Essays
Start Here
New to my work? These essays introduce some of the questions connecting it: how we live well with people unlike ourselves, find meaning in a free society, and build communities that make room for our differences.
The Inner Life of Liberalism
Free societies depend on our everyday habits of attention, curiosity, and care. An introduction to the project connecting much of my writing and podcasting.
Liberalism and Sympathetic Joy
What changes when we move beyond tolerating other people’s ways of living and learn to find joy in their happiness?
How LEGO Can Teach Us About Meaning in Liberal Societies
Freedom gives us room to reshape the identities and traditions we inherit. A LEGO metaphor helps explain why that needn’t leave us adrift.
What the Ancients Knew About Posting Well
An early Buddhist dialogue offers practical questions for deciding what to say online—and why truth alone isn’t enough.
Social Media and Anti-Social Pluralism
Why can the diversity that makes cities delightful make social media miserable? An argument for privacy, boundaries, and overlapping digital communities.
All Those Metrics Bleed Your Obsessions
The internet lets us find people who share our particular fascinations. What happens when chasing numbers pulls us away from the things we love?
Latest Essays
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All Those Metrics Bleed Your Obsessions
The internet once encouraged us to build entire identities around our weirdest, deepest fascinations. Then metrics and distribution flattened those obsessions into fungible content.
Social Media and Anti-Social Pluralism
Communities are different online and off, and pluralism that thrives in the real world can turn toxic in the digital world.
The Anti-Social Life of the Unapologetic Man
On the fantasy of masculinity without accountability.
We Needn't Have a One True Platform
On Bluesky, user numbers, and the silliness of endless growth.
Distinguishing Labor from Work
We should get rid of the former, if we can, but we should absolutely keep the latter.
Your Internet Doesn't Need to Be Big
But it definitely can be better.
NIMBYism's Slow Cancellation of the Future
How the cost of housing undermines creative dynamism
A Couple of What They Call Media Hits
Liberal virtues and right-wing vices.
Skillful and Unskillful Politics
Skill is a combination of good intent and sufficient knowledge to act well.
The Ambiguity of "Growth"
Anti-growth rhetoric sounds appealing, but it privileges the present over the future.
American History as Fandom Lore
On MAGA canon and cosplay.
Two Helpful Essays Illuminating Liberal Practice
Two short Buddhist essays from Thanissaro Bhikkhu on karma as feedback loop, identity as inheritance, and intention as a skill you can practice.