Essays and reflections making their debut on Useful Uselessness. These pieces represent exclusive content created specifically for this platform, offering readers material they won't find elsewhere. First appearances of philosophical explorations before potential republication in other venues.
Four hundred students. Four hundred essays. One text. In an age where everyone must find "their truth," they all arrive at the same destination. The hive mind dressed in the rhetoric of radical self-expression.
I forgot to publish last Saturday. Not forgot and felt guilty—forgot entirely. On failing better, resisting the urge to be productive, and other paradoxes.
Uncertainty isn’t what threatens relationships—it’s what keeps them alive. The real danger lies in presuming we know everything about the other, extinguishing curiosity’s fire. What if mature desire is learning to want the familiar with fresh attention?
The Portuguese word 'ansiedade' carries within it 'ânsia'—yearning, eagerness. There's positive yearning and negative yearning. Our attempts to eliminate uncertainty are tragic because uncertainty is the source of enthusiasm that makes life worth living.
We’ve created a thriving marketplace where empty words thrive, where profundity is packaged and sold by the hour, and where the ability to say nothing with great conviction has become a lucrative career path. The attention economy doesn’t merely benefit from bullshit: it structurally depends on it.
From wellness gurus certain about ancient wisdom to CEOs certain about the future—everyone's performing certainty while drowning in doubt. On the pathology of fake knowing and why admitting ignorance might save us all.
