The Top 5: From Gen-Z and the Black Church to weird campaign t-shirts
Welcome to the latest edition of the Top 5 articles we’ve read this week. Each week, we read dozens of articles in the hope we find essays and reporting that speak to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy these articles, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation!
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The Top 5 articles for your week:
“The Black Church Has a Gen-Z Issue: ‘They Don’t Come Into the Building Anymore’” (NYT)
Because Clyde McGrady explores dwindling Black church numbers in Philadelphia.
For centuries, the church has been not only the spiritual and social center of Black life but also a political force. The church is where the civil rights movement incubated, pastors have launched political careers, and its modern-day members have mobilized in support of political candidates.
“Why Are Innocents Still Being Executed?” (The Atlantic)
Because Liz Bruenig is back to writing about the death penalty in light of five executions last week.
America is currently experiencing an execution spree: One person was executed the week before last, four this past week, and three more are scheduled for October. Maybe all of the people being put to death now are guilty, but there’s more than a sliver of a chance that someone among them is or was innocent—that’s eight executions, after all. For some, that falls between a worthwhile risk and a necessary evil. For others, it’s just murder.
“The Cult of Wellness” (Toronto Life)
Because Olivia Stren spends time with the founders of two Toronto-based wellness companies, Nutbar and Othership.
Nutbar’s tag line is “feel good here”; Othership’s is “feel good now.” Both brands exhort their followers to extract the most out of every experience, calorie, sauna, second. In a culture held in thrall to efficiency and optimization, where every morsel of time or food is subject to betterment, it’s a canny strategy.
“Politics is getting more ridiculous. So are the T-shirts.” (WaPo)
Because Maura Judkis considers the proliferation of non-official campaign merchandise. Why would niche, “weird” t-shirts become bestsellers?
But the other explanation is psychological. T-shirts with messaging communicate not only our preferences but also how we would like to be perceived. If the apparel has gotten weirder, wilder, more caustic and nihilistic — then haven’t we, too?
“Main character syndrome” (Aeon Magazine)
Because philosopher Anna Gotlib writes about “main character syndrome” and “non-player characters” taking over younger discourse.
…the non-philosophical take on people as NPCs is deeply morally worrying. Having taught and written for a number of years in the areas of ethics and moral psychology, one of the central ideas that I have tried to explain and make more vivid is that morality is something that we do together, that our ideas about who we are require each other’s engaged participation, and that an empathetic openness not only to each other’s moral agency, but to each other’s emotional states, is central to our shared lifeworld. We must see others as fully human, and be engaged with each other as moral beings to understand who we are, and who we are in relation to others and to the world. But the main character narrative denies all these possibilities. It is destructive to views of human beings as fundamentally relational and interdependent, and poses a threat to two important experiences of being human: the first is connection to others; the second is love.
ICYMI on The Morning Five
The Morning Five: September 23, 2024