W(h)ither Cyberpunk?: A Review, an Experiment, an anti-Manifesto

This began as a review for Cyberpunk 2077 and changed into something else. From the piece:

The real world didn’t copy cyberpunk, but it rhymed it, and then one-upped it. A novel set in the real 2021, that accurately reflects it, sent back to Gibson or one of his contemporaries, would be an incomprehensible trip: a hit of uncut psychedelia that would be both banal and mind-shattering (equal parts Dick and Ballard, shot as a documentary).

The Nature of the Unnatural

Consider: we think of paper when made by human beings as an artificial substance – a relatively benign one, but artificial nonetheless – but when made by wasps for a nest, the paper is natural. Every building is artificial, but a beaver dam is clearly natural. A tool made by an octopus or a crow feels more “natural” than something made by a human.

An Infliction of Sacred Wounds: On Mental Health Under Capitalist Realism (Fisher's Ghosts, part 4)

The system, which supposedly generates prosperity for everyone to an unprecedented degree, doesn’t. We’re told that it works, we’re told that doing all of these things should help, and we internalize this narrative. It becomes a subconscious mantra, the way that an Orthodox monk is encouraged to say the Jesus Prayer in time with his heartbeat. You see: we’ve been sold a fantasy that does not map on to reality. Human beings are smart enough that you don’t have to actually give us the reward. You just have to convince us that the reward is there.

Which Grain Will Grow, and Which Will Not: On Syntax, Paradigm, and Myth

I think that narratives are important to understand for the same reason that I write about postmodernism so much: as chaotic and unpredictable as the world-at-large can be, we have to remember that the human brain is the most advanced pattern-recognition organ on the planet. We look at the world and we find stories and then we share those stories. If you look at how we talk about memory, then that’s a story to, and in a very real sense, it means that each and every one of us is made out of narrative in a very real way.

Buried in the Tombs of their Luxury SUVs: Notes on Exterminism

Because if we're all going to die then we might as well die in luxury SUVs with fuel economy measured in gallons per mile with the Pixar movie Cars playing in the back seat so the kids don't notice that they're breathing in poison.