I also want to share Byung-Chul Han’s observations about tattoos.

Traditionally, tattoos meant belonging to a community and a hierarchy. Army tats, for instance. Or prison tats. They inscribe you into an existing order.

But for a neoliberal subject, tattoos are about expressing that all-important authentic self. They have no symbolic power because a symbol has to relate to something outside of the self.

“The neoliberal hell of the same is populated with tattooed clones,” says the philosopher. “Everyone carries their own private space wherever they go.” But instead of retreating into that private space when the public life becomes a bit too much, people turn their private spaces towards the world, and we are left with a bunch of competing private spaces and nothing remotely like an actual public space.

I hope people understand that this isn’t a dig at individuals with tattoos. This is about how all of us relate to the world. We are all neoliberal subjects. Nobody is a very special cookie who is immune. To the contrary, the need to be a very special cookie is the most neoliberal thing in existence.

Byung-Chul Han makes it clear that rituals and depression are incompatible. Rituals, he says, relate us to the world. They distract us from our selves, and that unburdens us and makes life lighter. An excessive fixation on the self is a depression-causing trap. Rituals also protect us from the most painful, caustic effects of raw emotion.

In Paul Murray’s novel The Bee Sting, characters become obsessed with discovering and revealing to themselves the most authentic way of being. They turn into closed down systems that are constantly trying to figure out who they really are. In such an exercise, the self is ceaselessly trying to produce itself. That makes all of these characters miserable. They thought that circling down the deep drain of their inner life in hopes of reaching its ever elusive center is what freedom was about. In reality, this was worse than any jail.

Nobody (sane) is saying the 25-year-old DOGE staffer's whole life needs to be ruined, only that they lack the professionalism to be a high-level government staffer. There are plenty of other jobs out there. This isn't DEI for racist posting.

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) February 7, 2025

Richard Levine and Sam Brinton are begging to disagree with the professionalism part.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett and too many Democrat politicians, officials, and staffers for me to list here beg to disagree on the DEI for racist posting part.

https://twitter.com/TxWiseacres/status/1888328323358474421?t=KSjtfjNKeDwGeCQXP-oJ8w&s=19

This is as unacceptable and dangerous as if the teacher performed root canals on these kids during recess. She absolutely should be fired and never work in education again.

At my university we are routinely pushed to act as homegrown psychotherapists to students, and nobody except for me seems to understand that it’s not OK. We are told that it’s a sign of empathy to want to help people in psychological distress. As Byung-Chul Han says, appeals to empathy are used to exploit us and wring out of additional work beyond our contractual obligations.

https://twitter.com/Valen10Francois/status/1888229692077162927?t=cbuUwIffWeDNOUBtqB4JTg&s=19

I’m starting to get really fed up with this dude:

Every high school senior should pass the same civics test that we require of every naturalized citizen. This shouldn’t be controversial.

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) February 7, 2025

This feeds directly into the pernicious “everybody is an immigrant” narrative, and why do we need this on our side when there’s enough of it on the other?

Also, what do we do with those who don’t pass? Strip away their citizenship and bring over better quality people? I fail to see the difference and the attitude of every open border fanatic out there.

I expressed an opinion on social media that Governor Pritzker is not a good governor, and immediately an overheated Democrat showed up to tell me that I shouldn’t have opinions since I wasn’t born here. It’s hilarious that the only time I hear that I should shut up because I’m an immigrant is when I talk to Democrats. The only immigrants they like keep silent while cleaning the toilet and mowing the lawn. Mouthy, opinionated immigrants offend their sensibilities because we don’t need to be rescued and patronized.

In any case, here is my springtime decor which is consoling me for the silliness of engaging with fanatical Pritzker supporters.

I don’t understand what people mean by “see.” When I close my eyes, I obviously don’t see anything. Because my eyes are closed. The only thing to see with my eyes closed is to fall asleep and have dreams.

Do they mean they can conjure a visual with their imagination? I can, kind of, but it’s not going to be isolated objects and I definitely need my eyes to be open.

I had a very busy day, plus I had to take my car to the mechanic.

Finally, at 8:30 pm I go on social media to see what is happening in the world and discover that America is in the midst of yet another scandal about “racist comments.”

Did anything else of note happen because I can’t plow my way through the waves of all this outrage?

“Please give me the names of leading Hispanic thinkers who are currently living,” I asked the AI. It gave me a list where half of the people are dead, half are not remotely Hispanic, and 100% are mega woke.

“Please give me the names of leading Hispanic thinkers who are currently living, actually Hispanic and not left-wing,” I insisted.

The AI gave me a different list, consisting of one transhumanist, two Communist Jews in the US, one  African (not Afro-Hispanic but an actual African), and two non-binary activists.