One thing I miss about some of the reading I used to do was that it was largely useless, in the sense that I was just reading for personal interest and edification. All the time I spent slogging through James Joyce or Kierkegaard never amounted to anything beyond time well spent.

One thing I wish the left did a better job of was advocating the importance of "useless" things. I get how the humanities are & #39;useful& #39; in certain respects, but I think their value in helping people cultivate an & #39;inner life& #39; and having that be valuable in itself get missed a lot.

I get how the line between inner- and public/political-life is blurry, and I& #39;m glossing over a lot here, but my main point is I miss the days of biking to a park and reading Ulysses or Works of Love by the river, and I wish everyone had the time to do more of that sort of thing.

It& #39;s unfortunate that a lot of people& #39;s first encouragement to read and turn inward in a seriously reflective way comes from Pordan Jeterson, but I think this is a major reason for his popularity, and even gives me hope that there remains a hunger out there for that sort of thing

Funnily enough, the possibility of my own radical politics was cultivated by doing a lot of personal reflection. Reading Capital was just a material framework, but reading Kierkegaard and Heidegger might& #39;ve done more to prepare me to become a Marxist than actually reading Marx.

Idk. Maybe this is wrong, but the nice thing about having so few followers is I can air half-developed thoughts like this and get 2 likes and maybe a comment saying & #39;Yeah, totally& #39; rather than dogpiled. <3 all 201 of you