#sterling lynch

[sterlinglynch]

The tenor of our age: nihilism born of egoism

The tenor of our age: nihilism born of egoism

When I die, my ability to experience will die with me. How I lived, how long I lived, and how I am remembered won’t make any difference to me because I won’t be able to experience it. From the perspective of experience, death voids everything. Unfortunately, from that very same perspective, living is not that much different.

Living is a series of loosely connected experiences of now, each of…

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Writing: what I've learned

Writing: what I’ve learned

In the beginning, writing was a fun school assignment. It was a way to compete with my friends. It helped to wean me off my toys, offering an age-appropriate medium for the expression of my imaginative impulses.  

Then, when I was sixteen, going on seventeen, while hiking across a glacier in the Rockies, I experienced something I couldn’t quite make sense of. In response to the experience, I…

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Within the mirror of COVID-19: a vision of a better society.

Within the mirror of COVID-19: a vision of a better society.

Many years ago, during my PhD research, I audited a lively political theory seminar. As you’d expect, at some point, we discussed the ethics of health care.

From the outset, the conversation was framed by the assumption that health care resources are necessarilyscarce. Society, it was assumed, would be crippled by the costs of health care, unless they were carefully rationed. The notion that we…

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I have no symptoms. I have locked myself down. You should consider it too.

I have no symptoms. I have not travelled recently. As far as I know, I have not been in direct contact with anyone who has travelled recently. The risk that I have COVID-19 is very low — almost nil. I have, nevertheless, by my own choice, locked myself down. I have not left my apartment since Monday evening. 

Why is that? 

The short answer: I want to be certain that I am not spreading the disease…

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Who died and made content king? Survival bias, confirmation bias, and a farcical aquatic ceremony.

Who died and made content king? Survival bias, confirmation bias, and a farcical aquatic ceremony.

When I first started using social media, thirty Helens agreed: “content is king!” 

And, at the time, it certainly felt that way. Perfectly crafted tweets seemed to be retweeted again and again; insightful blogs seemed to lead to comment after comment; great articles were always bookmarked. 

I suspect, however, that content looked kingly only because we content creators looked at tiny samples of…

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My answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything: four four through it all

My answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything: four four through it all

If the mystery of the human condition can be characterized as a kind of puzzle or riddle, the answer and/or punchline can be aphorized, I think, through four banal facts and four mollifying delusions.

I can’t say that anyone will necessarily gain anything by knowing and understanding these facts; nor can I say that they will gain anything by ridding themselves of the delusions.

If anything, I am…

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The spade has turned: from weltschmerz to mono no aware and back again.

The spade has turned: from weltschmerz to mono no aware and back again.

After many years of digging, I am pretty sure I have hit bedrock.

The spade has turned.

Human behaviour and all the products of human behaviour are best understood as expressions of the human tendency to allocate resources according to status.

Practically-speaking, a person’s survival depends on their membership in a group and their status in it. Additionally, success — however it is defined over…

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The iconoclasm to end all of my inconclasms: making the word flesh once and for all

The iconoclasm to end all of my inconclasms: making the word flesh once and for all

After many many years of reading, writing and thinking, I have arrived at the rather unremarkable conclusion that reading, writing and thinking are neither important nor unimportant in and of themselves.

They are human activities like any other and, as such, their value is ultimately determined by other humans. They can influence others — if they influence at all — only because of the values…

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