12 October 2024

"Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways" in America by David Hackett Fischer (1989)

There is much to be admired about each of the four tribes that migrated to America. There is much to be admired about their mutual suspicion and incomprehension. There is much to be admired about their offspring's ability to eventually agree on building a new country together. A substantial degree of conflict is certainly a feature, not a bug, of American politics. 

“One is occasionally tempted to abandon the role of the historian and to frame what social scientists call a theory,” remarks David Hackett Fischer. And yet he does not succumb to this temptation. As a result, there is nothing to disagree with in the book. A fact is a fact.

Joker: Folie à Deux

In this instalment, the system takes revenge on freedom. 

Freedom is the plurality of stories: the human stories that run in parallel in society, the stories that one man is capable of living concurrently, and the stories that are capable of coexisting in one man's head. Identity is the inability to be free.