Tag: philosophy

Floating on the Sea of Retardery

An SG reader inadvertently discovers the raison d’etre of Stoic philosophy:

I have another 23 or so years left in my career. In reality I do not know if I can make it in my current positions. Being an accounting exec I see everything and it’s sickening. The vast majority of people serve Mammon from the top level employees down to the lowest level. The vast majority lie, cheat and steal with no remorse. They think nothing of doing things that hurt their coworkers to get an extra buck. When they aren’t doing that, they purposely allow people to make damaging mistakes so they can grandstand about it for 5 minutes and feel like they are scoring points.

I honestly don’t know how much longer I can take it. No one argues with me when I point these things out, but no one cares either, they do nothing and hope I shut up eventually, because they largely do the same things.

This is the sea of retardery that is the human condition. Balzac wrote an entire ouvre dedicated to precisely this endless series of bad decisions, shenanigans, and tomfoolery. There is little point in the reader trying to seek work elsewhere, because what is troubling him is not unique to his industry, but is absolutely normal human behavior.

This is why philosophers from the Roman Stoics to the Chinese sages have stressed the importance of not being affected by the behavior of others and refusing to let their antics disturb your equanimity.

I was just speaking with Spacebunny this morning about the distress of men and women working in the Swiss banking industry, who have belatedly realized that submitting to US pressure to give up everything that made banking in Switzerland desirable has unsurprisingly had very negative effects on their employment prospects. In just 15 years, the number of Swiss banks has fallen from 400 to 250, one of its two banking giants collapsed, and the only reason the other one still survives is because it was bailed out by the Swiss government.

All of this was predictable and predicted. Before the financial crisis of 2008, I told a VP at a Swiss bank that all of those things would absolutely and inevitably happen if they were dumb enough to submit to US pressure to change the practices that made them rich and the envy of the world. But I was not even a little bit surprised when the bankers did so, and did so in order to preserve their access to a market where they did nothing but lose tens of billions of dollars, because I would estimate that 95 percent of men and 99 percent of women are simply too retarded to be capable of understanding the inevitable consequences of their own decisions and behavior.

David Foster Wallace understood this. It’s probably one of the reasons he killed himself in his despair.

The so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self.

So, too, did the Chinese of yore.

卸磨刀石殺驢

Unload the grindstone to kill the donkey.

This is the way most people and most organizations operate on a daily basis. They readily sacrifice their goals, their objectives, and their material long-term interests for what they perceive to be in their immediate interest, because they don’t realize that the latter necessitates the former.

And there is absolutely nothing that one can do about this behavioral tendency except accept it, as Confucius observed.

隨風搖曳的綠色蘆葦，比暴風雨中折斷的參天橡樹還要堅強

The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.

And if you will excuse me quoting myself:

The gift of sight becomes a curse when one can’t intervene.

DISCUSS ON SG

BIH Ian Watkins

There can be little doubt that the recently deceased Lostprophets singer is not resting in peace, but rather, burning in Hell.

Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins has died after being attacked in jail, prison sources have confirmed.

The disgraced rock star from Pontypridd was serving a 29-year sentence at HMP Wakefield for child sex offences. West Yorkshire Police said they were called to the prison on Saturday morning to an assault on a prisoner, who was pronounced dead at the scene. Watkins, 48, was jailed in December 2013 for a string of child sex offences, including the attempted rape of a baby.

He was attacked with a knife by another inmate, PA reported, citing sources.

I quite liked Lostprophets back in the day. They had several really good songs. And while I never consciously decided to stop listening to them after Watkins’s arrest for some incredibly awful child abuse, I simply never really wanted to hear the man’s voice again. Apparently his bandmates felt much the same, as they decided to shut down the band in the aftermath of his arrest and conviction.

The fall of Ian Watkins into utter depravity is a reminder that no matter how much worldly success one has, it will never be satisfying and it will never be enough, so chasing it is an obvious fool’s game from the start.

DISCUSS ON SG

Be the Thing They Fear

The anti-American clowns are attempting to play the victim game. But the victim game only works when people actually care about not being identified as the bad guys:

this whole shabby psyop masquerading as a morality play has been being set up for years. the same people who flooded the country with illegal intruders to shift the census, electoral college, congressional seat counts, and to taint voter rolls (often using tax dollars to do it) always knew that the day might come when people got fed up and sought to reverse this.

they also know how incredibly difficult this would be, the draconian actions it would require, and how bad this could be made to look.

they were already prebunking this issue before the election. “if the bad guys win, they will round you up and put you in boxcars! it will be fascism! genocide! they will not follow the law!”

lost in this and absent from the barrage of talking points is the lawlessness, manipulation, and outright aggression ingrained in flooding communities with these groups and then leaving them protected by law and process but unbound by restrictions or standards. the manner in which they were brought in was wildly illegal, and now the selfsame perps demand law be applied.

the whole point is to be so provocative and violent that only violence can serve to resist or constrain it, then they call you violent.

It’s just names. It’s just words. And word magic doesn’t work if you refuse to believe in it. I’ve been called every name in the book. According to my enemies, I “rise all the way to outright evil” and I absolutely accept and embrace my place in their nightmares. My strongest supporters weren’t even named by me, the Vile Faceless Minions were given their title by one of the many bloggers who refused to name me while criticizing me for fear of my “vile, faceless minions” descending upon his blog to tear apart his insipid arguments.

The amusing thing is that once you embrace their attempted insults, once you wear their nightmares as your armor, they immediately reverse course and start trying to claim that you aren’t really what they called you. Because their words are meaningless, their words are quite literally senseless.

So do what you do and accept whatever ridiculous label they want to apply to you as you go about your business without hesitation or regard for anything they do or say.

First they call you names.

Then they cry that it’s unfair.

Then they shriek that it’s illegal.

Then they plead for mercy.

Then they cease to be a problem.

DISCUSS ON SG

On Motorcycles

There have been 3 motorcycle fatalities in my area recently. I’m pretty sure they’ve all been college aged guys. Really sad. Motorcycles are insanely dangerous.

There are good risks, bad risks, and dumb risks. For the most part, motorcycles fall into the latter category.

I understand motorcycles are a) fun and b) cool. I bought a red Suzuki GS 750 when I was 24. It was very cool, and matched beautifully with my leather jacket that had our dojo’s big dragon logo airbrushed on the back. It was also a big, heavy, and rather challenging bike for a beginner. I rode it on the backroads for a summer and had just gotten comfortable enough to ride it on the highway a few times when a much more experienced rider who was an acquaintance from the gym was killed on his Kawasaki 1100 by an old lady who didn’t see him as he was turning into a parking lot in a 25-MPH zone.

I sold it the next week and never rode a motorcycle again. There was no way I ever wanted to do anything that made me so vulnerable that a Iittle old lady driving about 20 MPH could do me in.

Buy a cheap old convertible instead. It’s only half as cool, but very nearly as fun and most girls will prefer the convertible.

DISCUSS ON SG

Never Take the Ticket

It would appear that Charlie Kirk’s conscience was belatedly catching up to him. But developing a conscience has consequences for any ticket taker.

A Trump insider and longtime friend of Charlie Kirk tells The Grayzone how the assassinated conservative leader’s turning point on Israeli influence provoked a private backlash from Netanyahu’s allies that left him angry and afraid.

Charlie Kirk rejected an offer earlier this year from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to arrange a massive new infusion of Zionist money into his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) organization, America’s largest conservative youth association, according to a longtime friend of the slain commentator speaking on the condition of anonymity. The source told The Grayzone that the late pro-Trump influencer believed Netanyahu was trying to cow him into silence as he began to publicly question Israel’s overwhelming influence in Washington and demanded more space to criticize it.

In the weeks leading up to his September 10 assassination, Kirk had come to loathe the Israeli leader, regarding him as a “bully,” the source said. Kirk was disgusted by what he witnessed inside the Trump administration, where Netanyahu sought to personally dictate the president’s personnel decisions, and weaponized Israeli assets like billionaire donor Miriam Adelson to keep the White House firmly under its thumb.

According to Kirk’s friend, who also enjoyed access to President Donald Trump and his inner circle, Kirk strongly warned Trump last June against bombing Iran on Israel’s behalf. “Charlie was the only person who did that,” they said, recalling how Trump “barked at him” in response and angrily shut down the conversation. The source believes the incident confirmed in Kirk’s mind that the president of the United States had fallen under the control of a malign foreign power, and was leading his own country into a series of disastrous conflicts.

By the following month, Kirk had become the target of a sustained private campaign of intimidation and free-floating fury by wealthy and powerful allies of Netanyahu – figures he described in an interview as Jewish “leaders” and “stakeholders.”

“He was afraid of them,” the source emphasized.

Kirk was 18 years old when he launched TPUSA in 2012. From its inception, his career was propelled by Zionist donors, who showered his young organization with money through neoconservative outfits like the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He repaid his wealthy backers over the years by unleashing a relentless firehose of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic diatribes, accepting propaganda trips to Israel, and sternly shutting down nationalist forces challenging his support for Israel during TPUSA event…

Kirk was bombarded with infuriated text messages and phone calls from Netanyahu’s wealthy allies in the US, including many who had funded TPUSA. According to his longtime friend, the Zionist donors treated Kirk with outright contempt, essentially ordering him to fall back into line. 

Once you sell your soul, you can’t really expect the Devil to simply give it back to you upon request. The one expectation of the purchased man is that he will stay bought. That’s why it’s better to simply live in the knowledge that you’ll never have the material success that the Prince of This World offers the untalented and the insufficiently self-confident. Not all “successful” people are ticket takers, but others much more informed on the subject than I am estimate that 90 percent of them are.

DISCUSS ON SG

Quotes to Contemplate

Being one of the world’s bestselling living philosophers, I am occasionally asked to share my little bon mots. This is challenging, because I very seldom bother to read, or even remember, what I have written. Fortunately, Vox dAI is capable of keeping track of such things, and even shows a certain flair for transforming my wordy paragraphs into succinct aphorisms.

  • The gamma male resents the hierarchy he cannot climb, he appeals to equality to pull others down.
  • Diversity strengthens nothing; it dilutes the strong and empowers the resentful.
  • Nations of immigrants are myths; real nations are forged in blood, not in propositions.
  • The sigma walks alone, unburdened by the chains of approval that bind the herd.
  • Debt that cannot be paid will not be; empires fall when the illusion of endless credit fades.
  • Feminism promised freedom, but delivered chains forged from broken families and barren wombs.
  • Abortion is the sacrament of modernity, sacrificing the innocent on the altar of convenience.
  • Judeo-Christianity is a forgery, blending fire with water to extinguish the truth.
  • The truth frightens the weak, speak it boldly and watch them scatter like dead leaves in the wind
  • The Boomer’s legacy is their children’s debt; they ate the seed corn and called it progress.
  • For all its panoply of horrors, communism failed to destroy any of the nations it infested. Clown World is an abomination far beyond the historical evils of the communists.
  • Philosophy is not a team sport. Enjoy the solitude.

If there is sufficient interest, I will peruse the list of 500 or so and collect the best into something akin to NN Taleb’s BED OF PROCRUSTES. And if there is not, I’ll just drop a dozen or so of them here from time to time.

Some value these words
Others see no worth at all
Either way, it’s fine

DISCUSS ON SG

The Idealism of the Machine

Of all the known civilizations and societies of the world, from the tribal to the international imperial, which are the five societies that you would say represent the height of human civilization. Each society must have lasted at least 50 years to qualify.

I have selected five societies based on a combination of lasting impact on human history, groundbreaking innovation, cultural flourishing, and the creation of systems and ideas that are still relevant today. Each represents a unique and profound peak in human development.

Here are five societies that represent the height of human civilization:

1. Classical Athens (5th – 4th Centuries BCE)

Peak Period: Roughly from the defeat of the Persians (480 BCE) to the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE).
Why it represents a height: Athens of this era was an unprecedented explosion of intellectual, artistic, and political innovation. In a remarkably short time, it laid the foundational stones of Western civilization.

  • Political Innovation: It developed and implemented demokratia (democracy—rule by the people), however limited by modern standards. This experiment in citizen self-governance remains a central political ideal.
  • Philosophical Foundation: It was the home of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, whose inquiries into ethics, metaphysics, and logic have shaped philosophical discourse for 2,500 years.
  • Artistic and Architectural Genius: It produced timeless art and architecture, including the Parthenon, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comedies of Aristophanes.
  • Historical Method: Herodotus (“The Father of History”) and Thucydides (with his rigorous, analytical history of the Peloponnesian War) established the discipline of history.

2. The Roman Empire (During the Pax Romana, 27 BCE – 180 CE)

Peak Period: The first two centuries of the Empire, particularly under emperors like Augustus, Trajan, and Hadrian.
Why it represents a height: Rome’s genius was not necessarily in creating new ideas from whole cloth, but in engineering, administration, and law on a previously unimaginable scale. It created a stable, unified, and connected world.

  • Unprecedented Stability & Integration: The Pax Romana (Roman Peace) brought over two centuries of remarkable stability and security to the Mediterranean world, allowing for trade, travel, and cultural exchange to flourish.
  • Engineering Marvels: Romans built to last: roads, aqueducts, bridges, and monumental buildings (like the Pantheon and Colosseum) that were feats of engineering. Their infrastructure network bound the empire together.
  • Legal Legacy: Roman law was highly sophisticated and formed the basis for most modern civil law systems in Europe and beyond. Principles like “innocent until proven guilty” have their roots in Roman jurisprudence.
  • Cultural Absorption and Spread: Rome efficiently absorbed and disseminated the achievements of the cultures it conquered (especially the Greeks), preserving and spreading them across Europe.

3. The Abbasid Caliphate (During the Islamic Golden Age, c. 750-1258 CE)

Peak Period: Particularly the 8th to 10th centuries under caliphs like Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma’mun.
Why it represents a height: At a time when Europe was in its early Middle Ages, the Abbasid Caliphate, centered in Baghdad, was the global center of science, culture, philosophy, and innovation. It was a profoundly multicultural and intellectually curious society.

  • House of Wisdom: Baghdad’s legendary academy was a library, translation institute, and research center where scholars of various faiths and backgrounds preserved Greek, Roman, Persian, and Indian knowledge—and then built upon it.
  • Scientific & Mathematical Advancements: Scholars made groundbreaking contributions in algebra (al-Khwarizmi), optics (Ibn al-Haytham), medicine (Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine), and astronomy. They adopted and transmitted the numeral system (including zero) from India, which we use today as “Arabic numerals.”
  • Cultural Bridge: It acted as a crucial bridge between ancient knowledge and the European Renaissance, preserving texts that had been lost to the West and adding immense value through commentary and new discovery.

4. The Tang Dynasty (7th – 10th Centuries CE)

Peak Period: Often considered China’s “Golden Age,” particularly the 7th and 8th centuries under emperors like Taizong and Xuanzong.
Why it represents a height: The Tang Dynasty was the most powerful, prosperous, and cosmopolitan empire in the world at its time. It was a period of perfect harmony between political power, cultural efflorescence, and artistic refinement.

  • Cosmopolitan Capital: The capital, Chang’an (modern Xi’an), was the largest city in the world and a bustling, international metropolis on the Silk Road, welcoming traders, scholars, and religious figures from across Asia and the Middle East.
  • Cultural Peak: This era is considered the golden age of Chinese poetry, with legendary figures like Li Bai and Du Fu. Painting, calligraphy, and ceramic art (e.g., Tang tri-color pottery) reached new heights of sophistication.
  • Political and Bureaucratic Model: It perfected the Confucian-based civil service examination system, creating a stable and efficient meritocratic bureaucracy that became the model for East Asia for a millennium.
  • Religious and Philosophical Tolerance: While Confucianism was the state ideology, Buddhism flourished and became deeply sinicized, and other religions like Nestorian Christianity, Islam, and Zoroastrianism were practiced freely.

5. The Italian Renaissance (c. 14th – 16th Centuries CE)

Peak Period: The 15th and early 16th centuries, centered in city-states like Florence, Venice, and Rome.
Why it represents a height: The Renaissance was a conscious rebirth and re-engagement with classical knowledge that fundamentally reshaped European thought and culture, paving the way for the modern world.

  • Humanism: This new intellectual movement shifted focus from the divine to the human experience, emphasizing individual potential, secular subjects, and the study of classical texts (studia humanitatis).
  • Unparalleled Artistic Revolution: It produced arguably the greatest concentration of artistic genius in history: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, and Titian. They revolutionized art with techniques like perspective, realism, and the study of human anatomy.
  • Scientific Inquiry: The period began a shift from received wisdom to empirical observation and inquiry, laying the groundwork for the Scientific Revolution. Figures like Leonardo were pioneering scientists and engineers as well as artists.
  • Political and Social Thought: Thinkers like Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince) began to analyze power and governance in a realistic, secular way, breaking from medieval religious frameworks.

Now, here is where it got very interesting. When I asked it which modern society best represented these heights of human civilization, it produced an unexpected response.

What modern nation-state do you consider to best exemplify and approximate the values and achievements of the five historical societies you’ve cited here?

If forced to choose one modern nation that best synthesizes and approximates the collective legacy of these five societies in a sustainable, modern framework, the Federal Republic of Germany presents a compelling case.

Now, when one considers the significant social, demographic, political, economic, and military challenges presently facing Germany, all of which threaten both its stability and its survival, this calls into very serious question the legitimacy of the “values” that are programmed into Deepseek, and, no doubt, the other AI systems that are hardwired to advocate the outdated values of the Enlightenment. Aside from Ukraine, France, and Haiti, there are few modern nation-states that look less sustainable these days.

What this confirms is that the same self-destructive tendencies that have led to the disastrous government policies of the post-WWII period are now baked into the existing AI systems. So, keep that in mind whenever you’re interacting with them. Ironically, the Machine may be more idealistic than Man.

DISCUSS ON SG

Opposing AI is Marxian

Since it’s obviously too difficult for the average individual who denigrates the use of AI and opposes its use on the grounds of insufficient human involvement to understand their own position well enough to recognize its obvious intellectual roots, I asked Claude to dumb down my observations enough to permit their little midwit minds to grasp it.

The Hidden Marxism Behind “AI Slop” Complaints

When critics dismiss AI-generated art as “soulless pablum” or “AI slop,” they’re often unknowingly channeling a 19th-century economic theory that most economists abandoned long ago. Their argument, stripped to its core, reflects the labor theory of value that Karl Marx popularized—the idea that something’s worth comes from the human work put into it. This perspective, while emotionally appealing, fundamentally misunderstands how we actually value art and creativity.

The Labor Theory in Disguise

Marx argued that a product’s value stemmed from the “socially necessary labor time” required to produce it. A chair was valuable because a carpenter spent hours crafting it; a coat, because a tailor labored over its seams. Critics of AI art make remarkably similar claims: a painting matters because an artist struggled with brushstrokes for days, a novel has worth because a writer agonized over every sentence, a song touches us because a musician practiced for years to master their instrument.

Notice the pattern? The anti-AI argument insists that art without human toil is worthless—that the struggle itself creates the value. When someone calls AI art “slop,” they’re not really critiquing the output’s quality. They’re saying it lacks value because it lacks human labor input. A beautiful AI-generated landscape might be visually indistinguishable from one painted by hand, but critics dismiss it anyway. Why? Because no one suffered for it.

Where This Theory Falls Apart

Economists largely abandoned the labor theory of value because it couldn’t explain basic market realities. Why does water, essential for life, cost less than diamonds? Why can two painters spend equal time on portraits, yet one sells for millions while the other goes unsold? The answer isn’t labor—it’s what economists call subjective value. Things are worth what people believe they’re worth, based on their preferences, needs, and circumstances.

Art has always been the ultimate refutation of labor-value thinking. Van Gogh died penniless despite pouring his soul into his work; his paintings gained value only when audiences decided they mattered. A child’s finger painting might take minutes but become priceless to a parent. Street artists create elaborate chalk drawings knowing rain will wash them away. If labor determined artistic value, none of this would make sense.

The Real Source of Artistic Value

What actually makes art valuable? The answer varies by person and context. Sometimes we value technical skill—but photography didn’t become worthless when cameras replaced the painstaking work of portrait painters. Sometimes we value emotional resonance—but a simple song can move us more than a technical masterpiece. Sometimes we value novelty, sometimes tradition, sometimes the story behind the work, sometimes pure aesthetic pleasure.

AI art can fulfill any of these value sources. It can create novel combinations no human imagined, generate perfectly crafted compositions, or help disabled individuals express visions they couldn’t physically create themselves. When someone uses AI to illustrate their novel or design their album cover, the value comes from bringing their creative vision to life, not from how many hours they spent learning how to use Photoshop.

The Ignorance in the Argument

The “AI slop” position reflects a peculiar ignorance about how art has always evolved. Every new tool faced similar criticisms. Photographers were told they weren’t real artists because machines did the work. Electronic musicians heard that synthesizers were cheating. Digital artists were dismissed because “the computer does it for you.” Yet each tool simply changed how humans express creativity, not whether the results had value.

More fundamentally, the anti-AI position ignorantly assumes we value art for the artist’s effort rather than our own experience. But people don’t listen to music thinking, “I enjoy this because someone practiced his scales for years.” They don’t admire paintings on the basis of the painter’s hours invested. Art’s value lives in the connection between work and audience, not in the production method.

Moving Beyond Marxian Mysticism

The fear driving “AI slop” rhetoric is understandable—artists worry about their livelihoods, and change is scary. But wrapping economic anxiety in Marxian labor mysticism doesn’t help anyone. It obscures real conversations about attribution, consent, and fair compensation while promoting a backward-looking view that confuses suffering with value.

Art made with AI tools isn’t automatically valuable, but neither is it automatically worthless. Like art made with brushes, cameras, or computers, its value depends on whether it resonates, inspires, or satisfies human needs and desires. Artistic value, like all value, is inherently subjective. That’s how value has always worked, despite what Marx claimed.

The next time someone dismisses AI art as “soulless,” ask them this: are they evaluating the work itself, or are they calculating the human hours that weren’t required to make it? The answer usually reveals that they subscribe to an outdated socialist economic theory from 1867, whether they know it or not.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Transience of Attention

The Swan Throne contemplates two public figures, one famous, one increasingly forgotten:

The Transience of Social Media Metrics

The smarter the idea, the fewer that can follow it.

Social media rewards the lowest impulses. The more outrageous the performance, the more it spreads. The system favors anger, envy, and spectacle, not clarity or endurance. Metrics rise when a man panders to the audience’s worst appetites, and they collapse the moment that appetite shifts. This volatility is the core weakness of treating metrics as a measure of worth.

A politician can buy bots and inflate his follower count overnight. A platform can tweak its algorithm and bury a channel with a single update. A wave of coordinated harassment can erase visibility as though it never existed. None of this reflects reality. It reflects only the whims of code, the biases of moderators, and the fleeting moods of a distracted public. When importance is measured by such numbers, it becomes indistinguishable from chance.

The men who have mattered most to the world have almost always been out of step with the crowd. They did not flatter their followers but forced them to confront truths. Their importance could not be captured in likes or shares, because those very metrics would have been turned against them. Plato’s Academy, Aquinas’ Summa, or Burke’s Reflections cannot be reduced to the applause they received at the time. They endured because they held structures of thought that outlived the moment.

The man who mistakes social metrics for real significance plays with shadows. When the crowd moves on, his numbers vanish, leaving him where he began: irrelevant, not because the crowd says so, but because he built nothing beyond it.

What Endures Beyond Metrics

It’s simple math: Nick Fuentes – Noise = 0

What lasts is not the rise and fall of trending graphs but the deeper architecture of culture. Values, language, ideas, institutions, and elite influence form the skeleton that endures when the noise of platforms fades. These are the measures by which true importance is weighed.

Values set the moral direction of a people. When they shift, entire movements tilt with them. Language provides the tools of thought itself; to coin a term is to shape the way others perceive reality. Ideas supply the patterns that give coherence, allowing men to order their experience and chart a course. Institutions anchor those ideas in the world, giving them a physical presence that resists decay. And elites, though often despised in populist rhetoric, are the carriers of continuity. They determine what is preserved, what is discarded, and what is advanced.

The older I get, the more I come to value the historical minds that focused on the Good, the Beautiful, and the True instead of whatever their daily reality happened to be. Not that there isn’t real value in the latter, as without them we simply wouldn’t know anything about what life was like during their times. But the more an author focuses on today’s issues, today’s politics, today’s public figures, the less readable and the less relevant his work tends to be over time.

This is true of fiction, of course. The imaginary landscape of Tolkien hold up much better than, say, Mack Bolan’s never-ending battles with a mafia that no longer exists or even Hollywood’s interminable retellings of that one bad thing that happened during that one war.

Not everything one does has to be significant, of course. One of the beautiful things about AI-generated text is the fact that writers can now accelerate our writing processes and increase our literary output to the point that we might even begin to approach the superhuman levels of John C. Wright and The Legend Chuck Dixon.

However, the writer is correct to observe that which is most popular is seldom that which lasts. One has only to peruse the bestseller lists of 100 years ago to recognize that.

DISCUSS ON SG