Janan Ganesh

[ghost]

Reckon this guy is the greatest thinker Britain has left. A man after my own heart, right up there with Ross Douthat and Freddie DeBoer in the pantheon of great op-ed writers.

 

[sus]

I read the Bonfire of the Vanities one and I said, it's me, I'll do it

But then life got in the way, alas, a great loss for the world

 

[ghost]

Spendy, how much time have you even spent here in the greatest city in the world?

 

[sus]

Good question. I would guess 2 months.

 

[sus]

Maybe 3. But I would definitely have spent more time before writing!

 

[sus]

Under Trump, the US will reduce the scope or enforcement of sanctions against Russia. It will also slow the traffic of materiel to Ukraine. This will be justified as putting the US first. It will have the opposite effect. Nothing has done more for America’s global clout since the first Gulf war than its support for Ukraine. The world now knows that it can tie down the third costliest military on Earth for an indefinite period with donations from the Pentagon arsenal. Imagine being a state that hedges between China and the US, and seeing this exhibition of almost insouciant power. In other news, Vietnam upgraded its relations with America this month.

I think one of the things that sets Ganesh and Douthat both apart is that they're able to appeal to partisans on grounds that the partisans care about. Not "your position is jingoistic bigotry" but "this policy would work against your own values." It seems like a very basic skill, but most rhetoricians fail to do it.

 

[Clinamenic]

Spendy, how much time have you even spent here in the greatest city in the world?

I actually may soon stay at a commune in SF for a couple months.

 

[sus]

Sounds great, someone please invite me to a Bay Area commune so I can write a commune-themed chapter for my Great Frisco Novel

 

[Clinamenic]

Th

Sounds great, someone please invite me to a Bay Area commune so I can write a commune-themed chapter for my Great Frisco Novel

This is the place, if you're curious - think they have a few places in SF, as part of a larger (international) network of intentional communities. This one is in a big ol' mansion.

embassy2023 | Facebook | Linktree

An intentional community of 11 people exploring collective impact

linktr.ee

 

[sufi]

i

The world now knows that it can tie down the third costliest military on Earth for an indefinite period with donations from the Pentagon arsenal. Imagine being a state that hedges between China and the US, and seeing this exhibition of almost insouciant power.

That is so weirdly written that its arduous to extract its actual meaning,
I read JG stuff occasionally but the glibness is offputting

 

[sufi]

he's right if he says that earnestness is underrated tho

 

[ghost]

he's right if he says that earnestness is underrated tho

his position is that he mostly finds earnestness grating and unpleasant, but he grudgingly admits that it's a prerequisite to doing anything of value in the world:

Allow me a third case study, in the form of Burning Man. People chuckled when the festival was rained-out a few weeks ago, and with reason. Its mission statement is vapid and half-literate (“The touchstone of value in our culture will always be immediacy”). Its quest to remake the world through Stoicism, Effective Altruism or whichever whim-of-the-week is sweeping the Santa Clara Valley, is teenage. And just listen to the rising cadence with which regulars say the name of the festival. It sounds as though they are asking if you mind the Nevada heat (“Burning, man?”). I dislike this annual crucible of near-religious earnestness: this bonfire of ironies.

But — a Burner might say — of course I do. I am someone of moderate success in a downwardly mobile profession who never has to put much on the line. People who deal in higher stakes have to insulate themselves from the archness and cynicism of the wider culture. Irony gets nothing done. It is the creed of the passive observer. Not everyone who is incapable of irony is a winner, no. But lots of winners are incapable of irony.

 

[sus]

Hopefully he doesn't become one of those metamodernism shills

 

[version]

His latest's on the benefits of going to the office as a young person.

Wearing a suit and tie when it isn’t required is a mark of low status, not high. It is “the south of France”, not “southern France”. (Getting it wrong suggests you don’t visit or have a second home there, you serf.) The loneliest men in the world are married. To establish trust with someone, disparage a third person in their presence. Self-deprecation is in almost all cases an assertion of higher status. The sign of someone who has been bullied is quite often sublime social skill (the better to defang people) rather than shyness. To rattle your boss, remind them of a bad hire, not an incompetent act of their own direct commission. It stings them more.

And then the most useful lesson of all: the averageness of the competition. Except in sectors where the minimum standard is kept high through regulation — medicine, say, or piloting — the standard in a profession is always lower than outsiders would credit. This has to be drummed into young people from less privileged backgrounds, all too many of whom believe that every lawyer is Earl Warren, every trader a Fields Medalist. The office allows them to observe colleagues flail under pressure, utter banalities, or just shamble around. The ultimate benefit of going to the office is the demystification of the successful. You can’t see someone’s clay feet over Zoom.

In my pre-FT days, a superior who was born into the top tier of public life would enter my office to run column ideas past me, at some length and with some convolution. Mistake, son. It was sweet, but I could sense the self-doubt under that expensive veneer. The job had never felt more attainable.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

His latest's on the benefits of going to the office as a young person.

Basically he's saying to know how human's behave in situation x you have to be in situation x. This guy is a guru megagenius. Maybe his next post will be about how you have to go down the pub to see how people behave down the pub. Although he does seem to contradict himself by saying that people are also super predictable. If they are super predictable why can't he predict their behaviour in slightly different contexts by using some sort of logic.

 

[ghost]

The last few weeks he's been very off kilter. This one is a return to form stylistically, but he's not back on track with the substance.

 

[sus]

I thought it was a good column. Yes, the overall takeaway is banal if you want to boil it, but it's the little things that shine.