“I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time.” — Nayyirah Waheed — Tuesday July 1st — —

“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Tuesday July 1st — —

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” – Herbert Simon — Tuesday July 1st — —

Slow → articles tagged with opinion

Doing nothing might be the best thing we can do

The other day I walked past a shop window in Utrecht that read, “Buy here and make the world better.” I won’t repeat what I felt like throwing through that window, but let’s just say a passing glance wouldn’t have done my frustration justice. And that frustration wasn’t just about the tone-deaf message, as if consumption ever makes the world better, but because that same frustration has been showing up more and more often lately. After reading Reint Jan Renes’ opinion piece in de Volkskrant from June 26 (dutch only) “We need a mental Ozempic for our urge to buy,” it became painfully clear. This isn’t simple. It’s not a matter of an injection, a pill, or a clever sentence on a shop window. Reality is more messy. The urge to consume runs deep, and the system that creates it runs even deeper. What we call “good” in this context is often just a less harmful version of the same problem, packaged as moral progress. As if buying “consciously” suddenly exempts you from the damage. But even second-hand platforms like Vinted operate on the same logic as fast fashion: rotation. Quick purchase, quick resale, dopamine rush, environmental impact ignored. [ Continue reading ]