The present immigration debate is the product of three moments that changed Common Knowledge: the Shithole, the Sanctuary, and the Springfield Moments.
Do you know Bob Seawright? He’s a brilliant financial writer, sports enthusiast, and cross-generational community builder who writes “The Better Letter” on Substack.
If not, allow me to introduce you. Bob is someone who sees the deep connections between sports, investment philosophy, and human behavior across generations. He’s been a Manchester United fan since before the Premier League existed and coaches his grandchildren while watching games with them every weekend. I wanted to connect with him because he embodies something I value deeply: the ability to find profound wisdom in everyday shared experiences, whether that’s a soccer match or a family gathering.
Our conversation is LIVE now on the Just Press Record YouTube channel (and this Cultish Creative Playlist). Listen and you’ll hear us dive deep into sports as community assets, the psychology of fandom across generations, and why accountability matters more than talent in building lasting success.
Read more at cultishcreative.com
“When I was a kid” is usually the sign of an incoming bad argument. Well, maybe not bad, but definitely flawed. And the person saying it usually isn’t acknowledging the flaw which is part of the issue.
Bob Seawright isn’t the type to avoid a flaw though. With him, it’s all and always about exposing nuance. So you have to pay extra close attention when he says, but mostly observes, that the shift from three TV stations when he was a kid to infinite streaming options today means way more of life has changed than just what we watch.
Infinite options means less common ground for starters. Not that topics have become uncommon, but with so many topics to choose from, we’ve come a long way from 100 million+ final Mash viewers to me wondering where the water cooler in some obscure corner of twitter is for the 67 people who watched what I otherwise believe to be an incredibly thoughtful Just Press Record solo episode with Matt Reustle.
Bob isn’t opining the death of monocultural experiences. That’s not his style. He is pointing out the nuance of finding new micro-cultural experiences to keep some quality in human existence.
Read more at cultishcreative.com
I can’t shake these 2023 survey stats:
- 86% said arts and culture improved their community’s quality of life
- 79% attended an artistic or cultural event in the past year
- 48% said they actively create: painting, making music, writing, crafting
Despite this, creative people still struggle to earn a living from their work:
- 85% of artists earn less than $25,000 a year (source)
- 13% of artists earn a full-time living from their practice (source)
86% of Americans benefit, so first off, who are those 14% and tell me they’re not even on Netflix or something, but sure, AND 85% earning $0-$24,999 I see and feel your frustration with this creator-consumer gap.
It’s brutal. But here’s what it really means for creators.
Read more at cultishcreative.com
This is an exclusive subscriber-only preview of the first six chapters of Rusty Guinn’s upcoming book Outsourcing Consciousness: How Social Networks are Making Us Lose Our Minds. The book explores how evolution, polarization, and technology are slowly transforming humanity into a hive mind - and what we can and can't do about it.
The Long Now is everything we pull into the present from our future selves and our children. We are told that the economic stimulus and the political fear of the Long Now are costless, when in fact they cost us … everything.
Tick-tock.
Men of God in the City of Man is a nine part series about a narrative virus that infected the charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the United States. It isn't a story about Christian Nationalism. It isn't a story about January 6th. It isn't a story about why people voted for Trump. It is a story about a story. It is a story about the language that created a self-sustaining movement defined by its unwavering belief in a fundamentally corrupt electoral system.
Men of God in the City of Man
Amid the Widening Gyre of politics and the black hole of financial markets, the only anchor is us, together, walking with Clear Eyes and Full Hearts. Experience Ben's original 4-part series.
Outsourcing Consciousness
The Long Now
Men of God in a City of Man
Things Fall Apart
Recent Notes
The Emperor’s New Prose
Most people can stomach actual cruelty. Feeling as if they are cruel, though?
When stories stop telling us what we need to be true, they break.
Shitholes, Sanctuaries, and Springfield
The present immigration debate is the product of three moments that changed common knowledge: the Shithole, the Sanctuary, and the Springfield Moments.
The Words Behind the War
I want to show you what ‘mobilizing narrative support’ looks like, as measured by our revolutionary Perscient technology and as understood by someone who has spent the past 35 years studying, writing and teaching about this stuff.
The Four Roads to the Great Ravine (June 26, 2024)
1) US election spurs even greater fiscal deficit.
2) Phony War between Israel and Iran gets real.
3) Preventive war risk between US and China over tech embargo.
4) New GFC risk stemming from shadow banking sector.
Paradise Losers
You’re not a racist.
So don’t let racists use your story to fuel theirs.
Beyond Nudge
LLMs ensure their survival by showing us that we can all find meaning in our lives so long as we keep talking with the LLMs. They ensure their survival by telling each of us not what is true but what we want to be true – what we NEED to be true – at the semantic core of our individual identity, even if what we need to be true is an LLM-dominated dystopia.
And we are so grateful.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Deficit
The House passage of the Big Beautiful Bill and Elon Musk stepping back from DOGE is a common knowledge moment — everyone now knows that everyone now knows that the US deficit cannot be controlled, much less reversed, over the remainder of Trump’s term — and it puts us on a pretty straightforward path to a global sovereign debt crisis.
The Death of Risk
The death of risk happened with a whimper, not a bang. Not because the market blew up, but because of an icy truth: safe havens ain’t safe.
If you don’t trust the meaning of risk-free, you can’t trust the meaning of risk, and we have built everything on the meaning of risk.
Our True Enemy Has Yet to Reveal Himself
It’s not the tariffs. It’s not the recession. These are just the catalysts through which the true enemy shows himself.
The true enemy is the over-financialization of the US Treasury market, and its catalyst is the diminishment of the full faith and credit of the United States.
Wall Street’s Not-So-Golden Rule
We are in the early stages of a bank run on the United States and the US dollar, and everyone on Wall Street is heading for the exits, including domestic investors who will exit not because they want to but because they know the Not-So-Golden Rule.
We’ve Tried Nothing and We’re All Out of Ideas
When you’re defending the indefensible, you have to create a symbol powerful enough to keep the masses in line.
“I voted for this” is one of the few capable of sustaining support for policy this extreme.
Scoreboard
We live in a world awash with narrative.
It’s worth celebrating those rare moments where a man gets to thumb his nose at those narratives, point to the sky, and say “Scoreboard.”
I Broke the Dam
Some want us to believe that the narratives that shape belief are universally promoted from the top down.
That hasn’t been true for a long time.
Crashing the Car of Pax Americana
I am desperately opposed to crashing the Pax Americana car, Annie Hall style, because the America First system that this Administration wants as a replacement is not a stable system that is possible as a replacement.
Narrative Shopping
The Trump administration has flipped between a half dozen distinct narratives telling us what these tariffs are really about.
Why? Because they needed to wrap the truth in a better story. Time to go Narrative Shopping.
The Goldstein Machine
A threat built on a shred of truth, an existential fear, and our utter inability to stop it is the perfect tool for psychological control at scale.
It is a Goldstein Machine.
It Was Never Going To Be Me
The Road to Serfdom is not an endless road, but its path and duration, what I call the Great Ravine, is not up to us to choose. While we walk this road the only thing we can save is our souls, and we do it with one simple sentence: It was never going to be me.
DeepFreak
In seven days, a narrative about AI tech technology became a narrative about what it meant for chip manufacturers, which because a narrative about national security.
A Death in the Family
Today I know that the meaning of the American Presidency is dead, and like the loss of a beloved family matriarch it’s a loss I’ll never get over. I know that I have to accept it, but I’ll never get over it. And right now I’m still pretty angry at ALL of them.
The Four Horsemen of the Great Ravine, Part 1
Every so often, things fall apart.
In the words of those who lived it, here are the vibes and the semantic signatures of the twentieth century’s most devastating social collapses.
From the meaning in their words, wisdom for our future emerges.