Stuart Whatley on Muck Rack

Stuart Whatley

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As seen in: Project Syndicate, CNN, MSN, HuffPost, The Guardian, Il Sole 24 Ore, The Christian Science Monitor, The Jakarta Post, The New Statesman, NRC Handelsblad, The American Prospect and
Senior Editor @prosyn | Co-author, "How to Think About Progress" (link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-68938-3) | @stuartwhatley.bsky.social
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Stuart Whatley’s Journalist Portfolio

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The West is bored to death

The West is bored to death

The New Statesman — Our nihilistic politics are a product of the crushing ennui and spiritual vacancy of modern life.
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Speculative futurism sells us a lie

Speculative futurism sells us a lie

UnHerd — Silicon Valley has everything to gain from a public that is ready to believe anything. But whether a radically "open-minded" futurist outlook serves the rest of society is quite another matter.
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The Techno-Realist Manifesto

The Techno-Realist Manifesto

Project Syndicate — Amid a confounding mix of hype and genuinely valuable innovation, today’s entrepreneurs, scientists, and other experts betray an abiding belief that technological progress will make us healthier, wealthier, and wiser. But there are strong reasons why we should not bet everything on future world-changing breakthroughs.
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Praying for Rain (SSIR)

Praying for Rain (SSIR)

Stanford Social Innovation Review — An excerpt from How to Think About Progress on the perils of technological futurism
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The delusion of having a meaningful job

The delusion of having a meaningful job

UnHerd — Now that we are in another wave of hype about technology and its potential to cause widespread job displacement (AI-powered “brand management” is already here), age-old arguments for the vita contemplativa — an obvious substitute for delusional workaholism — take on a new urgency.
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Toward a Leisure Ethic

Toward a Leisure Ethic

The Hedgehog Review — How people spend their time is a fundamental mark of civilization.
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The Dream Economy

The Dream Economy

Los Angeles Review of Books — Like those forecasting a millennial lifespan or an AI singularity, Elon Musk is in the mythology business. As the fin de siècle French theorist Georges Sorel observed, social myths exploit the unpredictability of the future by “framing” it in ways that are useful for “acting on the present.”
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The Problem of Perishable Progress

The Problem of Perishable Progress

The Hedgehog Review — Based on our own firsthand experience of the present, we can assume that, on average, people in the past were not radically more or less “happy” than we are today; and we can presume the same about people far in the future. The upshot is that technological progress can never do as much as its evangelists would like us to think it will.
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Should We Drop the War Metaphor?

Should We Drop the War Metaphor?

Democracy Journal — The trouble with our metaphorical wars is that they seek definitive solutions to fluid problems. Such is the nature of what the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called “liquid modernity.”
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The Inflection Pointillists

The Inflection Pointillists

Los Angeles Review of Books — Conjuring the image of an “inflection point” is a favored device among those who want us to believe that we are in the midst of a world-historic transformation. But there is a glaring problem with such arguments: they all rely on an incorrect meaning of the central term.
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Technology Will Not Save Us

Technology Will Not Save Us

CNN — Nicholas Agar and Stuart Whatley write that -- while the Covid vaccine trials continue to produce hopeful news that could lead to control of the virus -- we should not always rely on sweeping technology to get us through other large-scale scientific issues such as climate change or the cure for cancer.
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The Machine Pauses

The Machine Pauses

The Hedgehog Review — Will our means continue to dictate our ends?
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After Cosmopolitanism

After Cosmopolitanism

The Hedgehog Review — Like globalist, cosmopolitan has become a freighted term.
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Civilization and its Stuff

Civilization and its Stuff

Los Angeles Review of Books — WHY DOES ONE spring clean, declutter, or otherwise slough off the collected detritus of bygone years? To free up space for more, newer stuff, of course. But minimizing one thing also can help to maximize something else: less work means more free time; fewer possessions means less upkeep.
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Is Growth Moral?

Is Growth Moral?

Democracy Journal — Yes, economic growth is necessary. But does it produce a just society?
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Don't Let the Last Crisis Go to Waste

Don't Let the Last Crisis Go to Waste

Democracy Journal — Now that Democrats have reclaimed the U.S. House of Representatives, the jostling over policy and political priorities has begun. Obviously, oversight investigations into Trump Administration corruption are long overdue, as are measures to protect the integrity of the U.S. electoral system from threats foreign and domestic. But beyond these immediate imperatives, Democrats will also need to start preparing for the next economic downturn.
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Who's Afraid of Ocasio-Cortez?

Who's Afraid of Ocasio-Cortez?

Democracy Journal — Having subscribed to the doctrine of “disaster capitalism,” critics of Western democratic socialism fear a storming of the Winter Palace, simply because that is what they would do.
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A Modest Proposal: Tax Worthlessness

A Modest Proposal: Tax Worthlessness

Democracy Journal — Since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Democratic primary victory in New York’s 14th Congressional District, the question of how to pay for ambitious progressive programs such as universal health care and a federal jobs guarantee has come to the fore. One answer is to tax unproductive and otherwise worthless economic activity.
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Dignity Included

Dignity Included

Democracy Journal — The passing of Initiative 77 tomorrow would mean the political recognition of a value that restaurant owners have been reaping for free.
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Digital Capitalism's War on Leisure

Digital Capitalism's War on Leisure

Democracy Journal — Market forces are invading the space for leisure. Defending it will require nothing less than a return to robust twentieth-century social democracy.
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The Future of Leisure

The Future of Leisure

Democracy Journal — Leisure has long been regarded as a residual to work. But it hasn’t always been as neglected as it is today.
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Mourning in America

Mourning in America

Project Syndicate — Now that Donald Trump has challenged democratic institutions, violated American values of tolerance and openness, and questioned Western alliances, it is not unreasonable to feel a sense of grief for all that has been lost. An emotional reckoning may now be necessary to confront this new world - and to move forward constructively.
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The Philistine Factory

The Philistine Factory

The Baffler — If the Democrats are now conducting an election post mortem, they should consider taking a new approach to education, first by rejecting the ideology that treats schools as nothing more than the engines of consumer capitalism. Democrats could then furnish voters with an alternative vision for society—one where people have opportunities to define personal fulfillment for themselves and are not assigned personal aspirations by the state.
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Breadwinners, Breadlosers

Breadwinners, Breadlosers

The Baffler — Sooner or later, developed countries are going to have to reassess their obsession with full-time employment—and GDP growth—for its own sake, and such an exercise will inevitably demand a revalorization of the welfare state itself. In time, labor-market disruptions will become more severe, even in the most optimistic techno-utopian scenarios.
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