Today's Navel-Gazer

...except that the argument here is that navel-gazing don't feed no bulldog.

Hannah Arendt and the Post-Enlightenment.

We're stuck in a perpetual loop between labor and work (two different things according to Arendt), and all the value of participation in the real world around us feels like it's missing - like we're missing out on something...it's all kinda pixilated...the way Facebook gives us pixilated "friends" who aren't quite the real thing...pixilated expressions of approval that mean less than a real thumbs-up...it gives us a world where we're all cogs in an economic machine rather than real people active in our communities.