Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
These are posts about books from the blog Base and Superstructure. Occasionally I’ll read a book worth talking about, and write some thoughts on it. These cover a wide range of topics from the blog.
This country feels different than it did just a few years ago. We’ve moved past the ‘Great Awokening’ and into a backlash phase. Many of us – especially liberals, progressives, and/or college graduates – seek answers. How did it happen? Musa al-Gharbi offers answers in his book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite.
But they might not be the answers folks seek.
Let’s take a closer look at We Have Never Been Woke and find out.
Welcome to the second reading list of the new year! For this darker, winter list, I’ve got a selection of mostly political analysis. Read on, and let me know what you’re reading over the winter.
Near the end of his novel, The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov has a few things to tell us about the use of automation and robots that bears interestingly on our use of AI today. Asimov wrote the book in the 1950s, during an earlier wave of automation. He had no specific knowledge of LLMs, of course. But in reading it, I felt as though the Good Doctor reached into our future.
I’ve hit a flurry of interest in George Orwell in the last 6 months. My partner and I read a book of essays on Orwell by Rebecca Solnit – Orwell’s Roses – and then we watched a film on him at a local film festival.
In that spirit, I bought a book of short Orwell essays. In those essays, his criticisms of the left – written in the early 1940s, during World War II! – sparked my interest. I found the criticisms still relevant today, but relevant to a different group.
Let’s take a moment to look into this.
It’s exciting to begin the new year with a new reading list! And, of course, there’s always more to read. Here’s how I’m starting my 2026.
Let me know what you’re reading these days.
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