Kyle Thomas Hemingway: The ephemera edit

“In the 20th century, Hans-Georg Gadamer was one of the theorists who helped to popularize the idea of ‘historical consciousness.’ He argued that we can only ever interpret the past through our own prejudices and traditions, and that meaning emerges through a fusion of past and present ‘horizons.’ Appreciation for the subjectivity of our historical consciousness was, he suggested, a relatively new phenomenon. He believed it was ‘the privilege of modern man to have a full awareness of the historicity of everything present and the relativity of all opinions.’”

“‘We are constantly contending with algorithms of all kinds,’ writes Kyle Chayka in his book Filterworld, ‘each one attempting to guess what we are thinking of, seeking and desiring.’”

“‘Compassion draws on mental resources and given that our mental resources are finite, we have a finite capacity for it,’ explains Adam Waytz, a psychologist and professor at Northwestern University. And because our tendency is to direct our empathy toward those we feel closer to, ‘we might fail to properly acknowledge the suffering of others’—to be unfair to groups we consider different from ourselves, say, or unethically biased toward those we favor.”

“Is it any wonder that so many of us, after a busy week of work, opt for a change of scene, as often as we can, rather than stay put and build the kind of community that we find so appealing elsewhere? The 17th-century French thinker Blaise Pascal suggested that this was down to humankind’s ‘secret instinct which impels them to seek amusement and occupation abroad.’ Alongside this urge, Pascal wrote, stood a contradictory pillar of self-knowledge: ‘That happiness in reality consists only of rest, and not in stir.’ In the case of the village mentality the contradiction is evident: We want the deep peace of belonging, but our itchy feet undermine our ability to put in the hours.”

“What would it mean to practice negative capability in one’s own life? Perhaps it’s simply having a certain comfort with the messiness of existence—a determination to not be crippled by the thought that one either is, or isn’t, ever doing the ‘right’ thing. And an ability to celebrate, to wonder and not attempt to explain; to look at your child and think, ‘If I had decided to do something different in my life, even if it was ‘better,’ then this person might not exist.’ It is a way to realize that despite everything, there is really something very beautiful about the chaos of existence. Rather than try to find reason in it, we perhaps just need to embrace it.”

“Today there are increasingly fewer mysteries in our scientific, overdocumented world. So—with even shimmering monoliths now humdrum—where can we turn to find the mystery in our lives? Perhaps the best place to start is the landscape in which they appear. Touch the earth, observe the clouds, consider the extraordinary statistical unlikeliness of evolution and chance which has led you to this exact moment, on a planet spinning at 1,000 miles an hour in a mostly uncharted universe. It makes you wonder, at least.”

“An encouragement to subtract can be seen in various forms of the so-called slow movement, which include calls to reduce the length of the standard workweek from five days to four. The idea is a good one, but as Cal Newport argues in Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, many employees aren’t burdened by how many hours they work, but by how much work they’re expected to do during them. What we need, Newport says, is to rethink how we measure productivity—as well as to reduce the volume of work employees have to do in the first place.”

“This is how to remember a moment: You write it down as soon as it is over. Spare no detail—the weather, the color of the walls, every single thing that’s said (you will not accurately recall every single thing that’s spoken: Record all conversations you have). It would be quicker to photograph the moment, of course. It would be easier, less emotionally taxing. But writing it all down, as much as you can bear, reminds you, in the way a photograph can’t, that you were there inside the experience, trying to make some meaning out of it.”

“Growth is often associated with moving on. It’s a commonly posed question, for example, whether one should ever vacation in the same place twice. If travel broadens the mind, the argument goes, then a travel itinerary should be as broad as the horizon. There’s such a lot of the world to see: Why go back again?”

“Without ugliness, without imperfection, beauty spins frictionless; it gains no purchase on the world. Real, unabashed ugliness should be celebrated. One aspires to be beautiful, and one desires lovely things. But ugliness is the stuff of life.”

“Tackiness may require unabashed love, but it also rewards those who get the references—and the current mood. As Karl Lagerfeld once proclaimed, ‘Trendy is the last stage before tacky.’ The tack-o-meter is constantly adjusting. It moves with the times, chewing up the past to recalibrate our present tastes.”

“I made it a point to greet it every morning, to be sure it was still doing its thing. For as long as it is waving, it gives me a sense of assurance that all is well. An unexpected, yet very real relationship had been unwittingly established, and it taught me that value of things is not determined by price, but through time and meaning.”