The Top 5: Memphis, AI, and Kraft mac 'n' cheese
Also - what's "victim power"? And what is a "polycrisis"?
Welcome to your weekly 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 our list, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation! Please also consider becoming a paid subscriber if this is one of those newsletters you open up all the time or look forward to each week.
The Top 5 articles for your week
“Why Memphis is Different” (The Atlantic)
Because Juliette Kayyem provides an illuminating perspective on what’s been going on in Memphis and across US cities: “Like mass shootings, police brutality is, tragically, common enough in the United States that we are getting better at addressing its consequences. The challenge is to not become numb to it.”
“René Girard and the Rise of Victim Power” (Compact Magazine)
Because this essay explores René Girard’s work, and applies some of the concepts he developed, like “mimetic desire,” to today’s cultural environment.
But there was another side to Girard’s project that made it less in line with this fashionable skepticism. In his examination of novels from Cervantes to Dostoevsky, he discovered a pattern in which the protagonist undergoes a conversion, often but not always explicitly religious. This conversion amounts to a rejection of the false gods he has idolized—that is, the mediators he has modeled his desire after—and a turn away from this “deviated transcendence” toward the real transcendence of Christian faith. Mimetic desire is an illness afflicting modern societies that have lost any transcendent horizon, such that “men become gods in the eyes of each other.” The only remedy found by the novelists who most powerfully document this predicament, according to Girard, is a religious one.
“Are we headed toward a “polycrisis”? The buzzword of the moment, explained.” (Vox)
Because a respected international relations scholar looks at the history of the new buzzword “polycrisis” and assesses whether it has merit.
The future will not be crisis-free by any stretch of the imagination — but the notion of a polycrisis might do more harm than good in attempting to get a grip on the systemic risks that threaten humanity.
“AI or No, It’s Always Too Soon to Sound the Death Knell of Art” (Wired Magazine)
Because this essay recounts the invention of photography in the 1800s and how it caused a stir in a world dominated by a different form of art - painting - and how the challenge of photography did not portend the death of another form of art. It’s a good argument to consider, as we’ve discussed AI and art on Wear We Are in Episode 47.
“An Ode to Kraft Dinner, Food of Troubled Times” (Catapult Magazine)
Because it’s been a heavy couple of weeks, so let’s end The Top 5 on a lighter note, shall we? In fact, Saoirse and I (Melissa) made a box of it together last night.
The first bite was bliss. I usually started eating so fast that I had to pause while all the mouthfuls I had barely chewed could make their way safely to my stomach. I’d wait for a moment while a knot of noodles shimmied down my throat, and then I’d start again, only slightly slowed by my poor motor skills. It would be far too easy to write Kraft off as soulless junk food, but how could I, with its inextricable place in my upbringing? My baba taught me to make it with the same care she taught me to make baklava. Guess which one I make more often.