The modern world has delivered great progress, but a fierce price. That, in a nutshell, is the story of disen­chantment. It’s neither truthful nor helpful. 

The cheery image of humanity projected by social media selfies isn’t an attempt to fool us into believing in the contentment myth; it’s how we want to see ourselves.

Sartre famously wrote that “l’enfer, c’est les autres”: hell is other people. But I’d rather suggest that “other people” are both hell and heaven. Strung between community and individ­u­ality, the umbilical cord of identity is a tenuous one.

It’s an attractive propo­sition to believe that humans are in essence inclined to do good. But there is also a case to be made for the opposite: that humans’ true nature is driven by base and amoral appetites. These two views of human nature seem to be irreconcilable—but are they?

Boredom is the mind searching for something to do. We experience it as unpleasant, but tedium can help us grow into better, more well-rounded people.

In a hypothetical post-apoca­lyptic world, an arche­ol­ogist stumbles upon an artifact from the distant past. Our present.