CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Image via Medium.

Misfit advocate, events-goer amish, wisdom hacker, economist historian and writer Alexa Clay, is woman with multiple personae, that is probably why she wrote a very interesting piece in Medium about the power of alter-egos. "The fun of alter egos is that you get to un-brand or re-mix yourself. We are constantly living in a world with self-commodifying pressures, from the social media sites where we package ourselves to the practice of resumé creation or networks like LinkedIn that ask us to serve up cohesive and linear narratives of our functional time spent on earth. The radical idea that we are living in a constant ebb and flow or that ‘self’ might be an illusion altogether goes against the mechanics of our age where individualism has become the primary interface for interaction — and where homo economicus (the rational, utility-maximizing agent) pre-supposes an atomized ‘I’ for engaging in our economic systems." Read full article in Medium. E.T.P. 5'

Photo The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Maria Povova in her lovely Brain Pickings talks about melancholy and how deeper and darker emotions can empower us creatively. "For one am afraid that our American culture’s overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am wary in the face of this possibility: to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful over our society’s efforts to expunge melancholia from the system. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?" Read full article in Brain Pickings. E.T.P 3'