Japan-based scholar Christopher Hobson reflects on how we can live and act in conditions that are constantly changing and challenging us. Pursuing open thinking.

Last week marked two years of this Substack, so it seemed like a good moment for a brief update and review of the project. The original aim was for it to be a ‘thought sketchbook’, and that is roughly how it has developed.

Australian National University

Re-view

Evil might seem like a strange topic to be commencing the year with, but I have been finishing an article on this elusive theme and these notes are consciously untimely. It is a difficult, awkward topic, weighed with religious and mystical connotations, it does not fit well with many contemporary frames.

Fragments

With this note, I would like to thank and welcome new readers, and provide an update on what I am exploring through this Substack. By training, I am a scholar of politics and international relations, and hold positions at universities in Australia and Japan, the former my country of origin, the latter my country of residence.

A note on notes

Part of what I have been suggesting about polycrisis is the difficulty in making sense of it. Given this, I am trying a slightly different format for this note, it is consciously fragmentary, presented as a series of somewhat connected thoughts, observations and provocations about the current moment.

Observations and provocations on the current moment

Defending worlds

One of the core aims of this project is to engage in the practice of open thinking. One of the constant challenges is doing so in conditions that actively impede thought and reflection. Swept up in reactivity and immediacy, weighed down by banality and stupidity. Much of this note is based on some ideas about AI from about two years ago that I have yet to find the space to finish working through.

A bank run on meaning

Attending to the world feels like a constantly more challenging task. What to listen to? What to read? What to watch? Overwhelmed, dazed, collectively and individually we stumble from news story to news story. Stocks go up, bombs go down. Reality feels more abstracted and simulated, except for those constant reminders of the really real.

Beware decoys

The last few notes have been framed around the question of ‘what time is it?’ (first note, second note, third note). Another question I have been asking alongside it is, ‘where are we’? Together these prompts speak to the sense of confusion and disorientation that prevails as events race ahead of our capacity to comprehend and assign meaning to them.

Where are we?

Apology and explanation: a brief change in the tempo of notes. Normally I try to avoid more than one per week. Yet these are not exactly normal times… This note is somewhat of a bridge between the previous one, which offered an updated reflection on some of the major forces shaping the present, and the next note in coming days that will revisit comprehending the contemporary through the polycrisis frame.

Piecing and parsing

Despite having done a lot of research on democracy, I have not written much about it here. Given that we are reaching the climax of a big year of elections, I thought it would be useful to share some of my conclusions on democracy and its enduring value. To understand what an existential crisis for modern democracy looks like, we should turn to early 1941.

Gray democracy

Despite being based in Japan, I tend not to write directly about it as much as I plan to. I keep meaning to address this, but have been distracted with other topics. Given that the country is in the news following the weekend’s election, I thought it might be useful to offer some reflections and context.

Stresses and surprises

Zooming in and zooming out, continuing to think through and with China. This note moves to the macro, considering consumption and production, and the offer of an international order based on ordering. More charts and less literary references ahead. Previous notes in the series: one, two, three, four.

In terms of our troubles with comprehending the contemporary, one of the big challenges is the combination of speed and scale.

The ordering principle

The aim of this series is

 thinking through

and

 thinking with

China. One of the references for ‘to orient’ is Edward Said, and while these notes likely fail to meet his exacting standards, hopefully the intent and core ideas might. The aim - the need - is to recognise and reckon with China, in all its complexity and detail.

Digital worlds

In a nuanced and thoughtful piece, Philip Zelikow judges: Indeed. And yet, the tendency is for analysts to mix empty platitudes with unearned certainties. Conflict as content, triviality prevails. Faced with a troubling array of possible futures, grimly marching towards November, there is a need to escape social media circularity, and instead move outwards in thought. With that in mind, some points and provocations.

Geopolitics and dice

Continuing the conversation with Pete Chambers, this time recorded in-person during a trip to Australia in February 2024. Donald Horne famously described the country as ‘a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck.’ That depiction could easily be applied to much of the West over the last few decades. Central to our conversation is the issue of scale, prompted by a rare interview with Vaclav Smil.

In conversation with Pete Chambers, Q1 2024

A central theme of these notes is

 thinking through

and

 thinking with

: searching out and identifying fragments, frames, clues, people, texts: whatever might assist in reckoning with our collective conditions. We need partners, collaborators, aids and inspirations. With that in mind, this note engages with a series of artists and artworks, classical and contemporary, centred around a recent Europe trip.

What we cannot see

Much of what we use and touch every day is likely connected to the sea: many items would have been wholly or partially produced abroad, and most – if not all – of the remainder would have relied on commodities that would have arrived on tankers and other ships. Yet this all forms part of that background web of global interconnections that we too rarely recognize or reckon with, but are vital to how we presently live.

In Conversation with Laleh Khalili

I find myself in a disposable hotel, a place that could not have existed 10-15 years, and most likely will not exist again at some point in the near to medium term future when we are forced to consider more what we choose to build and consume.

Disposable world

W. H. Auden, ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’.  For more: ‘A Poem (and a Painting) About the Suffering That Hides in Plain Sight’.

Matcha variations

Josef Adalian and Lane Brown have written a thought provoking article about the state of the television industry, ‘The Binge Purge’. What is remarkable is how much of what is being described could be applied more broadly to describe many industries and institutions today.

My aim in this series is to think through the likely trajectory of current AI-technologies, and what some of the potential ramifications might be (notes one and two). In doing so, I’m not attempting to assess how powerful these current models are or could become, but assuming that they have reached a stage of development consequential enough to be impactful.

Embedding extraction

Below a selection of some news pieces, articles and podcasts that have caught my attention. I might try doing notes like these more regularly if there is interest. The full name is ‘Very Intense Tropical Cyclone Freddy’. From FT: What is remarkable is that the cyclone circled around and hit Madagascar and Moazambique

 twice

. It came back for a second shot. And add in that Malawi is experiencing its worst cholera outbreak on record.

Listening

Friedrich Nietzsche, Aphorism 125, ‘The Madman’,

 The Gay Science

[1882]: - Hermann Broch,

 The Sleepwalkers

, Part 3, Chapter XLIV, ‘Disintegration of Values (6)’ [1931-32]: - Ezra Pound, ‘Canto CXIII’ [1969]:

Imagining the real. Really imagining. There and here, blending and blurring, all together. Hayao Miyazaki,

 Shuna’s Journey.

Christopher de Bellaigue on the possibilities of ‘an unstoppable spiral of state violence and popular fury’ in Iran. Alexander Baunov on Russia’s objectives. 2022 is set to be ‘a fabulous year’ for some. Ali Ansari on ‘failures of imagination’ in Iran.

This week I found myself back in Kyoto. Walking through temples that have been standing for hundreds of years, lasting through wars, plagues and much more, served as a useful reminder that this pandemic too will pass. But seeing so many people flocking to sakura and choosing to ignore a less serene reality made me also think we likely still have some time to go before that passing will happen.

Of scraps and circles

Joseph Roth, ‘The Inexpressible’ (1938): - Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Barbarism, A User’s Guide’ (1994): - Ivan Illich,

 The Rivers North of the Future

(c. 1997): - Hermann Broch,

 The Sleepwalkers

(1931-21): - Cecil Day Lewis, ‘Where are the War Poets?’ (1943): -

This year the cherry blossoms have been late to arrive. Waiting, waiting, with expectation, they have finally appeared. Matsuo Basho in Spring 1688: And yet, with the clouds and the rain, the blossoms scatter too soon. Basho a few years and seasons later: More than a century passes, and with it, many seasons, and Kobayashi Issa pens: The deep appreciation of the seasons is one of the most distinctive features of Japanese culture.

Seasons and cycles

What to make of our present conditions? The post-Cold War era has passed, (hyper)globalization has peaked, the unipolar moment has finished, neoliberalism has perhaps entered its zombie phase.

Resisting kitsch analysis

In conversation again with Pete Chambers. With this episode we have moved to a new recording setup and the audio quality is much better as a result. Thanks for the feedback from listeners and to our producer, Peter Van Hoesen, for his guidance. Our starting point is the extreme weather that has marked this year’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

In conversation with Pete Chambers, August 2023

When a dam breaks, we can be confident bad things will follow. To what extent we can accurately forecast where exactly the water will rush to, what the precise damage will be, that is much more difficult to predict, as Falconer explains. War is much the same. Wars are a distinctive mixture of highly contingent, historically distinctive features and relatively constant dynamics that tend to reappear.

Everything washes by

In the first note thinking through the arrival of ChatGPT and the incipient AI arms race, I suggested Shoshana Zuboff’s work on surveillance capitalism as an important reference point. The behaviour of big tech over the last 15 years offers a clear track record of what we might expect, and it does not look promising.

Big tech and bad faith

Simone de Beauvoir,

 The Ethics of Ambiguity

(1947): - Robert Oppenheimer, Hearing Before Personnel Security Board (1954): - Bill Joy, ‘Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us’ (2000): - Victoria Krakovna, ‘Risks from general artificial intelligence without an intelligence explosion’ (2015): - Ezra Klein, ‘This Changes Everything’ (2023): - Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher, ‘ChatGPT Heralds an Intellectual Revolution’ (2023):

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

A year ago I wrote a note considering the appearance of a new coronavirus variant, Omicron. I stressed the difficulties of making sense in real time and the need for greater intellectual humility.

One year on

‘All alike burned in its fire’ - a line taken from the fragment below - captures something powerful about the impact of disasters, moments when worlds bend and break. How to make sense of the nonsensical? How to comprehend the incomprehensible? What to do when reality outstrips imagination? Robert McLiam Wilson on the trial for the 2016 truck attack in Nice, France.

As we struggle to make sense of our ‘unnamable present’, one logical direction to turn is backwards. Historical analogs are sought out, comparisons are offered, and sooner or later, a reference is inevitably made to the Nazis. Certainly, historical reflection is a vital part of comprehending and acting in the world, but the manner in which it can work as a guide is less straightforward than what is often hoped.

The old new

In this episode, I speak with Sun-ha Hong, a scholar based at Simon Fraser University, author of the 2020 book,

 Technologies of Speculation: The limits of knowledge in a data-driven society

. His work challenges claims that we should simply listen to what ‘the data’ tells us, questioning whether it really has the capacity to reveal hidden truths about how humans interact.

In Conversation with Sun-ha Hong

In this episode, I speak with L.M. Sacasas, who has become a leading voice in examining the ethical, social and cultural consequences of technologies. His prior blog,

 The Frailest Thing

, and current Substack newsletter,

 The Convivial Society

, offer a wealth of insight, encouraging a greater awareness of the ways that technologies shape the conditions within which we live and act.

In Conversation with L.M. Sacasas

In this episode of ‘Imperfect World’, I speak with Claire Benn, a philosopher who explores how our growing reliance on digital technologies are impacting our moral landscape, and the ethical challenges that come from a world shaped by machines.

In Conversation with Claire Benn

This conversation was already posted on the ‘Imperfect world’ podcast feed, I am cross-posting it here in case this platform is better suited for some audience. For future episodes, I will post them across both platforms simultaneously.

In conversation with David Cayley

A year ago, I started this Substack as an experiment for sharing my writing. A major motivation for doing so was a recognition of the role that academics play in marginalising their own voices. Part of this is through getting lost in narrow niches and specialisations; part of this is through being caught in a dysfunctional neoliberal university system;

Throwing sketches into the wind

A key theme across these notes is moral agency. Rarely do we determine the conditions in which we act, but this does not absolve us. The circumstances may be more or less extenuating, yet we always have a choice. Recognising and accepting our agency, and the responsibility that flows with it, is a necessary part of acting in the world. The macro is made up of the micro.

Snake and the wheel

Bertolt Brecht once stated, ‘to those who do not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.’  Given his was writing in the first half of the 20th century, such an observation is understandable. What would Brecht say today? Whether looking at the spread of COVID-19,  increasing signs of social unrest, or the very direct and immediate consequences of climate change, the image of fire has both real and metaphorical resonance.

And it burns

There is little clarity in Christopher Nolan’s deeply confused movie,

 Tenet

, but there is one line that shines through: ‘we live in a twilight world’. This potentially captures something important about the world we find ourselves in. Between day and night, we exist in an interstitial moment.

 L'heure bleue

. The blue hour.

The Empire of Twilight

After the Lower House elections in Japan last October, I wrote a note that emphasised the mounting and cumulative stresses on the country.

On and off target

Rainer Maria Rilke,

 Letters to a Young Poet

: - Milan Kundera,

 The Art of the Novel

: - Walter Benjamin,

 The Storyteller

: - Osip Mandelstam, ‘The 19th century’: - Georg Lukacs, Preface to

 The Theory of Novel

: - Friedrich Nietzsche,

 Twilight of the Idols

: - Robert Musil,

 The Man Without Qualities

:

 The Ox and His Herdsman

, 十牛図〈八〉人牛倶忘 :

Pete Chambers has coined ‘3SD’ to describe conditions in 2025: Surreal, Stubborn, Stupid + Dangerous, Destructive, Dumb. He eloquently describes these conditions at length here. The quotes below are taken from a pair of recently published notes on involution and simulation.

Watching - and experiencing - big tech march forward with close to zero concern for the societal costs, I keep recalling this talk that Neil Postman gave to Apple employees in 1993. He considers the development of computers in the context of his arguments, emphasising the costs and unexpected consequences that always come with technological developments.

Big tech, big mistakes

Lost in a dance of reactivity. Recalling some modified adages from previous notes: If a country shows you who they are, believe them.

 and

Combine Occam’s Razor with ‘if it looks like a duck…’ to make: If it looks brutally stupid and/or stupidly brutal, then that is most likely what it is.

 To which can be added:

Fool me first term, shame on you.

Of mice and dice

Eternally returning to Friedrich Nietzsche.

To restate: In Japanese, there is an expression

 ame to muchi

( 飴と鞭 ), which translates as ‘candy and whip’. Apparently this was taken from Otto von Bismarck’s expression of ‘

 zuckerbrot und peitsche

’ (pastry / sugar bread and whip). These are generally equated with ‘carrot and stick’ in English, the basic idea of positive and negative incentives to shape behaviour.

Candy and whip

A quarter of the way through the year, a quarter of the way through the century. On a recent visit to Australia, I had the opportunity for another in-person meeting with Pete Chambers. Previously we have tried to avoid focusing on the United States, conscious of how much of our collection attention it demands.

In conversation with Pete Chambers, Q1 2000-25

In December, I published a note that finished with: This reflection was connected to a longer piece I was writing for

 The Journal of Global Ethics

. The article is now available and open-access, so it is free to read and download: Christopher Hobson. ‘The Passing of Another Golden Age: Global Ethics in a Time of Deglobalisation.’

 Journal of Global Ethics

, March 2025.

Global ethics in a time of deglobalisation

Franz Kafka,

 The Zürau Aphorisms

: - Arthur Miller, ‘Why I Wrote

 The Crucible

’

 :

- Robert Musil, ‘Questions for Volume Two’ of

 The Man Without Qualities

: - Joseph Roth: ‘Our Homeland, Our Epoch’ - Neil Postman, ‘Future Shlock’: - Hannah Arendt, ‘Franz Kafka: A Revaluation’: - Franz Kafka,

 The Zürau Aphorisms

: -

A few weeks ago I gave a lecture entitled ‘The Great Disorientation’. It covered a lot of ground, as our present disorientation is indeed very great. Confused, overloaded, we stumble from update to update, constantly refreshing, all the while reducing our individual and collective capacities to comprehend and respond.

Values all the way down

As shocks and surprises mount up, in time so do the anniversaries. Another year passes since a disaster was visited on a people and a place. Today is one of those days. On 11 March 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck the Tohoku region, triggering a massive tsunami and nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Turning, returning to Fukushima

An AI prompt might suggest starting the note with a reference to these being ‘interesting times’. These are certainly eventful, fateful times, but how interesting? As opposed to simply being stupid and dangerous? Brittleness makes breaking more likely, one can be shocked by the shocking, but whether one should be surprised by it is a different matter.

The brutal and the stupid

If there are any readers in Canberra, I will be giving a lecture on the evening of Tuesday 25 February entitled, ‘The Great Disorientation’. It is based on a chapter from the book manuscript I am working on. The event is in-person only, but I can try to record and post it if there is interest.

The plastic and the questionable

This month will already be the fourth anniversary of ‘Imperfect Notes’, which commenced in February 2021.

Pacing and spacing

A news story from Japan, where a gaping hole has appeared in a road, swallowing a truck and its driver:

 The Japan Times

reports: And from AFP: A hole that continues to expand, sewage and debris getting in the way. Another image from Japan, taken this morning. In a neighbourhood park in Tokyo, it is possible to see Mt Fuji, but only from one particular spot.

Reality as metaphor

Apology and explanation: This is the last of the ‘polycrisis pairings’ series (see notes one and two), then a pause. I am keenly aware one of the issues I raise below is the problem of immediacy and yet I am sending these out in a flurry. I also end up using the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’, which I generally try to avoid.

In media res, in the style of immediacy

A new year, but the challenges and dilemmas tumble forward with us. An important theme in my notes last year was the sense that we are disorientated and that there is a pressing need to reorientate ourselves. How to do so when we are so lost and confused? The sky is dark, it is unclear which way is north, how to orientate?

The strange intruder

Intentionally or not, as the year ends, I’ve been engaging in some summative notes framed around ‘knowing the time’ (first note, second note). The plan is to finish working through some of these ideas before shōgatsu in Japan, a special time when this place goes quiet and stops for a few days.


 And for whatever reason, it appears there has been a recent uptick in subscribers.

Pitted with the present

In a recent note, I reflected on the need - and difficulty - of ‘knowing the time’. One is struck by the sense of disorientation that prevails, as events tumble ahead of our capacity to comprehend them. The demand is for content and quick takes, and so we are immediately told why an election outcome was to be expected, why the fall of a regime was a matter of time.

Another golden age

Ivan Illich,

 The Rivers North of the Future

(c. 1997): - Paul Virilio,

 Crepuscular Dawn

(2002): - Oliver Sacks, ‘The Machine Stops’ (c. 2015): - Neil Postman,

 Amusing Ourselves to Death

(1985): - Thomas Pynchon, ‘Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?’ (1984): - Norbert Wiener,

 The Human Use of Human Beings

(1950):

The calendar suggests it is late autumn in Japan, but it feels like proper autumn weather has only recently begun here. Two years ago I wrote a note on ‘polycrisis in autumn’, now a time to return to those themes. Scrambled seasons continue, mirroring the scrambling of politics, markets and minds. It is almost like these phenomena are connected.

Knowing the time

The prior note contained images from Francisco Goya’s etchings,

 The Disasters of War

. The less obvious context for it is that I am currently doing some thinking and writing alongside the Spanish painter. Given my recent note on

 Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes, I was happy to come across a sketch of the famed knight-errant by Goya.

Beset by monsters

Hannah Arendt,

 On Violence

: Simone Weil,

 The Iliad, or The Poem of Force

: Svetlana Alexievich,

 Boys in Zinc

: Susie Linfield,

 The Cruel Radiance

: Virginia Woolf,

 Three Guineas

: - Prints from Francisco Goya,

 The Disasters of War

.

Marked

Staying with China as a ‘manufacturing superpower’, thinking through what it means for energy and consumption. A few more to go, thanks for your patience. Previous notes in the series: one, two, three, four, five.

Two images from my recent trip that capture the contradictions and complexities of the contemporary in China:

 Sitting in traffic in rural Sichuan.

Enframing in the East

Pierre Ryckmans (aka Simon Leys),

 The View from the Bridge

(1996): - Hermann Hesse,

 The Glass Bead Game

(1943): - Max Weber, ‘The Bernhard Case’ (1908): - Friedrich Schiller, ‘What Is, and to What End Do We Study, Universal History?’ (1789): - Hermann Broch,

 The Sleepwalkers

(1931-21):

Returning to the practice of open thinking alongside Pete Chambers, taking place between Japan and Australia, recorded as the seasons (are meant to be) changing across the Northern and Southern hemispheres. In this episode we continue our examination of the individual and collective consequences of the digital worlds we are choosing and using. The ever-expanding reach of smartphones comes with a constant decline in recognition of shared spaces.

In conversation with Pete Chambers, Q3 2024

Moving from climate and consumption to polycrisis. Apologies, it is a long one. This note has been informed by discussions with colleagues from the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA), my thanks to them. Previous notes: one, two, three, four, five, six.

Reckoning with ‘the trap the world has become’, attempting to orientate thought, doing so by thinking

 through

and

 with

China.

Polycrisis through Peking

The attempt to think

 through

and

 with

China proved to be fittingly quixotic. It turned into a much bigger undertaking than initially anticipated, taking about a month and resulting in more than 12,000 words. In the process of researching and writing, I became more convinced of the claim I made: China is too important to be left to the specialists.

Cold war or hot world

A month after returning from China, this series finally reaches its conclusion. Thanks for your patience. Previous notes: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

The aim of this series has been ‘to orient’ our thinking

 through

and

 with

China, and by doing so, trying to move beyond binary frames that view the country as threat, as enemy, as other.

The problem of...

The intent of this series is thinking through and with China, meant in an essayistic sense. As such, it is not just about the country, but also the observations emerging from the experience of being there.

In search of windmills

This note continues the ‘to orient’ series, prompted by a recent visit to China. The plan is for this ‘batch’ to be published relatively quickly, and with that done, return to a slower publication schedule.

Lost online

The political and financial might of the United States, combined with the centrality of its tech platforms and English as the

 lingua franca,

ensures voices from that one country tend to occupy an outsized role in discourse and thinking. Certainly, what happens there is deeply consequential for the world, and so it is important, it does matter.

Contra and counter cold wars

A new missive has appeared from the ever-prolific , this time about Antonio Gramsci’s much quoted ‘interregnum’:ChartbookChartbook 298 Built not Born - against "interregnum"-talk (Hegemony Notes #2) "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born;

Of silkworms and butterflies

Zooming in and zooming out, moving from the micro to the meso and the macro. From the most basic of daily interactions, through to the relationships and institutions in which we work and participate, all the way up to the highest levels of international politics and global power, remarkably consistent patterns and dynamics are found. Similar shapes, similar uneven edges and jagged lines. Social entropy is fractal.

Social entropy is fractal

Karl Barth, ‘The problem of ethics today’: - Hannah Arendt, ‘Introduction into Politics’: - Bertolt Brecht, ‘And in your country?’: - Theodor Adorno,

 Problems of Moral Philosophy

: - Eugenio Montale, ‘Cuttlefish bones’: - Paul Valéry,

 History and Politics:

In his seminal analysis, Max Scheler defined

 ressentiment

in the following terms: It is tricky concept that speaks to a tricky reality. Recently, it has been explored by Pankaj Mishra in his book,

 Age of Anger

. In an accompanying article he observes: One of Mishra’s points is that the surfacing and spread of this anger is neither incidental nor accidental, it is deeply connected to prevailing political and economic structures.

In Conversation with Joseph Vogl

We live in a world of ‘up and to the right’. Much of the stresses and strains we are facing can be connected to that gap between expectation of continued possibility and a biophysical world of life that is generally not well matched to such rapid and sustained growth. And yet, this is what is wanted.

Up and to right

To these questions posed by Guillaume Pitron could be added: how much energy was required to create this note and podcast? What inputs are required for you to be able to read and listen to it? These are things we simply do not think about: the whole digital experience feels ‘light’, it is in ‘the cloud’. But that cloud is very real and very heavy.  Look at these charts and then wonder: what resources are needed for this growth to be possible?

In Conversation with Guillaume Pitron

Bruno Latour, ‘I am interested in Europe as an ecological problem’ (2019): - Tony Judt, ‘The Way Things Are and How They Might Be’,

 London Review of Books

(2010)

 :

- Sam Knight, ‘What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?’

 The New Yorker

(2024): - Salman Rushdie,

 Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

(2024): - Adam Curtis, Interview with

 Jacobin

(2023):

This week I am teaching on how humanitarian crises are understood and seen, or more often,

 not

seen. In a prior note, ‘the meaning grinder’, I considered the perverse dynamic in which conflict is flattened out and turned into content. It ended with gesturing towards the value of silence.

Silent horror

Ernst Jünger

 , On the Marble Cliffs (

1939): - Hannah Arendt, ‘From an Interview’ (1978): - Herbert Marcuse,

 One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

(1964): - Arundhati Roy, ‘Intimations of an Ending’ (2019): - Karl Jaspers,

 Tragedy is Not Enough

(1952): - Albert Camus, ‘Are We Pessimists?’ (1946): - Pankaj Mishra, ‘Welcome to the age of anger’ (2016):

Tolstoy’s depiction of the jumbled mix of good and bad, continuity and change, is one that still holds. Invariably, though, our attention is drawn to the specific ideas now appearing and perishing. With the new year, the content monster rolls on, with previews replacing reviews, all while the trendlines remain in place.

Polycrisis, past and persistent

How to finish writing in, through, and on the fractured, fracturing year that is hastening to a close? Initially, a long post was drafted, full of quotes and charts, but on further reflection, more analysis is not needed at this point. Grimly marching towards the new year with more trepidation than anticipation. The balance of probabilities would suggest that conditions are likely to get worse. Pseudoreality prevails.

Noted, late 2023

In Kyoto, the calendar indicates it is middle of December and winter has started. Looking around, red leaves gathering on the ground, it still feels like late autumn. Seasons and schedules increasingly fall out of sync. The translators note that ‘

 aki no kure’ ‘

can mean either “autumn evening” or “the end of autumn.”’ Twilight hours and twilight times.

Pseudoreality prevails

Continuing the conversation with Pete Chambers, in late 2023, in which late-ness is deep with connotations. Our dialogue was partly prompted by Naomi Klein’s thought-provoking new book,

 Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

. Using frames of mirrors, shadows and others, Klein manages to capture something about the deeply weird and warped relations that now prevail between online and the real / ‘real’ world.

In conversation with Pete Chambers, late 2023

That serious periodical,

 The Economist

, has published a profoundly unserious article entitled, ‘What a third world war would mean for investors’, in which it offers such wisdom as: Indeed. The 60/40 might be in trouble if there is a world war. Bonds won’t provide much safety during nuclear escalation. Good to know.

The meaning grinder

With each new incident or disaster, a rush to place it within a frame, to enlist it to a narrative. In our eagerness to decipher the meaning of the moment we miss that what is occurring might simply beyond our capacity to comprehend and order, or that it has not yet crystalised. Too soon, not yet at hand.

Not quite here, but yet at hand

Late September, almost a month into autumn. Walking by Kamogawa in Kyoto at night. The air has cooled slightly, the intense humidity has finally lifted. The

 nouryou-yuka

remain, raised wooden decks constructed each summer, allowing people to dine and drink while overlooking the river. This yearly tradition is now extended an extra month, until the end of October. The warm lights from restaurants reflect and shimmer in the water.

Scrambled seasons

Alexander Etkind,

 Nature’s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources

(2021): - Helen Thompson in ‘The New Age of Tragedy’,

 The New Statesman

(2023): - Adam Hanieh, ‘Petrochemical Empire: The Geo-Politics of Fossil-Fuelled Production’,

 New Left Review

(2021): - Laleh Khalili,

 Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula

(2021): - Timothy Mitchell,

 Carbon Democracy:

China and its economy is currently in the news cycle.

Peeking Peking

The promotion cycle is telling us it is time to be interested in nuclear weapons. That the topic is getting more attention due to the release of a film, rather than because of heightened risks posed by such weapons is a reflection of the general lack of seriousness that permeates our present condition. This is not a note about

 Oppenheimer

, I have not seen it yet, there is no firm release date announced for Japan.

The view from below

This evening I found myself at the closest convenience store to my apartment, one of four that are within five minutes walk, all of which are open 24-7. How necessary such a situation is, well, that is besides the point, each is slightly closer for someone. Never mind the costs of keeping these places permanently staffed, lit and at the right temperature, just as long as the onigiri and beers are always available.

What is undone?

Last year I produced a series of conversations on thinking through technology and society, including with L.M. Sacasas, David Cayley, and Elke Schwarz. Some of the most productive were with my friend and colleague, Pete Chambers, a scholar based at RMIT University in Melbourne, whose work engages with traditions of critical and social theory.

In conversation with Pete Chambers, July 2023

I recently returned from a 5 day trip to Shanghai, my first visit to the city and the country since late 2019. It was interesting and instructive being back. While it was a short and incomplete visit, I thought it might be worthwhile sharing some observations, especially given that the vast majority of content on China is being produced at distance and with little direct engagement.

Back by the Bund

Substack has been constantly reminding me of my failure to publish new notes. This is not exactly surprising. It is a model that encourages a ‘pump and dump’ approach to writing, the content monster is always hungry.

Silence

In Japan, the sakura are falling. Perhaps elsewhere, too.

Prior to the pandemic, I had commenced work on a project that would consider Artificial Intelligence (AI) safety practices in reference to the development of nuclear power. At that time I was struck by the comparatively limited work done on AI safety, considering the potential downside risks.

Reckoning with AI

Imperfect notes on an imperfect world

With the impending anniversary of Japan’s triple disasters, this piece reflects on an important lesson I learnt from the research I did on the Fukushima nuclear accident: some things break.

On 11 March 2011, a huge earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered a massive tsunami that struck the Tohoku region.

Things break

This piece was first published in

 The Japan Times

in late January 2021. The year 2020 undoubtedly defied expectations and predictions. Yet as a new year commences, the experience has not deterred many from offering predictions about what is coming next. While it might be tempting to decisively announce that the world after COVID-19 will be fundamentally different, it really is impossible to say.

Lessons from living through a pandemic

This piece was first published on E-IR. An important truism within disaster studies is that all disasters are human-made. What this insight conveys is that how people act – before, during, after – plays a crucial role in shaping how a disaster unfolds, even if the trigger is from nature.

The pandemic and our place in the world

Welcome to ‘Imperfect notes on an imperfect world’, an open-ended experiment sharing my writing on this platform. I am a scholar based in Japan, my research and teaching draw on politics, ethics, sociology and related fields. The title hopefully gives a bit of a sense of the perspective you can expect here, a sketch book of thoughts and reflections on our world. Humans are wonderfully incomplete, constant works in progress.

Imperfect notes on an imperfect world

Things break

Lessons from living through a pandemic

The pandemic and our place in the world

A thought sketchbook