Do something that won’t compute - by Ashley Zhang

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Over the last year, the main questions I’ve been meditating on are what it means to be human and how to live a full, beautiful human life in this age. In our culture of optimization and efficiency and scale, it feels like a small act of resistance to embrace human limitations instead of attempting to overcome them, to elevate what is natural and core to our being rather than attempting to engineer the optimal outcome. Few writers better capture this sentiment than Wendell Berry, the poet-essayist-farmer whose work pokes at my beliefs in the most brilliantly uncomfortable ways. His most (in)famous essay, which gives a good sense of his general orientation toward our modern world, is titled “Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer.” At first, I dismissed him as a Luddite who futilely rejected progress. But in recent months, bewildered and disappointed by the world in many ways, I find myself returning again and again to his writing, seeking a truth I am often reluctant to admit to myself: t

Claude Monet, Poppy Field (1873) Dear friend, Over the last year, the main questions I’ve been meditating on are what it means to be human and how to live a full, beautiful human life in this age. In our culture of optimization and efficiency and scale, it feels like a small act of resistance to embrace human limitations instead of attempting to overcome them, to elevate what is natural and core to our being rather than attempting to engineer the optimal outcome. Few writers better capture this sentiment than Wendell Berry, the poet-essayist-farmer whose work pokes at my beliefs in the…

Do something that won’t compute - by Ashley Zhang

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