Fukuyama: Political Decay
Next time I publish notes on a book, I’ll be more careful to frame why it’s actually interesting to me. It’s been a pretty dry month for this blog. The notes took a particularly long time because I lost my little offline copy of quote transcriptions, and a significant amount of willpower with it. A few more posts coming more »
Notes on Graham Harman
Did I finish the Fukuyama dive this week like I said I would? No. Are you gonna do something about it? Nope. — These notes are pulled from a few online lectures I’ve listened to by Graham Harman. I still haven’t read any of his books but the signals are good that he’s a person worth reading more »
Fukuyama: The Spread of Democracy
Previous Book (Origins of Political Order) Political Order and Political Decay Part One: The State and Clientelism Part Two: Foreign Institutions This is Part Three, notes and quotes (1) on Class-based analysis of the development of modern states, (2) about how the political franchise has expanded historically, (3) arguments against democracy, (4) the Arab Spring, more »
Fukuyama: Foreign Institutions
Notes on Fukuyama’s Origins of Political Order. Part One of Political Order and Political Decay. (This is Part Two) I’ll try to get the next part out next week. — I’ve been pretty bad about writing lately. I haven’t been traveling consistently (my preferred writing time). I also got a new cat. I discovered an allergy to her. more »
A belated halloween post
Two times makes a tradition, right? Thomas Ligotti’s The Red Tower was the first fiction piece of his that I’ve read.
Fukuyama: The State and Clientelism
Not long ago I posted notes on Fukuyama’s Origins of Political Order. Here are some quick notes on the first third of his recent book, Political Order and Political Decay. As noted before, there are three pillars of political development: a strong central State, Accountability, and the Rule of Law. Fukuyama argues further that the more »
Notes on “World Order”
This summer, I read Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy. I recently finished his new book, World Order. Both are excellent. Since Kissinger’s project has remained the same for decades, the two books share some content. Between the two, I enjoyed a T-shaped view of Kissinger’s worldview: deeply into Westphalian Europe [Diplomacy] and broadly across the Asian and Middle Eastern more »
Notes on “The Origins of Political Order”
I never wrote proper notes on Fukuyama’s Origins of Political Order when I first read it. I recently started the new volume, Political Order and Political Decay. The introduction to the second entry provided a great high-level reintroduction to the first, so I thought I’d put it down for the record. Notes on “The Origins of Political Order” more »
Play-Spirit, and Those Who Ignore It
I. Deviants, and The Bad Sportsman A longtime co-conspirator has surfaced with a new blog. We share a canon on game studies issues, so we thought it might be fun and productive to write back and forth about game studies a bit and see how that works. So here we go. His first article was about more »
Checking In
I was working from home for a couple of weeks. I write mostly in and around airplanes, so my writing/reading schedule fell apart for a bit. I’m travelling again for a short time, and so I hope to pick this back up. I’ve found writing somewhere regularly to be a pretty useful habit for organizing my thoughts, more »