“The problem is not the thing that is big, but bigness itself.” Leopold Kohr

If a government becomes oppressive, people can feel the oppression. If a corporation exploits you, there’s a transaction you can examine. But if the tools you use to reason with are subtly tilted, you may never develop the outside vantage point needed to notice.

The influence works precisely by becoming indistinguishable from your own cognition.

Cognition is emergence.

The temptation when writing about your own bottoming-out is to either dramatize it or apologize for it.

Don’t do either. Keep not doing either.

In November of 2018 I moved into a fourth-floor penthouse apartment in Somerville’s Union Square. I had been living with my on again off again partner.

We had met my sophomore year of University. That was 2007 in Hamden, Connecticut. I was 20 years old.

Over a decade later and I’d decided it was time to split and fall farther – and harder – than I had before. And I’d fallen many times. But at 31 it finally felt like a good time to really bottom out.

So I moved on my own. I had just been promoted to Associate Design Director at IBM. I could finally afford it.