What We Believe

As the velocity and size of our data swells to inhuman proportions, it has become increasingly unrealistic to know and increasingly essential to believe. A belief is not an assertion of fact, but rather a projection of the will—pointed, yet flexible amidst inevitable states of flux. WHAT WE BELIEVE began as a series of keywords designed to circumvent the conflict adverse atmosphere of a “post-everything” culture. Yet as it evolves, it has become a guide for doing business, a fluid set of protocols for an age of uncertainty.

WHAT WE BELIEVE is provocative of the present-tense tensions that contribute to the new. It embraces doubt not as a critical scapegoat for techno-cultural insecurity, but as a starting point towards decision-making. As Kanye West told a group of Oxford students last year, it could be “completely fucking with you, and the world, the entire time.” It then moves past doubt, with a Kanye-level measure of conviction. WHAT WE BELIEVE harvests energy from the irritations and confrontations of the now, in the service of the future. We don’t know this, but we’re telling you anyway.

1. Energy

Energy is the capacity to do work, and to produce change. It may well produce change, but will never quantitatively undergo it. It is contained in every object, person, animal and system. By the laws of energy conservation, it cannot be lost or, despite the usual eco-vocabulary, wasted. Thermodynamic entropy will cool your soup or melt the ice cubes in your drink, but as a measure of disorder and chaos in media as well as physics, entropy is an overlooked function. With information entropy, noise balances that information by increasing with it, as nonsense does with sense. Messages are thus communicated transformatively, without for a second losing power. That is the process that incurs the most powerful and productive kind of change.

2. Sex

Sex is at once the most commercialized thing on the planet and the most resistant to commercialization. It has been made phenomenally public and yet it remains deeply private. It is an instance or state of being that is thought and talked about constantly, but not in any proper terms, because it is a physical matter, a question of impulse, not intellect. It is beautiful and it is horrifying. It is impermeable to the perversion of culture and it is the perversion of culture. So it is, officially, the most mysterious non-mystery ever – a paradox so unfathomable that the only thing to do about it is embrace our fascination. Obsess about it. Reproduce it, and sell it. Censor it. Celebrate it. Practice it as much as possible. It will never lose interest, and it will never lose power. Fighting it is to fight a losing battle. So just let sex win.

3. Intercourse

"Intercourse" also means communication with others. Hot!

4. WORK (I)

If you reject work, you are not doing it properly. If you think work is exclusive of magic, you are not being creative enough. If you think work is exclusive of pleasure, you are old-fashioned. “Balance” only matters if you perceive the creative world in a binary of black and white. INDUSTRY IS SEXY. The impulse to work should be as unapologetic and immediate as the impulse to eat or to fuck.

5. WORK (II)

WORKING VS. STEALING

There is a meme re­circulating right now that quotes Fran Lebowitz’s argument that no one “earns” $100 million a year – they steal it. People “earn” $10 an hour, she says, or $40,000 a year; they “steal” their $100 million. We’re not actually condemning thieves – or anyone else. It’s just essential that every­ one understands these nuances.

6. LOVE

You are mistaken if you think using the word “love” is enough to conjure the thing itself. Love is an inclusive form of energy. Do it hard, impossibly, radically, and as often as possible. Understand that love is not opposed to entropy, to mutiny, to mold, or to matter. Understand that while love is changeable, it is not exchangeable. To commodify it is corrupt, like deep-drilling for fuel when renewable energy surrounds us in the earth, air, and sea.

7. FAMILY

It is naïve to exclude work and politics from a family model based on love. To speak of “making time” for family is to make it exclusive of social and creative life. But the family is immersive, a function of a greater communal impulse. The nuclear private life is an outmoded, Anglo-Saxon constraint, a construction that carries on in a merely 3-D reality while the rest of the universe expands, rapidly. We count dimensions in double digits now.

8. Politics

We believe in an inherent politics to every gesture, word, and image. This is not a cop-out, and it is not a dismissal of outspoken politics. It is a view towards political immanence that takes responsibility for the role and influence of cultural output. It acknowledges the potential meaning – in context, content, function, and form – of the building as it is architected, the body as it is photographed, the page as it is laid out, and the technology as it is engineered. Acknowledge the politics of your product, then be recklessly accountable for it.

9. POLITICO-SEXUAL "SHOCK VALUE" IS THE MOST IDIOTIC WORD PAIRING IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND WE HEREBY BANISH IT.

10. Instability

Earth has become atmospherically unstable. As our computer simulation models for forecast and early warning improve, weather and seismic patterns seem to become increasingly unpredictable, and dramatically so. The repetitive rhythm of the seasons once ingrained in our understanding of the world have been violently disrupted.

Meanwhile, we cling stubbornly to the learned cycle. Yet this clinging is no way to survive an atmospheric disturbance, let alone move forward within it. Rafters are told to remain supple and lithe should they fall into river rapids, allowing their bodies to bend to the rocks and other dangers they may encounter as they are propelled downstream. Rigidly resisting the current will get you killed. Letting yourself flow with it will take you somewhere new. It is time to embrace instability on a universal level. Stable systems are flat, static. Instability is volatility. It is seismic change. It is volcanic activity. In structural engineering, a system can become unstable when excessive load is applied. But excess is sexy – apply it freely. Destabilize your life, and live at the accelerated pace of the world.

11. IRRITATION

IRRITATION IS UNPLEASANT. TO IRRITATE IS TO ROUSE IMPATIENCE, ANGER, OR EVEN PAIN. IT IS TO ANNOY OR CHAFE, AND SOMETIMES IT IS TO BURN, OR ENFLAME. THEREIN LIES ITS POSITIVE POTENTIAL. UNPLEASANT OR NOT, AN IRRITATION IS A PROVOCATION. JUST AS AN ITCH DEMANDS TO BE SCRATCHED, AN IRRITATION TRIGGERS AN ACTIVE RESPONSE – A DIRECT, SOMETIMES AGGRESSIVE ENGAGEMENT WITH THE SITUATION AT HAND. IRRITATION IS PRODUCTIVE, A NATURAL STIMULANT. AN OYSTER RESPONDS TO AN IRRITANT BY DEPOSITING LAYERS OF CALCIUM CARBONATE AROUND THE OBJECT TO FORM A PEARL – AN ORIGINAL THING BORN FROM TRIVIAL DEBRIS. SEEN AS A PROVOCATION, IRRITATION BECOMES A POSITIVE EFFECT, JUST AS DIALOGUE IS MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN SILENCE, AND REACTION PREFERABLE TO STASIS.

12. Promiscuity

In 1988, WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS was in London trying to explain ALFRED KORZYBSKI to KATHY ACKER when he said, perhaps obviously, that “one of the basic errors of Western thought is either/or. Something is either instinctive or intellectual, either hereditary or environmental – this split which of course does not exist in fact. It’s both/and.” That means, for instance, that it is possible to be both hard and soft at the same time, which is fantastic. Casually repeating oneself is nonchalance distilled, which is chic. Thus duplicity isn’t a vice at all – it’s a virtue – and multiplicity is even better. Remember that promiscuity is not antithetical to rigor. This is the 21st century: anything trying to appear exclusive looks conservative now, and the cult of authenticity looks naïve. Disconnect, unhinge yourself from absolutes and you won’t even need to think about things like intellectual property, because you will have moved on to the next idea.

13. Complaining

Intransitive whining is a bad idea. Complaints regarding workload, illness, elective activities, and lack or excess of sleep or sex are especially counter-productive. Exceptions to this include complaints that are formulated in a way that is either incredibly entertaining, or directly provocative of change. A grievance that is neither stimulant nor dynamic is a waste of time that could be spent building, researching, chasing, or fucking something.

14. Generosity (Part I)

Just because a colleague, a lover, or a comrade is not complaining doesn’t mean he or she might not need a hand from time to time. Being generous and impulsive with your spirit is community-building and fun. Generally speaking, you should never address life by seeking to expend less energy, resources, or enthusiasm; you should make more instead. (This doesn’t mean you have to be patient, however. There just isn’t time for that anymore.

15. Generosity (Part II)

The celebrity selfie has come to be seen as an act of populist generosity. Group shots involving presidents and popes may feel big-hearted and authentic, their share statistics seldom rival those of Hollywood’s Instagram elite, however. In an op-ed for The New York Times called “The Meanings of the Selfie,” James Franco wrote that as a social media self-portraitist, “You’re safe if you trade ‘one for them’ with ‘one for yourself,’ meaning that for every photo of a book, painting or poem, I try to post a selfie with a puppy, a topless selfie or a selfie with Seth Rogen, because these are all things that are generally liked.” As this issue of 032c went to print, the latest item on the Fox News website read, “Kim Kardashian’s corset selfie raises questions: How dangerous is the practice of corseting?” The selfie is not merely a medium through which the celebrity can use his or her abundant beauty to spread happiness to his or her followers: it is a platform to raise aware- ness about critical social issues – including those stemming from controversial fashion conventions! And the purchase of a new accessory such as a corset, but more commonly a hat, is a wonderful occasion for anyone to share and to educate.

16. HAVING IT ALL

PEOPLE ALWAYS TALK ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT THEY “HAVE IT ALL.” IT’S A PASSIVE, POSSESSION-ORIENTED PREOCCUPATION THAT CLEARLY PREDATES – AND IS OUTDATED BY – THE POST-DIGITAL AGE, IN WHICH THIS IDEA OF FINITE SELF-COMPLETION HAS BEEN REPLACED WITH AN UNKNOWABLE, EVER-EXPANDING WHOLE. STOP TAKING INTERNAL INVENTORY AND EMBRACE AN OUTWARD OUTLOOK AND YOU WILL SEE THAT “ALL” MEANS NOTHING, AND THAT LIVING FOR EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING.

17. PLATEAU

We would rather be falling into a creative abyss than ceasing to change at all. Like the element mercury, we are fiercely reliable, but reliably changeable. We believe in reciprocity, not permanence. We believe in touching, not in the partition. We split our time between high and low like we are in a long-distance relationship. This is clearly reflective of the current industry climate and
those who are immovable will vanish from it soon.

18. EXPERIMENTATION

The only possible way to do or make anything, ever, is by experimentation. Even a toddler’s existence is a series of experiments, mini-challenges pressed upon its environment and explored by trial-and-error. To cease to experiment is not only to cease to create in this world, but to renounce participation altogether. Non-experimentation is inert. In fact, if you are not experimenting, you might be dead. Stay as alive as possible.

19. Freedom

Freedom from the known is a necessary condition for creation. This is not simply a question of material freedom, of a geographical mobility or lack of physical boundaries. It is a question of intellectual, emotional and carnal liberty. It is a rejection of the accepted and the acceptable, of the familiar. It is an impulse towards the unseen and the unknown, a thirst for newness.

Freedom from the known is structurally embedded into the Berlin cityscape. Physical space is abundant and accessible, and any site is fair game. A mere subway ride separates NATO and the Warsaw pact. But beyond that cliché,
Berlin combines and entangles the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real components of freedom. The city has become a global symbol of post intellectual creative life – a center in time where the walls of social convention and perceived truths are endlessly crumbling. Embrace the freedom from the known that grows there, and make it global.

20. THE ESTATE

Edmund Burke called print media the “fourth estate” during a parliamentary debate in 1787. In an 1891 essay called “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” Oscar Wilde cattily called it “the only estate.” Whether or not it had in fact crushed the traditional three that preceded it – nobility, clergy, and common people – this fourth power had entered a canon of social order that had structured Europe since the Middle Ages.

Dictionary.com estimates that the “fifth estate” came about as an idiom in the 1960s – well before the blogosphere, Julian Assange, and WikiLeaks: The Movie. (There is, for instance, an anarchist periodical called the Fifth Estate that has been opera­tive since 1965.) Each additional “estate” seeks to lay claim to an unregulated space “outside” the tyranny of pre­established social order. Yet each one calcifies in a matter of decades, begging the creation of another. There is nothing radical about this proliferation. The formulation of a fifth estate does nothing to dismantle the hierarchical systems in place; it simply shifts power – or the public perception thereof – to new leadership. We must retire “The Estate.” Murderers serve less prison time than hackers and whistle­blowers in the United States now. This shows us that information is sovereign, not the social orders that feebly attempt to control and exchange it.

21. Literalism

Blind faith has been out of vogue for some time now. The well-­traveled left-leaner decries “organized religion,” “national pride,” “partisanship,” and/or similar communal impulses as such. Tell him/her that kale is healthy and that gluten is not, however, and he/she will swallow and regurgitate it as gospel, fucking with menus from Portland to Paris. This is the myopic, literal-minded behavior of the privileged, and it is irritating and corrosive.

Of course, the offender is not the belief, or the “believer” – be his/her convictions spiritual, political, or indeed, retarded – but rather the visionless, literal mind so occupied by “lifestyle” that it is incapable of big­picture thought. “Bread” is far greater than the plain combination of its ingredients – it is something that we break together.

22. NO-LEDGE

As noted above, information is really hot right now. It’s also become difficult to disentangle from aspiration. Our 21st­ century technological reality is reflective of a cyberdream that originated during the Space Race and the initial cinematic release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which prefaced Skype video calls and the “tablet.” Start­up offices look like Babylon 5. The headquarters of Bahnhof, the ISP in Stockholm that used to house the WikiLeaks server, make explicit architectural reference to villain­ lair design in early Bond films. Raw, honest data is housed in environments saturated with fantasy; it is only as “true” and as strong as our ability to recognize the emotional, subjective aspects of these scenarios.

23. SKYFALL

Speaking of 007, in Skyfall (2012), the twenty-­third film in the James Bond franchise, M, played by Judy Dench, must defend her branch of military intelligence against accusations that the digital age has made its old ­school espionage methods obsolete. For some reason, M opts to read the closing lines of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Ulysses during her public inquiry, bypassing the best part: “Come, my friends, ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.”

24. Accountability

Defaulting to the liberal norm is no longer acceptable. It betrays an uncritical approach to society and politics, a sheep-like mentality that is no better on the left than it is on the right. What’s more, it has the damaging effect of providing a wall behind which to hide your beliefs, and an escape route from the grasp of accountability. This is a call for transparency – not simply on the level of major government, but right down to the individual, no matter on which side of the imagined bipartisan line his or her politics fall. Ask that every person forge an ideological path, unencumbered by the cult of political labels or identifiers. We won’t judge your beliefs. But we will hold you gloriously accountable for them.

25. Conflict

As a person moves through life, they are expected to become more and more “certain,” to operate with increased decisiveness, to cultivate an existence that minimizes confrontation and emphasizes peace. People grow to shun conflict, internal and external. But this is the surest path to monotony and conformity. There is a simple cure, however: we must become shamelessly conflicted. Conflict does not have to result in paralysis; its energy can be harnessed and put to use. It is the very source of newness, and the foundation of discourse. Relish each contradictory impulse within yourself, and every clash you encounter with another – for these are moments of productivity and creation.

28. ARTS CENTER

AN “ARTS CENTER” IS A BUILDING, NOT A CITY. YOU SHOULD PROBABLY STOP CALLING YOUR TOWN THAT. LET THE ARTS EMANATE, WHILE YOU TRY LOOKING FOR INNOVATION IN OTHER INDUSTRIES.

27. Creative Class

The “Creative Class” is a “boutique advisory services firm.” It was founded by a “world-renowned thought leader,” and its goal is to “harness” communities’ “innate creativity to achieve greater prosperity and well-being.” This sounds neither particularly creative nor classy per se. What it appears to “harness” is the saccharine vocabulary of self-improvement, a rhetoric of motivation contingent on the insecurity or perceived ineptitude of its recipient. Let’s stop self-mythologizing, roll up our sleeves, and get to work.

28. Industry (I)

Doesn’t it feel like a lot of people are moving to Los Angeles right now, or at least talking about “trying to spend more time in LA”? The weather is great there, and there is something glorious about a city that has been a creative establishment since the early 20th century, and yet always seems to be evolving a new cultural identity for itself. It’s also fantastic if you’re the kind of artist/writer/musician/chef/collector/architect/“entrepreneur” who is empowered by the proximity to celebrity that instills that particular sense of potential in the LA lands­cape. While you’re there, though – and while you’re anywhere else – please make note of the human circuitry beneath that appealing veneer of iconicity. Development executives and copyright lawyers know things, which is sexier than a lot of what’s on the red carpet.

29. Industry (II)

Speaking of work: it’s industry, not “The Industry.” That means making the effort, labels-be-damned. It means emancipating actual output from a professional narrative too often put before content today. It means recognizing the limits of your knowledge (they’re probably practical), and respecting the skills of others. It means working collaboratively without niche circumscription. It’s Latin, from industria – for diligence, activity, and zeal. For cleverness, effort, and skill. For trade.

Example: There was a World’s Fair in New York in the 1850s called the “Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations.” Walt Whitman wrote a poem about it. It is cheesy, patriotic, and generally mediocre by Whitman’s standards. Still, it’s resonant when he introduces the New World to the Old as an “illustrious emigré,” when he serenades “all occupations, duties broad and close,” and locates wealth not merely in product (“gross or lucre”) but in something “electric, spiritual.”

30. Great City

Did you just refer to something as a “great city”? That’s a tautology. Or at least we should endeavor to make it one. The criteria by which we assign a city its “tier” – be it “first,” “second,” “third,” “fourth,” or “fifth” – may need a little 21st-century nuancing in the meantime. We look at population, GDP, transportation and communications infrastructure, historical and cultural significance, and the relative abundance of entertainment, shopping, and dining options – quantitative considerations, but hardly qualitative ones. We also look at growth potential, but in a way that is generally patronizing: “fastest growing” certainly implies promise, but it doesn’t get you onto the first tier. That’s the “establishment” tier. And if it excludes cities in states of flux, that doesn’t just imply status – it implies stasis. Nobody gives a shit what they’re playing at the socio-economic equivalent of Studio 54. What if we ranked places not in terms of internal movement, but in favor of mobility on that vertical, hierarchical spectrum, be they on the ascent, or mid-fall? What if we gravitated towards first-tier places of change?

Did you know: The term “world city” dates from the 19th century – that’s when it started to be used to describe hubs of disproportionate global business. Saskia Sassen’s 1991 coinage – “global city” – isn’t just 1990s; it’s 1890s. This just in: internationalism is possible and necessary outside the megacenter!

31. The Medium

So you’ve launched a “new magazine”; so you think you’re gonna change the world. We think that’s sexy as hell. We’re probably going to want to touch the magazine all over; we might also want to ravage it and keep it forever. If it’s online, maybe we’ll content-binge. But just because “mag hags” are sated doesn’t mean we’re all fulfilling the potential of our chosen format. We cannot embrace the moderate, middling, or central condition implied by the word “medium.” Look at the definition of “magazine” instead. Nothing in it stipulates that it needs to be printed, to contain text and/or visuals, or to appear periodically. It’s Arabic, this time, from makhzan – for storehouse, filled with goods, often with ammunition. The Makh-zan-i-Afghani is a Persian-language epic history of the Afghans; the Makhzan al-Irfan fi Tafsir al-Quran is a 20th-century Shia exegesis. In Morocco, “makhzan” has historically referred to the sultan’s court and retinue, to Berber power structure, and to the state apparatus. The magazine is not just a chronicle of – or container for – ideas conveyed, in words and image, to varying degrees of abstraction. It’s firepower. That vigor, and not its material or formal envelope, is the essence of the medium.

32. Performance

There is a tendency in the media of contemporary culture to objectify the products of design, to aestheticize them, to divorce them from their function. Performance, meanwhile, is a concept that has for too long been relegated to a corporate or industrial vocabulary. But material culture is meaningless if it is not put into action. Use is a critical part of design and industry. An object becomes beautiful in its being used – the higher the function, the more stunning the product. Performance is the missing link between knowledge and design, and the momentum behind advanced creation. Performance is the force upon which the future is contingent and by which it is fulfilled. Performance must be harnessed today for an optimal tomorrow.

33. Self-Reliance

“Do-it-Yourself” is an underrated concept. It is a far greater means of creation than the bricolage or handiwork it has grown to be associated with. It is synonymous with initiative and empowerment. It is inherently transgressive. To do something yourself is to do something without an invitation from the world, without conventional infrastructure or expected resources. The self-reliant gate-crash, the party of creation and innovation. They act without permission, and their work is more resilient, more impactful. You do not need an invitation to start an exhibition space or produce a magazine, to launch a social networking site or invent a computer operating system. Projects born against the odds are simply born stronger.

34. Pharrell’s Hat

The most fabulous thing about Pharrell Williams is the story of his giant hat. It’s a re-editioned Vivienne Westwood design from 1982, when it made its MTV debut in the video for Sex Pistols producer Malcolm McLaren’s hip-hop single, “Buffalo Gals.” Pharrell bought his Mountain Hat in London, made a number of appearances wearing it, then auctioned it off on eBay to benefit his youth-oriented charity. The American fast food chain Arby’s purchased it for $44,100 – clearly, the bargain of the century – following a Twitter conversation in which the company noted the accessory’s resemblance to its logo. (“Hey, @Pharrell, can we have our hat back?,” tweeted Arby’s; “Hey Arby’s, you want my hat? Now’s your chance,” Pharrell replied.) On the night that Arby’s announced its purchase, Pharrell appeared at the Oscars to perform his record-breaking single, “Happy” – wearing another hat of the identical design. This was a savage and extravagant gesture. It teaches us about the exponential combined value of generosity and hubris, pleasantry and gravitas, insouciance and engagement – the marriage of which amounts to a purposeful and post- (or neo-?) aristocratic kind of fearlessness. Pharrell’s hat is a democratic symbol of plenitude. The hat is a crown – headgear of power, legitimacy, victory, honor, righteousness and resurrection – and it is available in every fathomable color for a mere $180. The hat runneth over.

35. Happiness

Generally speaking, “happiness” isn’t particularly sophisticated as a life goal or mindset; we’re not grumpy, we just don’t ascribe to its cult per se. It isn’t obvious, but Pharrell’s “Happy” is different. The song debuted on the soundtrack of Illumination Entertainment’s 3D animated family comedy, Despicable Me 2 (2013), and everyone compared its vocals to Curtis Mayfield’s. “Happy” became one of the best-selling singles of all time. Shot in Los Angeles, the “Happy” music video is 24 hours long and has its own interactive website; 1000s of fans around the world have created YouTube tributes to the project. The Embassy of the United States in Armenia released its own version titled “Happy Yerevan,” which featured the US ambassador dancing with various Armenian celebrities. Iranian fans were arrested for their tribute in May 2014. The police chief called their video an act of vulgarity, but President Hassan Rouhani jumped to the defense of “Happy in Tehran,” and its participants’ sentences to lashings and jail time were suspended. “Happy” is a matter of international public diplomacy, and an agent of transnational civil liberty. That makes its author a political leader, voted in through a tally of Google analytics and video hits (472,353,655 and counting on YouTube alone). It is suggestive of a lateral celebrity career move on the level of Ronald Reagan becoming president. This is not an electoral model that makes us “happy.”

36. Death

“Happy” is a song about freedom, and mortality. “Clap along,” Pharrell sings, “if you feel like a room without a roof.” This is the vocabulary of the most famous and beautiful songs of American Spiritual music, in which the “sweet chariot” leads to an abundant and peaceful afterlife, and in which “the drinking gourd” – the “Big Dipper” asterism – leads slaves towards liberty, via a map found in the stars. Pharrell’s “roofless room,” too, locates sublime and communal and transcendent happiness in the heavens. Either Pharrell is as much a spiritual leader as he is a political one – as much prophet as president – or he is human embodiment of the international citizen’s compulsive inability to separate church, state, and pop. Perhaps he is all three.

In 1939, Georges Bataille wrote an incredible text called “The Practice of Joy Before Death”; this work also places an augmented and vertiginous kind of “happiness” – ecstasy, maybe – before the stars: “The depth of the sky, lost space is joy before death: everything is profoundly cracked.”

“Only a shameless, indecent saintliness can lead to a sufficiently happy loss of self,” Bataille states elsewhere. His “Joy before death” is not for prudes – “those who would be afraid of nude girls or whiskey” – and means that “life can be glorified from root to summit. [...] It renews the kind of tragic jubilation that man ‘is’ as soon as he stops behaving like a cripple, glorifying necessary work and letting himself be emasculated by the fear of tomorrow.” It goes without saying that the stardom that radiates from those small onyx devices that light up our faces from below has little to do with this shameless and indecent saintliness. Being and becoming and giving takes place deeply and overwhelmingly in black, cracked, star-sprinkled space.

37. Fantasy

Fantasy is often posited as the antithesis of reality, but this is a fallacy. Fantasy is a part of reality – perhaps its most vibrant, and certainly its most fun. Without fantasy, the reality we inhabit would not only be grayer; it would not exist at all. Fantasy is not merely a cherry on top of simple intellectual existence; it is integral to the foundations of our culture. It is not a threat to truth, morality, or perception; it is the necessary condition for these things. Fact and fantasy exist in a relationship of such constant and productive reciprocity that it is impossible to say which comes first. Too often ignored, this relationship is the perennial chicken-and-egg question of human existence. However, given the creative power that results from this magical interaction, makes determining which actually came first of little importance. Reality makes us dream, and dreams make us real.

38. Chance

To speak of “chance” may seem frivolous to some. Chance is the currency of the superstitious and naïve, they might say. To rely on it for even a moment is to renounce your agency to other forces. Yet indeterminist processes have been a part of the most fundamental instances of creation known to us – including the birth of our universe as we understand it. It is not chance that is outmoded, rather necessity and determinism. From the subatomic world, to Modernism, to genetics, certainty has been “over” for a long time. To ask how or why we came to be is to ask the wrong question. Celebrate the happenstance in creation and existence by asking instead, “what next?”