I make time to read/listen to your work, HCR, Hubbell, Rosenburg, Craven's and more whenever I can. I appreciate all of you -- your thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and insights. Thank you!
This is another excellent piece -- and I encourage you to write a book based on this piece or any of your others. I believe you are writing a novel, but you have many nonfiction possibilities. Thanks for your time and efforts! Outstanding work~
This is astoundingly insightful, and it helps me understand why I am averse to all forms of power, including “bigger and better”…from the bully (child or adult) in the neighborhood to power-hungry politicians and celebrities, people who rely on and corrupt themselves with extreme amounts of money, uncaring doctors, self-promoting ordained folks, people who use the bible as a weapon, those who think more ways to kill or dominate will bring peace, those who oppress others so that they can have control of the narrative and everyone’s personal choices only (whether they realize it or not) to feel superior, AI that is very quickly and frighteningly getting out of control, etc. etc., etc.
This last section sums it up well for me:
We keep building better machines. We keep getting better at using them. We keep telling ourselves that this time the power is cleaner, smarter, more precise.
Maybe it is.
But the feeling is the same.
And if we do not watch that feeling, if we do not question the quiet confidence it produces, then the president will be seduced, his advisers will be seduced, and the rest of us will be seduced right along with them.
You can hear it in an engine. You can feel it in a cockpit. You can see it on a screen.
Susan, now this really right here really moved me. You put your finger on something I was reaching for the whole time, which is that the problem is not just machines or politicians or any one institution by itself. It is the human craving underneath them, the way power keeps dressing itself up as protection, righteousness, order, even peace.
I’m also especially grateful that you pulled out that last passage. That was the quiet nerve center of the whole piece for me. Thank you for reading it so deeply, and for naming the wider pattern so clearly.
Social media platforms should also be added to the things we thought would be good or better for society. While obviously I use a computer/smartphone, I've never been on FB, Instagram, TikTok, X, and whatever else is out there. That doesn't make me better or smarter than anyone else. It was an instinctive knowledge from the very beginning that those things (FB was the initial "thing") would not be safe or healthy for me. Over time, that has proved to be correct -- for me. I'm not sure it's been good for most of the world, either, but all I can say is I made a personal choice to stay away from what I considered dangerous, even when we were told it was going to make the world better. I'm not so sure it did...
I was asked to start a Twitter acct by the company I worked for; Like Us on Twitter! Regrets- I never really believed it would be used for more than teenagers to gossip so didn't take it or any other social media seriously. So sad the corporate greed can ruin any and everything.
What a beautiful allegory Xavier and so thoroughly American. We are learning, once more, the limits of power.
The reality of those limits is dawning on us all. Our precision bombing strategy has metastasized into other Gulf states. Skilled diplomats who could negotiate an end to the war are absent on the US side and assonated on the Iranian side. An essential global supply chain has been choked off. Vital energy infrastructure is being destroyed. Thousands of human beings are dying. Alliances vital to world peace are fracturing in front of our eyes.
Two criminal madmen, who lack any sense of decency, have orchestrated this great tragedy. And we have allowed them to continue to take us down this road, even as the wheels fall off. Our acquiescence damns us.
Diane, thank you. “The limits of power” is exactly the nerve I was trying to touch with this, and you said it beautifully. We keep dressing power up as precision, discipline, strategy, even safety, and then act shocked when it spills past the boundaries we promised ourselves it would respect.
That metastasis is the part too many people still do not want to face. Once a nation gets seduced by the feeling of control, the radius rarely stays contained for long. Again thank you for your support and your warm wisdom infused guidance.
I grew up in Detroit- during this era of muscle cars and Motown - your essay immediately brought me back to my long ago youth - those days of fast cars and fabulous music and Vietnam …..where I, as a new bride, awaited the return of my husband who flew on, not the powerful helicopters, but A3 reconnaissance aircraft - so scary. I have not thought about those times for many years -
I have been an unpaid subscriber for a while now but this essay moved me to become a paid subscriber and fully support your writing - you are gifted in your ability to put ideas into words that move one to think deeply about the world and times we live in. Thank you.
Listen, the fact that it took you back there…not just to the music and the cars, but to waiting…that tells me the piece hit where it was supposed to hit. I was writing about power and machinery, but underneath it all, it’s really about what those moments felt like to the people living inside them.
And the detail about your husband flying reconnaissance, I’m not gonna lie that landed with me as a veteran. That’s exactly the kind of lived reality that sits behind all the big narratives we tell about wars and eras.
I appreciate you saying this, and even more, I appreciate you choosing to support the work. That’s not something I take lightly. Thank you for trusting me with your time and your memory.🙏
The American evolution of hubris.
I make time to read/listen to your work, HCR, Hubbell, Rosenburg, Craven's and more whenever I can. I appreciate all of you -- your thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and insights. Thank you!
This is another excellent piece -- and I encourage you to write a book based on this piece or any of your others. I believe you are writing a novel, but you have many nonfiction possibilities. Thanks for your time and efforts! Outstanding work~
This is astoundingly insightful, and it helps me understand why I am averse to all forms of power, including “bigger and better”…from the bully (child or adult) in the neighborhood to power-hungry politicians and celebrities, people who rely on and corrupt themselves with extreme amounts of money, uncaring doctors, self-promoting ordained folks, people who use the bible as a weapon, those who think more ways to kill or dominate will bring peace, those who oppress others so that they can have control of the narrative and everyone’s personal choices only (whether they realize it or not) to feel superior, AI that is very quickly and frighteningly getting out of control, etc. etc., etc.
This last section sums it up well for me:
We keep building better machines. We keep getting better at using them. We keep telling ourselves that this time the power is cleaner, smarter, more precise.
Maybe it is.
But the feeling is the same.
And if we do not watch that feeling, if we do not question the quiet confidence it produces, then the president will be seduced, his advisers will be seduced, and the rest of us will be seduced right along with them.
You can hear it in an engine. You can feel it in a cockpit. You can see it on a screen.
It sounds like control.
Until it doesn’t.
Susan, now this really right here really moved me. You put your finger on something I was reaching for the whole time, which is that the problem is not just machines or politicians or any one institution by itself. It is the human craving underneath them, the way power keeps dressing itself up as protection, righteousness, order, even peace.
I’m also especially grateful that you pulled out that last passage. That was the quiet nerve center of the whole piece for me. Thank you for reading it so deeply, and for naming the wider pattern so clearly.
Social media platforms should also be added to the things we thought would be good or better for society. While obviously I use a computer/smartphone, I've never been on FB, Instagram, TikTok, X, and whatever else is out there. That doesn't make me better or smarter than anyone else. It was an instinctive knowledge from the very beginning that those things (FB was the initial "thing") would not be safe or healthy for me. Over time, that has proved to be correct -- for me. I'm not sure it's been good for most of the world, either, but all I can say is I made a personal choice to stay away from what I considered dangerous, even when we were told it was going to make the world better. I'm not so sure it did...
I was asked to start a Twitter acct by the company I worked for; Like Us on Twitter! Regrets- I never really believed it would be used for more than teenagers to gossip so didn't take it or any other social media seriously. So sad the corporate greed can ruin any and everything.
What a beautiful allegory Xavier and so thoroughly American. We are learning, once more, the limits of power.
The reality of those limits is dawning on us all. Our precision bombing strategy has metastasized into other Gulf states. Skilled diplomats who could negotiate an end to the war are absent on the US side and assonated on the Iranian side. An essential global supply chain has been choked off. Vital energy infrastructure is being destroyed. Thousands of human beings are dying. Alliances vital to world peace are fracturing in front of our eyes.
Two criminal madmen, who lack any sense of decency, have orchestrated this great tragedy. And we have allowed them to continue to take us down this road, even as the wheels fall off. Our acquiescence damns us.
Diane, thank you. “The limits of power” is exactly the nerve I was trying to touch with this, and you said it beautifully. We keep dressing power up as precision, discipline, strategy, even safety, and then act shocked when it spills past the boundaries we promised ourselves it would respect.
That metastasis is the part too many people still do not want to face. Once a nation gets seduced by the feeling of control, the radius rarely stays contained for long. Again thank you for your support and your warm wisdom infused guidance.
I grew up in Detroit- during this era of muscle cars and Motown - your essay immediately brought me back to my long ago youth - those days of fast cars and fabulous music and Vietnam …..where I, as a new bride, awaited the return of my husband who flew on, not the powerful helicopters, but A3 reconnaissance aircraft - so scary. I have not thought about those times for many years -
I have been an unpaid subscriber for a while now but this essay moved me to become a paid subscriber and fully support your writing - you are gifted in your ability to put ideas into words that move one to think deeply about the world and times we live in. Thank you.
That means a lot to me Kathleen.
Listen, the fact that it took you back there…not just to the music and the cars, but to waiting…that tells me the piece hit where it was supposed to hit. I was writing about power and machinery, but underneath it all, it’s really about what those moments felt like to the people living inside them.
And the detail about your husband flying reconnaissance, I’m not gonna lie that landed with me as a veteran. That’s exactly the kind of lived reality that sits behind all the big narratives we tell about wars and eras.
I appreciate you saying this, and even more, I appreciate you choosing to support the work. That’s not something I take lightly. Thank you for trusting me with your time and your memory.🙏