landscape comparison wealth lifestyle materialism lifespan lifeexpectancy crime pollution cars homes housing data aesthetics food nature environment twitter discourse shortsightedness selfishness individualism consumption consumerism convenience space immediacy independence instantgratificationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:697be459736b/Europe is Healthier than US - Chris Arnade Walks the World2026-01-10T20:33:07+00:00
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/europe-is-healthier-than-us
robertogrecoI’ve engaged in this debate before, but anyone who doesn’t see that Europe is so much culturally richer, and healthier, than the US is missing that culture is fundamentally about communities, and the social.
When most people talk about Europe’s culture legacy, and superiority, they point to cathedrals, museums, and such.
But it’s not about the physical (although it makes the stage more dramatic), it’s about the work/life balance. About third spaces that encourage being around people, in a way that’s deeper than a brutal transactionalism.
US is about the individual, to a hyper degree. Everyone is so focused on being emancipated from everything, freed from any “outdated” obligations, that they end up in an empty loneliness.
It’s depressing to come back, after traveling. To see so many communities of one, all trying to figure out why their life feels so empty.
Yes. There is still the social and communal in the US. That’s human nature to build it. But we make it harder to do. Our culture just isn’t conducive to communities.
My first amendment is to recognize that saying Europe versus the US is far too simplified since each contains multitudes. Especially Europe, where Germany is different from France, and within France, Paris different from Valence, and within Paris, Le Marais different from Aubervilliers.
For what I’m discussing though, the most important European difference is between Paris and Valence. Or in Germany, between Frankfurt and Bochum, and in Belgium, between Brussels and Mechelen.
The most common way Americans see Europe is through its biggest cities, and yet that’s the least representative way to understand it. Especially the neighborhoods in those big cities they spend time in.
Big city Europe is in the process of being conformed, changed, and ultimately smoothed into a generic boring singular entity. A soulless Americanization that’s accelerated dramatically over the last few decades. It’s a process driven by globalization, tourism, and secular capitalism.2 What has resulted is a McEurope — a chain of big cities where chunks of each are the same. The branding of the franchises might be a tad different, the scenery a little altered, but these chunks serve up the same bland and drab experience.
The downtowns of cobble stone streets lined with the same stores selling runners, sex toys, raw paninis under glow lamps, absurdly caloric sweets, and whatever else tourists splurge on to feel special.
There is the one dirty plaza of check the box cafes which feels like EPCOT center cosplaying, with signs in English, and almost no regulars, beyond that one stubborn and ancient local, who through the force of time, has crafted their singular island of special.
There isn’t much dignity left in these “historic downtowns” most of it lost by the rush to monetize the mobs. The Hen and Stag parties flown in on Ryan Air. The pub crawls. The line of well scrubbed Americans and Asians scurrying behind a hatted scold yelling into a megaphone and holding a tiny red flag.
Some of the historic buildings, especially the Cathedrals, still have a dignity and heft, cultural buttes in a desert eroded by pagan winds, which can only last so much longer, since many have given over to being museums more than houses of worship. A check mark on tourist lists to justify a day of binge drinking. Attending mass in these churches means pushing your way through these packs of heathens who, if they stick around, watch the service with the bemused glee of a 19th-century anthropologist in Papua New Guinea. It wasn’t good then, and it’s not any better now.3
What McEurope is lacking the most, or what is hardest to see, is the communal-ism that’s central to European culture.
Thankfully though, McEurope is confined to a few neighborhoods, although they are by far the most visited ones. It’s very easy to get away from them, and once away, you will find that a healthy European culture is almost everywhere else, especially the smaller towns. In spades. That’s why my single suggestion for visiting Europe is to get out of the most visited big cities, which contain the largest number of most visited neighborhoods, and go to some random mid-sized town. Some place like Valence in France4, that also, like Paris, has a long history, an ancient and sublime Cathedral, yet hasn’t entirely succumbed to the global forces trying to flatten the world.
There you see the care Europeans still give to living. The care given to being a valued member of something larger than themselves. To being part of a group. To eating well, to relaxing well, to working with a purpose beyond making mint.
The flattening forces sloshing around the world are mostly viewed in economic terms. It’s mostly talked about as big global brands and franchises sweeping across the globe, knocking everything down around it.
There’s a truth to that, although they are symptom of a larger illness, which is ideological and also very American5.
It’s the idea of individual liberation. The idea that everyone needs to be emancipated from everything. Everyone needs to find and fly their freak flag. They need to find their true self and be it. Even if that means severing ties with family, friends, church, Nation, anything and everything that came before. Those are provincial, backwards, and holding you back.
That is the purpose of life. To be free. Yet it’s a perverse goal, a broken Telos, that can only be seen as positive if you have a abnormal sense of what it means to be human. To be human is to be social. The ancient Greeks knew it, the Medievalist knew it, and even the early Liberals knew it, but it’s us moderns who’ve somehow forgotten it.
Once you understand that, then you further understand that the American definition of freedom ends in a state of despair, and nobody should seek that. Much less entire cultures.
True freedom isn’t being so emancipated that you are isolated, it’s the opposite — being part of a group and knowing where you fit in and are valued. Be that a church, a cafe, a family, a club, or a Nation.
In that sense, Europe, outside of the overly visited but insignificant McEurope parts, is freer, and healthier than the US. Most of the rest of the world is.
The second amendment I’d make to my Note is a better explanation of the last paragraph,
Yes. There is still the social and communal in the US. That’s human nature to build it. But we make it harder to do. Our culture just isn’t conducive to communities.
Before I stared walking around the world I spent over a decade focusing on poverty, addiction, and despair in the US. My book Dignity was a result of that work.
During those years I got called the “McDonald’s guy” because I highlighted how much community exisited in them.
The salient point wasn’t that there’s something unique about McDonald’s, or America, but that humans are social animals. We need community so much that we will even build it in environments not intended for it.
Or to put it another way, if you provide humans with a landscape of banal franchises, they will form communities, and construct meaningful relationships, in them.
Think again about McDonald’s. The designed purpose was as a ruthlessly efficient way to get food, whittled down to its most transactional basic. You go in, you get calories, you leave, in as short a time as possible.
Yet, McDonald’s has evolved into community centers, where people even meet to pray, because people require and need that. To their credit, the corporation has recognized this, and changed how they approach their customers, although the higher driving goal is still efficiency.
Fast food franchises are not unique. I’ve seen that need for community in every space I’ve been. From trap houses in the Bronx, to homeless camps under bridges, to donut stores in LA. People form social groups wherever there’s more than one person. It’s one of the quarks of human existence. A cardinal building block6.
Yet in the US, and in McEurope, we view it as something to move beyond. Especially the intellectual class, who have an outsized role in policy and business decisions.7
That doesn’t mean the public doesn’t stop being social, rather it means they have to go out of their way to build connections.
America might have a broken culture, one ideologically committed to individual freedom, but we are still social, but not necessarily in the healthiest ways. Without functional communities to be members of, many, out of desperation, end up gravitating to dysfunctional ones.
Without church, they go to the drug traps; without cafes, bars; without families, politics; without sports clubs, gangs; without friends, angry online forums.
Some, a sadly growing minority, fail completely to find anything to be part of and end up in a state of complete antisocial perversion. A state of depression, confusion, emptiness, and then violence, against others and themselves.
A state that for too many ends in suicide, either quickly, or slowly one needle at a time.
That is a freedom turned into a tyranny of emptiness.
***
[Footnotes]
1 - Given that headline clashes with this essay (so far) I ask that you read it. It’s both a tongue in cheek headline, but also a different way of looking at how people see the two places.
2 - I know that reeks of buzzword thinness, but it’s true, although in less cartoonish of a way than usually thought about. It’s about an ideological mindset that sees materialism, and individual liberty, as key to human flourishing. I don’t believe that, as I hope to explain further below in the essay.
3 - I’ll never forget excitedly heading to the Cologne Cathedral, only to find a party of 20 or so British women on a Hen party weekend twerking in front of it for a Instagram post
4 - I could suggest many many others. I chose Valence only because it was where I ended my last trip. Avignon for instance, despite having one small McEurope neighborhood, is still a great place.
5 - Most of the things a lot of American tourists, especially on the left, like about Europe — health care, good public transport, walkable cities, less focus on cars, etc — are downstream of the European communal-ism. They are a result of the US focus on rugged individualism.
6 - That is also true in what I call McEurope. There is still community there, in those “soulless” downtowns, it’s just harder to find, and harder to form.
7 - I’m not suggesting the public, or normies, are also not responsible for a lot of our problems. This isn’t an elite only problem. Individualism isn’t only a belief of the intellectuals, although that’s where it originated, and that’s who is most responsible for the propagation of it. But ideas, unlike Economics, do trickle down, and at this point, a rugged, destructive, individualism is central to what the US is.
At it’s best, when tempered with organic community, it’s the American Dream. At worst, it’s constant fighting, constant blame, constant depression."]]>chrisarnade 2024 us europe comparison worklifebalance life living health loneliness france isolation social happiness community cafeculture cafes communalism individualism work food culture superiority wealth transactionalism thirdspaces thirdplaces paris valence germany frankfurt bochum belgium brussels mechelen aubervilliers lemarais dignity mceurope liberation liberalism liberals purpose existence depression confusion emptiness violence freedom tyrannyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b3090faaf5a5/Modern life is good actually2026-01-10T20:22:03+00:00
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/modern-life-is-good-actually
robertogreco"It is not the book I intended to write when I began. Preconceptions dropped off one by one as I investigated. The period was not a Golden Age or Belle Epoque except to a thin crust of the privileged class. It was not a time exclusively of confidence, innocence, comfort, stability, security and peace. All these qualities were certainly present. People were more confident of values and standards, more innocent in the sense of retaining more hope of mankind, than they are today, although they were not more peaceful nor, except for the upper few, more comfortable. Our misconception lies in assuming that doubt and fear, ferment, protest, violence and hate were not equally present. **We have been misled by the people of the time themselves who, in looking back across the gulf of the War, see that earlier half of their lives misted over by a lovely sunset haze of peace and security. It did not seem so golden when they were in the midst of it. Their memories and their nostalgia have conditioned our view of the pre-war era but I can offer the reader a rule based on adequate research: all statements of how lovely it was in that era made by persons contemporary with it will be found to have been made after 1914.**"
]
I especially struggle taking seriously the “modernity sucks” people who lay the blame on technology and seem to idolize the pre-industrial past. Modern technology is wonderful, and our current problems are not because of the machines, but in how we use them.
I was reminded of this with my recent health issue—when a blood test showed I had a risk of prostate cancer, and within two months I was able to walk into a clinic, have a biopsy, and then walk out two hours later, and within a week find out the growths were non-cancerous, and even had they been, my chances of survival were very high.
Modern medicine alone should be reason enough to understand how fortunate we are to be living now, surrounded by technology. At almost any other period of time, having made it to sixty in good health would be a great accomplishment, rather than the normal, and I would be nearing the end of my life, rather than having a decent chance of being here two or more decades4.
That is a lesson I learned early, from my grandmother, who grew up on a Michigan milk farm, loved going into the grocery store and getting Velveeta cheese5, loved her modern conveniences, and would laugh at the “back to nature” hippies as having no idea how hard life was then. Especially as she had lost her husband at the age of thirty-eight, who dropped dead from a blood clot that had gone to his brain, something modern medicine almost certainly would have caught before it killed him.
The problem with modern technology isn’t that it exists, but in how we use it, especially in highly individualistic societies such as the US, which is to go off on our own, into even more solitary lives, removed from community. It is an accelerator of an already existing problem. You can see that in Asian societies with a long-standing cultural emphasis on the communal, such as Vietnam, China, and Indonesia, where a thriving social life still exists, despite the phones.
Technology has enriched our lives in so many ways—extending them, lessening pain and suffering, and providing endless diversions—that having to argue that it is in fact a net good seems like an argument that shouldn’t have to be made, yet a “simpler, more rustic, less technologically advanced” lifestyle is one of those images that always has strong appeal, because we romanticize the simple, while forgetting that the simple has never been easy. The romantic appeal of pre-modern life might be about staying busy through constant toil, but actually growing your own food without machines, washing clothes without machines, and keeping your children alive without machines is not easy. Those are immensely hard, painful, and come with a lot of despair.
It’s interesting that the people most bothered by technology in the West, and most drawn to a prior lifestyle, are the highly individualistic and idiosyncratic intellectuals—not the “normies,” who when given the chance to choose overwhelmingly want the lifestyle anti-modern elites believe is so destructive.
Poor people especially understand something that anti-modernist romantics don’t, which is that every choice involves tradeoffs, and the tradeoff between our current problems and past problems isn’t close.
Show a Cambodian peasant, or a farmer in rural Indonesia, the neon lights and indoor plumbing of Phnom Penh or Jakarta, and they will drop their hoe in a second, happily throw away their low-tech supposedly idyllic life, cram onto a bus and move to be simply near them, even if that means living in a shack on the edge of town. That so many of them are drawn to the spectacle, like moths to a flame, is why these cities in the third world are swelling to the world’s largest, engorged with people seeking more glamorous lives.
The outskirts of Ulaanbaatar is another example of this. The Ger district, extensive and polluted slums that ring Mongolia’s capital, is where thirty percent of the country lives, having tripled in the last thirty years. Not by force, but because people have shown that they prefer being crammed together, next to hospitals, gaming centers, malls packed with Korean electronics, and the bright lights of the city, to the thousand year old long-standing tradition of being out in the sticks, with your Ger, horses, and a Prius6.
People, when allowed to choose, embrace modernity — because they see it as liberation from the hard, bland, boring life of poverty.
The counterargument is that they have not been allowed to choose, because of globalization, and the forces of a capitalism that’s made their past lifestyle impossible. There is truth to that. Policy crafted to maximize production without regard to communal consequences has not surprisingly resulted in more stuff but also devalued the communal7. This isn't the only reason for the rural exodus, and not, I think, the primary one, but it's certainly a large part of the story.
Economic transitions, from agricultural to industrial, and then from low tech industrial to higher tech industrial, always come with a great deal of turmoil, and displacement, that should and can be better managed, but as to whether it's “worth it”, I come down on the side of yes it is. Which I understand isn’t necessarily the most popular side in the online debate.
All of these issues, of progress versus tradition, were debated in England, during the Industrial Revolution, and occupied most of the country’s politics from 1650 to 1850s, and while that period saw a great deal of displacement, confusion, and pain, it also saw an immense increase in living standards. Today, only a few eccentrics argue that things were better before the Industrial Revolution than after, although in the grand calculation of moral right, it certainly came at a significant cost in human suffering.
Debating those questions will never end, and won’t be settled, but it is all academic because you can’t stop progress, that isn’t how humans work. You can manage it so the transition is less unsettling, and that is where the focus should be, not on denying that in totality it is the correct direction.
That modern life, especially the technology, has enabled governments to expand control of its citizens is another good argument, because as China shows, it is partly true, but as a whole package technology is the enemy of authoritarianism, not its friend, because it allows everyone to be informed. That repressive regimes limit what modern inventions the citizens can have, especially blocking the internet, should be evidence enough, that they see modern life as a threat.
That’s not to say modern life doesn’t come with new problems, and that technology can’t be used for ill, but all of that pales in comparison to what people faced in the past. It’s helpful to remember that every now and then.
We cannot ever eliminate despair, because living, while filled with the good, is also hard. There is no utopia, not here on earth at least, and the fruitless quest to try and achieve it is why humans can’t stop progressing, and why they also won’t stop believing it was better before.
The imperfection of the human condition, and our humble place in the universe, can never be eliminated. Not by more and more machines, and also not by denying the additional good they do bring, but only by an acceptance of our limitations.
In that way I suppose I side more with the nostalgics than the full-on modernists, who at least grasp most of that, but then fail to recognize that even a fallen person seeks and needs material comfort.
We might never be able to achieve perfection, but we might as well keep aiming for it, and that means continuing to try and move forward, rather than back, because humans, and living, is fundamentally good. "]]>chrisarnade 2026 modernity life living perfection barbaratuchman past history korea philippines florida us technology medicine phnompenh jakarta indonesia cambodia cities urbanism urbanization urban modernitychina community communities sociallife social society lifestyle ulaanbaatar mongolia liberation policy production globalization industrialrevolution displacement confusion pain authoritarianism humanconditionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:34f3e26c3fad/Why are Americans Unhappy? - Chris Arnade Walks the World2026-01-10T20:10:29+00:00
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/why-are-americans-unhappy
robertogrecoIt is easy to forget how astonishing modern life is … at the earthly level. A three-thousand-square-foot home, with central heat and AC, a two-car garage, and a two-acre estate complete with a swimming pool, with weekly festivals, is the life of a past baron or lord, now available, in some form, to most Americans.
While Franklin Street in Michigan City is far less idyllic than Westchester suburbia, it would also be a magical place to anybody from the nineteenth century, from baron to lord to servant. It is a safe, well maintained place of immense wealth, convenience, opportunity, excitement, with endless diversions. Everyone can now “keep a carriage,” a past symbol of gentility, which drives them from one market to the next, from one fair to the next, including the twelve-floor casino at the end of the street, and access to all sorts of wines, liquors, and ales, from all over the globe. No matter where you live, there are endless diversions you can reach in a few hours by car, accessible to almost every American, that would make Vauxhall Gardens look humdrum by comparison. Such magnificence!
Even the destitute, who I spend the majority of my time in the US with, are satiated enough that anyone who works with the homeless knows the primary issue is rarely a lack of food, or clothes, and it is far more common to meet the stubbornly picky rather than hungry. The man living in a tent, who will turn down a free sandwich, because “I prefer toasted sesame rolls”, or the couple living on the streets, who when I was taking them to get McDonald’s, pointed out, “There’s a nice sushi place we really like down the street, what about that?” or the constant vanity with appearance, “I only wear Jordans, you got any of them?”
Beggars can be choosers, and they are in the US, and while I have few problems with that, because vanity and dignity don’t die with destitution, it is another indication of just how wealthy we are.
Whether our historical wealth has translated into historic happiness, fulfillment, and contentment, is a far less settled question, and one which has launched a thousand think-pieces, books, hot takes, and political fights. The various factions in this debate, some genuine, most opportunistic, are roughly aligned into the following camps:
1. People are wealthy and happy, and any suggestion to the contrary is because you are looking in the wrong place, at the wrong things: (Insert their favorite statistic, anecdote, or quote.)
2. People are indeed unhappy, but that’s not because of economic anxiety; rather they’re deluded by X (insert some political figure, or institution the speaker does not like) into bad vibes, or because they are Y (insert some atavistic failing, like ignorant, racist, etc etc etc.), or both.
3. We might be historically wealthy, but all the wealth is being hoarded by X (corporations, billionaires, Jews, or the trifecta of corporations run by Jewish billionaires), and so the majority of Americans are indeed suffering from economic deprivation, because of bad actors.
4. We are not wealthy, and all the statistics saying that we are, are simply high class lies.
5. And then there are the single issue guys/gals, who jump into this debate, like they do every debate, with the “Everything, including voter anger, can be solved if we fix X”, where X is nuclear power, global warming, YIMBY zoning, the Jones Act, fluoride in water, prison reform, seed oils, high-speed rail, gut health, raw milk, kitten rescue, bicycle lanes, daylight saving time, kittens in bike lanes during daylight savings time, etc etc etc.
My own contribution to this has been to say that yes there is genuine and widespread despair in the US1, but the primary reason isn’t economic2, rather it is because human fulfillment requires more than material wealth, which in our quest for more stuff, we have forgotten. People need physical communities, and while the US excels at material wealth, it’s achieved it, especially in the last forty years, at the expense of the aesthetic, communal, stable, and personal, and so the bad vibes are justified.
While I still believe that, it is oversimplified, because exactly how we structure our economy does matter, as a recent viral Substack post highlighted. That piece, My Life Is a Lie, largely fell into camp three (we are poor and unhappy), and made the audacious claim that $140,000 is the new poverty line and so the anger of any family making less than that was understandable, and economic.
Much of that post, to be blunt, is bullshit, certainly the intentionally provocative claim that any family making less than $140,000 is suffering from economic deprivation. Yet the piece went viral, because the core of its argument is correct — the less troll-ish claim that because of the ad-hoc nature of our government policies, a lot of Americans, especially those who make up what I would call the “aspirational bottom” are being squeezed. They are doing too well to qualify for assistance, but not well enough to be fully self sufficient, at least as we understand that.
To be geeky for a second, in particular there’s a region (20 to 50K or so) where a family is treading water because their take-home pay almost flat-lines, just as they reach what should be escape velocity from the social safety net, on their way to reaching the American Dream. (The graph is from a different paper: Work Disincentives)
[graph] "
This is an important point because the dominant cultural archetype in the US is the self-made entrepreneur — someone who, through hard work, smarts, and dedication, can build that suburban lord’s life, complete with children who will do better than they did. This is the American Dream, and if there is a single idea unifying our country it is this.
Again, to reference myself, while I do believe in individual agency, I also believe societies come with strong forces that shape expectations and even shape people’s understanding of a ‘good life.’ That is, society provides citizens playbooks that they are urged to follow which are supposed to end in happily ever after, and ours is that you can become a millionaire on your own terms as long as you hustle hustle hustle — and when that doesn’t happen, it’s very lonely and humiliating, because we as a culture have put all our eggs in that one particular basket. At the expense of community, friendships, and even family.
So if you’re working your ass off and yet you keep doing about the same as the family down the street who doesn’t seem to be giving their all, then what the F, man. If we’re going to be the meritocracy we claim to be, you simply can’t do this to those near the bottom pursuing the American dream, who not surprisingly, will justly feel they’ve been sold out, deceived, and/or they themselves have failed, none of which leads to happiness.
This is an important point because the dominant cultural archetype in the US is the self-made entrepreneur — someone who, through hard work, smarts, and dedication, can build that suburban lord’s life, complete with children who will do better than they did. This is the American Dream, and if there is a single idea unifying our country it is this.
Again, to reference myself, while I do believe in individual agency, I also believe societies come with strong forces that shape expectations and even shape people’s understanding of a ‘good life.’ That is, society provides citizens playbooks that they are urged to follow which are supposed to end in happily ever after, and ours is that you can become a millionaire on your own terms as long as you hustle hustle hustle — and when that doesn’t happen, it’s very lonely and humiliating, because we as a culture have put all our eggs in that one particular basket. At the expense of community, friendships, and even family.
So if you’re working your ass off and yet you keep doing about the same as the family down the street who doesn’t seem to be giving their all, then what the F, man. If we’re going to be the meritocracy we claim to be, you simply can’t do this to those near the bottom pursuing the American dream, who not surprisingly, will justly feel they’ve been sold out, deceived, and/or they themselves have failed, none of which leads to happiness.
So yes, Americans are materially wealthy and unfulfilled, and the primary problem is cultural—we’ve sacrificed community and meaning to emphasize an archetype built on acquiring as much stuff as possible, but then we have made that unnecessarily hard to do. When you give your citizens a cultural script, built on the material, that promises hard work will lead to success, and then your policy design ensures it doesn’t, people will end up both economically frustrated, as well as spiritually empty, sitting in their living room streaming the latest movie wondering what exactly is the point of life. Or, they will feel they have failed at the material, while also having little else to give them meaning.
The dismissive response by pundits to a good economy with frustrated citizens is to say, “the vibes are off”, but the vibes really really matter! Bad vibes are the people saying, I’m playing the game I’m supposed to play, yet it’s not rewarding in the way I’ve been told it would be.
So the solution isn’t more stuff, it’s policies that don’t actively punish the people trying to live out the primary cultural script we’ve given them, or we need a change in the script, and I’ve got no idea how to make that happen, or even if we should."]]>us happiness culture chrisanade 2025 wealth society hunger homelessness homeless appearance vanity dignity destitution anxiety economics despair fulfillment aterialism community communities aesthetics economy policy government socialsafetynet americandream expectations hustleculture meritocracy politics workingpoor dependentpoor povery inequality careerism europe china authoritarianism childcare families accumulation successhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:43b0c8379d25/how one company broke sewing for EVERYONE - YouTube2026-01-05T06:26:30+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=4VJxJesgF8Y
robertogrecojoannfabrics sewing hobbies retail textile textiles cosplay clothing diy costumes materials 2025 yayahan making hobbylobby privateequity leveragedbuyouts history us consolidation craft crafts art theranos bankruptcy ceos materialliteracy quilting liquidation gagroup lizardleigh community education apparel offshoring customerservice labor work workers healthcare projects pasttimes capitalism latestagecapitalism pandemic covid-19 coronavirus supplychain canon crafting accessibility houseoffabrics hancockfabrics clothworld alanrosskamm 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s economics videoessays fabri-centersofamerica fastfashion 1943 cleveland butterick ebenezerbutterick ellenaugustabutterick joanzimmerman jackieannrosskamm gender prarierevival fashion justinzimmerman almazimmerman bettyrosskamm martinrosskamm knowledge institutionalknowledge hildareich bertholdreich sigmundrohrbach matildarohrbach women guitarcenter darrellwebb drewmaloney fabfrics wademiquelon michaelpendergrast greatamericangrhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3237c57dd4d3/The Quiet Erosion of Us - Short Stack2025-12-30T20:15:21+00:00
https://andypetro.substack.com/p/the-quiet-erosion-of-us
robertogrecoplace community 2025 local abstraction andypetro grief experience convenience amazon internet web online automation togetherness society social doordash delivery christianity neighbors neighborliness algorithms gigeconomy belonging spontaneity habits inperson humanism human humans humanity attention presence canon significance meaning meaningmaking life living interdependence capitalism commerce consumerism consumption vocation conviviality proximity memory nearness spiritualityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:db830bfa8cbc/Alexis Madrigal: "To Know A Place" - Social Science Matrix2025-12-28T20:58:00+00:00
https://live-ssmatrix.pantheon.berkeley.edu/research-article/alexis-madrigal/
robertogrecoalexismadrigal place urban urbanism bayarea 2025 technology culture socialscience cities landscape perspective memory narrative storytelling time watershed placemaking bighere longnnow bignow longhere biomes ecology temporality technophily online internet web bioredionalism garysnyder indigeneity indigenous life living flora fauna reallifemag meatspace nathanjorgenson bodies helenharrison newtonharrison saraamariwalker oakland eastbay peterberg planetdrum berkeley claremontcreek politics institutions robinwallkimmerer siliconvalley sanfrancisco waterfront south norcal mountdiablo mounttamalpais ecofeminism liberation robinsloan treasureisland spirituality strawberrycreek midlredhoward running physical adamwebb astrobiology margaretgordon eastpaloalto richmond marincity race racism russellcity bayview hunterspoint westoakland biology bart capitalism lakemerritt rondellums air water pacificcircuit claireleister sanjose solidarity geology history hydrology baybridge humanism human humans land california wildernehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9c6915ef93c3/The World Happiness Report Is a Sham - Yascha Mounk2025-12-16T07:07:29+00:00
https://yaschamounk.substack.com/p/the-world-happiness-report-is-a-sham
robertogreco“Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?”
The obvious problem with this question, commonly known as the Cantril Ladder, is that it doesn’t really ask about happiness at all. We know from many surveys that people tend to give very different answers to questions about what makes them satisfied with their life and to questions about whether they are feeling good in the moment. Having children, for example, tends to raise parents’ assessment of how meaningful their life is; but notably it does not make them report higher levels of happiness at any particular moment, including when they are spending time with their kids. At most, a ranking based purely on the Cantril Ladder could therefore give us something called a World Self-Reported Life Satisfaction Report—and it’s easy to see why such an honest title wouldn’t entice many journalists to write about it.
The less obvious problem with the Cantril Ladder is that it does not even do a good job of measuring respondents’ satisfaction with their own lives. When one set of researchers asked over a thousand survey respondents in the United Kingdom what they took the question to be getting at, the most commonly mentioned responses included “wealth,” “rich” and “successful.” As August Nilsson and his colleagues painstakingly demonstrate, some of the specific language in the question—such as the metaphor of the ladder and its emphasis on the “top” as well as the “bottom step”—primes respondents to think about social hierarchies. Their conclusion is sobering: “The Cantril Ladder is arguably the most prominent measure of well-being, but the results suggest caution in its interpretation—the Cantril Ladder’s structure appears to influence participants to attend to a more power- and wealth-oriented view of well-being.”
But perhaps the biggest problem with the World Happiness Report is that metrics of self-reported life satisfaction don’t seem to correlate particularly well with other kinds of things we clearly care about when we talk about happiness. At a minimum, you would expect the happiest countries in the world to have some of the lowest incidences of adverse mental health outcomes. But it turns out that the residents of the same Scandinavian countries that the press dutifully celebrates for their supposed happiness are especially likely to take antidepressants or even to commit suicide. While Finland and Sweden consistently rank at the top of the happiness league table, for example, both countries have also persistently experienced some of the highest suicide rates in the European Union, ranking in the top five EU countries according to one recent statistic.
It turns out that my hunch is born out by the data. Scandinavia doesn’t just seem a lot less happy than headlines suggest each year; if you look at a variety of metrics that have at least as much connection to a layperson’s understanding of happiness as the single metric used by the World Happiness Report, countries like Finland don’t do especially well.
***
Two distinguished economists, Danny Blanchflower and Alex Bryson, set out in a recent paper to discover what would happen to the world happiness rankings if they looked at a broader range of indicators—and what they found is a totally different picture.
Instead of relying on a single metric of life satisfaction, Blanchflower and Bryson consider eight survey questions which have widely been asked in different countries around the world. The first four of these questions measure different dimensions of positive affect. They are based on asking whether respondents experienced enjoyment yesterday; whether they smiled or laughed a lot; and whether they felt well-rested. (Their measure of positive affect also incorporates answers to the Cantril Ladder.)
The next four questions used by Blanchflower and Bryson measure different dimensions of negative affect. They ask respondents such questions as whether or not they experienced sadness yesterday; whether they worried during a lot of the day; whether they experienced anger; and whether they were in physical pain.
What Blanchflower and Bryson found is striking. Responses to the Cantril Ladder barely seem to correlate with expressions of either positive or negative affect. Denmark, for example, came top of their ranking on the Cantril Ladder. But, like most other Scandinavian countries, Denmark did much worse on both metrics of positive affect such as how likely respondents had been to smile or laugh a lot the previous day (111th out of 164 countries) and on metrics of negative affect such as whether they had worried a lot (93rd out of 164.)1
As a result, the overall ranking constructed by Blanchflower and Bryson looks totally different to the more famous version published by the UN. Finland, for example, falls to 51st place.2 Conversely, countries like Japan, Panama and Thailand, none of which do especially well on the official ranking by the UN, suddenly appear a lot happier; all of them are ranked above Finland and other supposed top performers.
Another surprise suggests that the story about happiness in the United States is not nearly as bleak as is usually suggested. For it turns out that happiness varies widely across America—and some parts of the country are seemingly the happiest in the world.
Once you break the United States into its component states, it becomes clear that parts of the country really are doing quite badly. Residents of West Virginia, for example, ranked 101st out of 215 countries and states, making them about as happy as those in much poorer places like Sri Lanka and Mauritania. But residents of other U.S. states are, according to the ranking constructed by Blanchflower and Bryson, among the happiest in the world. Seven of them—Hawaii, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas—are at the very top of the list, meaning that their residents are happier than those of the happiest country in the world (which turns out to be Taiwan, located in East Asia rather than Northern Europe). All in all, the residents of 34 U.S. states, plus those of the District of Columbia, have higher average levels of happiness than do the Fins.
***
In a culture obsessed with happiness and wellness, there will always be huge demand for content that sells readers on the one great hack for how to improve their lives. Want to live to a ripe old age? Eat like the residents of “blue zones” such as Sardinia or Okinawa. Want to be happy even though you’re not rich? Move to Bhutan, a country often portrayed as having figured out the key to happiness because the government announced in 2008 that it would henceforth be focusing on growing its “Gross Happiness Index.”
But that one great hack for how to improve your life nearly always turns out to be a sham. The residents of blue zones aren’t especially likely to live long because of their unique diets; more likely, blue zones are distinguished by poor record-keeping, leading to an abnormally high number of people defrauding the government by overstating their own age or continuing to collect pension checks for deceased relatives. Similarly, the government of Bhutan may talk a big game about prioritizing happiness over economic growth; but in reality, it doesn’t do particularly well in either the World Happiness Report or on Blanchflower and Bryson’s alternative metric—and the steady flow of people leaving Bhutan appear to believe that they could lead much happier lives elsewhere.
This suggests that, for all of the evident shortcomings of a purely economistic mindset, attempts to abandon tried-and-tested metrics like GDP for new-fangled indicators like happiness rankings may do more harm than good. After all, it remains extremely hard to measure happiness—and even if we could somehow come up with a reliable metric, we’d have precious little idea about what government policies could actually boost this outcome.
More broadly, supposedly serious news outlets still have a long way to go in subjecting publicity exercises like the World Happiness Report to appropriate journalistic scrutiny. It is easy to see why editors are tempted to assign some beat reporter without expertise in the social sciences to write up a fun little story about how much happier those enlightened Scandinavians are compared to benighted Americans. But if the media wants to live up to its self-appointed role as a gatekeeper of reliable information, it can’t continue to be complicit in the spread of such shoddy clickbait.
Over the last years, media outlets like the New York Times, universities like Oxford, and international institutions like the UN have devoted themselves to the fight against so-called “misinformation.” It is certainly true that our political discourse is awash with dangerous distortions and outright lies. But any institution which wishes to address that problem must start by looking into the mirror—and cease spreading “elite misinformation” like the World Happiness Report."]]>yaschamounk 2025 happiness well-being wellbeing scandinavia denmark finland nordiccountries sweden iceland us costarica lithuania worldhappinessreport surveys skepticism wealth mentalhealth society community cantrilladder assessment power dannyblanchflower alexbryson japan panamá thailand un hawaii minnesota northdakota southdakota iowa nebraska kansas dc washingtondc taiwan asia europe srilanka mauritania westvirginia culture sardinia okinawa gdp misinformation fraudhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f1c8c5ea80fb/7 Principles of Zapatismo to Consider in Community Building - The Mixed Space2025-12-16T06:38:57+00:00
https://www.themixedspace.com/7-principles-of-zapatismo-to-consider-in-community-building/
robertogrecozapatistas ezln nafta zapatismo 1994 principles indigeneity indigenous politics economics anarchism autonomy hierarchy horizontality community maya consent service leadership servantleadership governance participation participatory socialchange grassroots chiapas mexicohttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:47201049f748/Zapatismo at 30: An Indigenous Rights Movement Faces Perilous Times | Nonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice.2025-12-16T05:57:34+00:00
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/zapatismo-at-30-an-indigenous-rights-movement-faces-perilous-times/
robertogreco2024 tedsiefer zapatistas zapatismo ezln indigeneity indigenous chipas autonomy 1994 margaretcerullo quincysaul land morena amlo lázarocárdenas benitojuárez trenmaya cuartatransformación gerardoalbertogonzález claudiasheinbaum elisacruzrueda democracy economics economicjustice racialjustice jackwyss mexico emilianozapata chiapas history pri politics andrésmanuellópezobrador liberation community communitybuilding horizontality anarchism struggle displacement organizing maya consent service leadership servantleadership governance participation participatoryhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a793a0733a19/Could 'degrowth' save the world? | BBC News - YouTube2025-12-13T07:17:25+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=596dU6pDEU8
robertogrecodegrowth economy economics 2025 gdp donellameadows housing cooperatives cooperation capitalism socialjustice environment joanmartinez-alier greengrowth ecology ecologicaleconomics climate climatechange slow small democracy spain españa uk france japan giorgoskallis barcelona labrugueradepugol permaculture consumerism consumption jasonhickel production society filkasekulova mutualaid waysofbeing claudiacustodiomartínez inequality waste energy well-being wellbeing accumulation alternative democratization resources esteralegre speculation ninaturull autonomy community construction labor work nonprofit profit externalities materials recycling decentralization dennismeadows jorgenranders williambehrens mikeduff systemsthinking globalnorth globalsouth pollution panagiotakotsila awarenes colectivogrietas socialtransformation justice equality change changemaking security insecurity stability precarity cities class resilience isabelleanguelovski urbanism urbanplanning urban gentrification green greengentrificatihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ad7e96493e98/How to Argue with Pro-Capitalist Cultists2025-12-08T03:19:21+00:00
https://peterjoseph.substack.com/p/how-to-argue-with-pro-capitalist
robertogrecocapitalism economics anticapitalism 2025 leecamp peterjoseph society sociopaths power wealth globalsouth exploitation climate climatechange environment negativeexternalities work labor hardwork productivity efficiency behavior competition inequality taxes taxation tyranny meritocracy entrepreneurship entrepreneurialism socialism poverty allocation resources misery marketfundamentalism cults indoctrination consumerism freedom consumption innovation progress civilization ideology freedomtochoose housing healthcare food waste tina wellbeing well-being socialcohesion community health prosperity commons infrastructure publicgood marketsystems ecology economyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:df8c782c4e2e/Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century, by W. David Marx (2025): 9780593833995 | Penguin Random House2025-11-28T23:41:41+00:00
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/769187/blank-space-by-w-david-marx/
robertogrecoThe first step in reversing cultural stagnation is to accept that artistic invention is a social good. And like so many other social goods, it isn’t necessarily going to have its production prioritized by the market. We — creators and audiences alike — have to make an effort to encourage bold new forms of culture. Even failures and half steps will be more interesting than overly market-tested products.
Reading Blank Space didn’t necessarily “radicalize” me, but it made me overtly grateful for the work I’m doing: work grounded in the world, physicality, relying on social media as little as possible, operating at “human scale” and creating as many “durable” and “deep” connections as possible, attempting to elevate everyone who’s involved. I’ve been lucky. I’m able to walk, to write, to photograph, and then collate all that into printed books. It’s easier than ever to sell printed books online thanks to companies like Shopify. And it’s easier than ever to form a relationship with a fulfillment warehouse, set up a DHL account, and ship the things around the earth. Global shipping is the 10th wonder of the world. I love that I work with talented printers and binders, paying their employees well. I love that I have readers who are OK with paying what my books cost. I like that the arc of the work is slow and loping, that daily updates might happen in spurts, but they are 2,000-5,000 words spurts, amidst an outsized walk, more like an ascetic ritual, calming, fullness-giving, the opposite of whatever it is you have to access to upload daily TikToks.
Work like mine has almost no representation in David’s book. There’s a ruthlessness that’s taken hold across all strata of cultural making (and life itself). Everything turned into a casino, “traps” galore. Billions as the only goal. Achieved celebrity? Start a coffee brand (or gin brand, or tequila brand; I’m shocked nobody is selling their own cigarettes). Leave “nothing on the table.” Epicurean maximizing. That sort of thing. The whole world in a swivet about every dumb breath by some dumdum. AI now turning the future protean. Models upending models within days. Solid ground made liquid for the next decade.
David’s book is funny. I mean, it’s heartbreaking, mainly. But you’ll laugh as your soul is pummeled. David quotes all the fools of the last twenty-five years. They are happy to shoot themselves in their own feet, again and again. The book is most tragic when it dips into politics. In our On Margins chat, we mention Obama, how his ascension symbolized some “completion” — “it was love triumphing over hate, and peace over war, and all sorts of things of the way we were told how things were going to play out because of the natural order of the world, that there would be some sort of correction and this was the correction.” It’s surreal now to think of that world in 2010. The iPhone basically still new. Obama in the White House. The full conversion of everything online to brain traps, to teleportation heroin, still years away. Back when you actually had to “follow” folks to see their content. 2010, just fifteen years ago, but about seven generations of mental life. Back when a trillion-dollar company was a pipe dream (Apple being the first to hit that number, in 2018; now it feels like a monthly announcement, Nvidia hitting $5T a month ago), back when you didn’t nab a $100B valuation as a startup before you even launched a product. Back when Apple’s own apps weren’t loaded with ads. Back when not everything was “recurring revenue” driven. Back when even non-institutional investors had a chance to get in on a company like Facebook or Google while they were still in ascendancy.
Still, around that (now seemingly Brigadoonish) time, I already had a growing sense of doom / skepticism around how much tech money was being bandied about:
Craig: Early 2008, 2009, 2010, I was very negative on Facebook. Very early because I remember explicitly that Facebook was eating up all the designers, uh, from Brooklyn who were doing genuinely interesting work. I remember being really depressed about that. But if Facebook offers you a million dollar salary — especially in 2008, 2009, 2010, it’s hard to turn down. But it felt like there was this incredible compromise that had started to happen.
And David, expanding on this point:
David: This is a really important point of the 21st century, which is I graduated in 2001, and I don’t think anyone around me, even the money hungry people were like, I’m going to be a billionaire. No, it was just on zero people’s minds. And the best was like, dude, did you know you could go work for an investment bank and within five years you could be making $1 million?
Anyway, you should absolutely read David’s book. It deals with all of this and more. His ability to synthesize vast swaths of history and criticism into sane, compressed chapters is inspiring. It’s a fun read, and may radicalize you, too, in better directions. Or just reaffirm the path you’re already on. Or just get you to step offline for a few moments."
"Pop Culture Got Stale. Counterculture Went Right-Wing.
How the rise and fall of the nihilist hipster gave us the cruel reactionaries of today."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/books/review/culture-right-wing-david-marx.html
https://archive.ph/idxdR
"Make Culture Weird Again
Even failures and half steps will be more interesting than the boring stuff."
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025/11/blank-space-book-excerpt-culture/685037/
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025/11/blank-space-book-excerpt-culture/685037/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZzZAypQ-DyUUwPxyZrMsWaI
https://archive.ph/KJmQM ]]]>wdavidmarx culture society 2025 stagnation art film tv television k-pop sociology economics politics snobbery liberalim liberals crypto cryptocurrencies nepobabies nepotism clarity tastemakers trends creativity community values neoliberalism capitalism profit profits twenty-firstcentury hispters nihilism reactionaries craigmodhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f71c57b0c5e9/What rituals from the past teach us about panic and anxiety | Psyche Ideas2025-11-22T00:23:09+00:00
https://psyche.co/ideas/what-rituals-from-the-past-teach-us-about-panic-and-anxiety
robertogrecosenses sensing multisensory mariwmel-kady psychogeography panic anxiety religion ritual community communalism mentalhealth ibnsina hippocrates islam culture ceremony ceremonies trauma shamans calming healing psychiatry medicine hysteriahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:dcd6408319f9/