The future is a wild fantasy. It’s feverishly concocted out of our hopes, fears, biases, ignorance, and imagination, saying far more about us than what is to come. Predictions of the future are really just reflections of the present. And that means we’re really bad at predicting what the future will bring.

We live in an interesting time in that, materially, things are arguably better than they have ever been before, yet we all seem to be losing our minds thinking the world is one giant toilet bowl about to be flushed. An irrational sense of hopelessness is spreading across the rich, developed world. It’s a paradox of progress: the better things get, the more anxious and desperate we all seem to feel.

Manson, Mark. Everything Is F*cked : A Book about Hope. Unabridged. [New York, NY] : HarperAudio, 2019.

La cultura oggi è costituita da offerte, non da proibizioni; da proposte, non da norme. Come già osservava Bourdieu, oggi la cultura è impegnata ad apparecchiare tentazioni e ad allestire attrazioni, ad allettare e sedurre, non a dettare regole e norme; è impegnata nelle pubbliche relazioni, non nella sorveglianza polizesca; a seminare e piantare nuovi bisogni e desideri, piuttosto che a imporre doveri.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Per tutti i gusti: la cultura nell’età dei consumi. Roma: Laterza, 2016.