“How Progressives Froze the American Dream.” Yoni Appelbaum’s essay, drawn from his new book Stuck, has some fair critiques of NIMBYism and thoughtful reflections on the tensions inherent in zoning, but his assertions about the apparently unalloyed goods of discontentment and restlessness and mobility are rather strange and unsubstantiated. Presumably his book provides further evidence (and I certainly hope that the book, unlike the essay, engages with Strong Towns and books like Escaping the Housing Trap), but much of the essay reads like an ode to Wendell Berry’s boomers: “As Americans moved around, they moved up. They broke away from stultifying social hierarchies, depleted farmland, declining towns, dead-end jobs. If the first move didn’t work out, they could always see a more promising destination beckoning them onward.” Yet as Berry points out, “upward mobility, as we now are seeing, implies downward mobility, just as it has always implied lateral mobility. It implies, in fact, social instability, ecological oblivion, and economic insecurity.”
“Tempted by the False God of Convenience.” Nathan Beacom draws on Neil Postman for wisdom about how to recognize and respond to the temptations of AI: “Postman wanted us to be alive to the fact that, as technologies change, we have the power to decide how they will change us, if we are willing to ask the right questions, make the right choices, and impose the right limits. This is not only true for lawmakers, but for individuals, who can use their freedom to use tools only to the extent that they encourage human flourishing.”
“Mud.” Brian Miller reflects on the moral resonance of mud: “The curious thing about mud is that it is only dirt pending the addition of water. Mud is all around us, waiting patiently to show itself for much of the year. It is to be found beneath the grass under your feet as you walk through the rounds of chores during the day. It is in the dry corrals of compacted clay and mixed in with the desiccated fecal matter from cattle and sheep. In the hog paddocks and woodland enclosures all tidy and dry, mud lies unnoticed, unborn, and unappreciated, until … you add a freeze or three and water, lots of water.”
“If You Care About Record Egg Prices, You Should Care About Corporate Consolidation.” Claire Kelloway details the risks and costs associated with centralized chicken farms: “Egg prices started rising in 2022 after a new strain of bird flu forced farmers to kill millions of egg-laying hens. However, concentrated egg production makes this outbreak and the resulting price hikes worse. First, massive, consolidated egg farms help spread disease and put more birds at risk of infection, and second, big egg corporations can abuse their market power to manipulate prices.”
“Is a Return to Public Trust Possible?” Stephanie Bennett reviews my recent book Words for Conviviality: “Public communication is broken. Seemingly innocent discussions erupt into canceled friendships, expired marriages, distrust of government, and business liaisons that no longer work. Everybody’s talking about it or not talking about it. Does anyone really know how and why our public conversations aren’t healthy anymore?”
“How COVID Pushed a Generation of Young People to the Right.” Derek Thompson looks at evidence that suggests the pandemic played a role in the widespread, rightward political shift among young people: “political science suggests that pandemics are more likely to reduce rather than build trust in scientific authorities. One cross-country analysis published by the Systemic Risk Center at the London School of Economics found that people who experience epidemics between the ages of 18 and 25 have less confidence in their scientific and political leadership. This loss of trust persists for years, even decades, in part because political ideology tends to solidify in a person’s 20s.”
“Against the Vandals.” Bari Weiss warns that “the far left destroyed the center-left in America.” She then issues a stern warning to the newly ascendant right: “one big takeaway is that if a political movement does not police its ranks, does not draw lines, if it neglects to protect its borders, if it does not defend its sacred values, it cannot long endure.”
“Dostoevsky’s Credo.” Gary Saul Morson probes Dostoevsky’s portrayal of faith and freedom: “Even in the throes of doubt Dostoevsky knew that, for us transitional beings, real faith always dwells in uncertainty. Like happiness, it consists in the striving for it. The goal is in the quest. ‘Comfort yourself,’ wrote Pascal. ‘You would not seek me if you had not found me.’”
“Exile’s Journey.” I make the case for writing and perhaps even publishing amateur poetry: “many of my poems respond, either implicitly or explicitly, to my persistent sense of displacement. There are reasons particular to my life that contribute to this sense, but in many ways, the human condition is one of exile.”
“Gentleness in Academia.” Elizabeth Hoare reflects on how the best teachers and scholars can unite gentleness toward others with unwavering fidelity to the truth: “Gentleness will suggest weakness to some, conjuring up soft-spoken people happy to stay in the background. Its opposite, then, is brute strength which crushes opposition with forceful actions, loudly proclaimed. Both are caricatures. Contrary to the popular consensus, gentleness and strength are not opposites.”
