New Yorker’s Remorse Syndrome

It’s a charming form of cosplay, really — striding around as a “well-informed citizen” while sinking ungodly hours into consumer research. Watches, radios, headphones, laptops, Chromebooks, mechanical keyboards, high-end sweatshirts, orthopedic luxury sneakers, protein powders, protein bars, athletic-grade water bottles — an entire temple of optimized living, curated with clerical devotion.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, society is fraying like an ancient flag in a hurricane. Yeats’ prophecy is no longer a chilling warning — it’s a project status update.
The center isn’t holding. The center left the chat months ago.
But instead of reckoning with the slow dissolve of civil society, it’s so much easier, so much kinder to the blood pressure, to compare toaster ovens with touchless air fryer settings.

Yes, yes, I know — one must be informed. George Carlin gave us front-row tickets to the Freak Show. We owe it to the species, or at least to our own dim dignity, to bear witness.
But honestly? Some days, it feels like sanity demands partial withdrawal. A news podcast here. A curated briefing there. Enough to feign civic engagement at parties without having to call a therapist immediately afterward.

This brings me to the shrine of guilt at the center of my living room: the great, unread New Yorker stack.
I have subscribed since 1985, back when Reagan was doing his best kingly impression and nobody had heard of an iPhone.
The stack now functions less as reading material and more as a kind of grim altar — a silent accusation in glossy print.
Friends glance at it and nod approvingly, as if my very possession of these magazines implies moral seriousness.
I let them believe.
Inside, I know better.
I know that I am a fallen monk, a heretic of intellectual duty, choosing the velvet lure of consumer escapism over the weighty gospels of sociopolitical collapse.

I have a diagnosis: New Yorker’s Remorse Syndrome — a condition in which one publicly performs allegiance to Enlightenment values while privately seeking refuge among comparison charts and Amazon star ratings.
The mind knows what it ought to do.
The heart, however, prefers shopping for the perfect water bottle while Rome burns quietly in the background.