Cinemorphosis

Category: TV and Movies

  • Books Aren’t Dead—They’ve Just Lost Their Monopoly

    Books Aren’t Dead—They’ve Just Lost Their Monopoly

    Are young people being vacuum-sealed into their screens, slowly zombified by AI and glowing rectangles? This is the reigning panic narrative of our moment, a familiar sermon about dehumanization and decline. In his essay “My Students Use AI. So What?” linguist John McWhorter asks us to ease off the apocalypse pedal and consider a less hysterical possibility: the world has changed, and our metaphors haven’t caught up.

    McWhorter opens close to home. His tween daughters, unlike him, are not bookworms. They are screenworms. He once spent his leisure hours buried in books; now he, too, spends much of his reading life hunched over a phone. He knows what people expect from him—a professor clutching pearls over students who read less, write with AI, and allegedly let their critical thinking rot. Instead, he disappoints the doom merchants. Screens replacing books, he argues, is not evidence of “communal stupidity.” It is evidence of migration.

    Yes, young people read fewer books for pleasure. McWhorter cites a 1976 study showing that 40 percent of high school seniors had read at least six books for fun in the previous year—a number that has since cratered. But this does not mean young people have abandoned language. Words are everywhere. Print no longer monopolizes thought. Screens now host essays, debates, Substack newsletters, podcasts, and long-form conversations that reveal not a hunger deficit but a format shift. As McWhorter puts it, the explosion of thoughtful digital writing signals demand for ideas, not their extinction.

    He is not naïve about online slop. He limits the digital junk his daughters would otherwise inhale all day. Still, he resists the snobbery that treats ubiquity as proof of worthlessness. “The ubiquity of some content doesn’t mean it lacks art,” he writes—a useful reminder in an age that confuses popularity with emptiness. Much online culture is disposable. Some of it is sharp, inventive, and cognitively demanding.

    McWhorter also dismantles a familiar prejudice: that books are inherently superior because they “require imagination.” He calls this argument a retroactive justification for bias. Reading his rebuttal, I’m reminded that Childish Gambino’s four-minute video “This Is America,” watched tens of millions of times on YouTube, is so dense with political symbolism and cultural critique that it could easily spawn a 300-page monograph. Imagination is not a function of page count.

    He takes aim at another antique claim—that radio was more imaginative than television. Citing Severance, McWhorter argues that contemporary TV can engage the imagination and critical thinking as effectively as any golden-age broadcast. Medium does not determine depth. Craft does.

    McWhorter also punctures our nostalgia. Were people really reading as much as we like to believe? When he was in college, most students avoided assigned texts just as enthusiastically as students do now. The pre-digital world had CliffNotes. Avoidance is not a TikTok invention.

    He reserves particular scorn for recklessly designed syllabi: professors assigning obscure philosophical fragments they never explain, using difficulty as décor. The syllabus looks impressive; students are left bewildered. McWhorter learned from this and streamlined his own reading lists, favoring coherence over intimidation.

    AI, however, has forced real change. The five-paragraph essay is finished; machines devour it effortlessly. McWhorter has responded by designing prompts meant to outrun AI’s comfort zone and by leaning harder on in-class writing. One of his questions—“How might we push society to embrace art that initially seems ugly?”—aims to provoke judgment rather than summary. I’m less confident than he is that such prompts are AI-proof, but I take his point. A philosophically demanding question tethered to specific texts still forces students to synthesize, even if AI hovers nearby. He also emphasizes graded participation, returning thinking to the room rather than the cloud.

    McWhorter’s larger argument is pragmatic, not permissive. Technology will keep changing. Education always lags behind it. The task of instructors is not to reverse technological history but to adapt intelligently—to identify what new tools erode, what they amplify, and how to redesign teaching accordingly. Panic is lazy. Nostalgia is misleading. The real work is harder: staying alert, flexible, and honest about both the costs and the gains.

  • Weapons of Fear: Epistemic Collapse in Eddington and Weapons (college writing prompt)

    Weapons of Fear: Epistemic Collapse in Eddington and Weapons (college writing prompt)

    Over the last decade, American culture has undergone a profound crisis of shared reality—what scholars call an epistemic collapse. In the vacuum created by fractured institutions, algorithm-driven outrage, political opportunism, and a populace trained to distrust expertise, communities have turned inward, building their own private universes of truth. Two recent films—Ari Aster’s Eddington (2024) and Zach Cregger’s Weapons (2025)—stand at the center of this cultural conversation. While their genres differ—Eddington as a neo-Western political drama and Weapons as a folk-horror anthology—both films dramatize the same underlying catastrophe: when people no longer agree on what is real, they become dangerously easy to manipulate, divide, and weaponize.

    In Eddington, the small New Mexico town is already fractured before the plot begins. The COVID-19 pandemic becomes the spark that exposes deep fault lines: anti-mask sheriff Joe Cross stokes resentment and paranoia, pro-mandate Mayor Ted Garcia attempts to preserve public health in a community that no longer trusts him, and the town’s institutions melt under the weight of political rage, conspiracy theories, and personal vendettas. Masks, lockdowns, land rights, and municipal policy become symbols of existential war. Citizens drift into echo chambers where identity outweighs truth and where “freedom” can be invoked to justify violence. Through these tensions, Eddington examines how tribal politics, misinformation, and fear transform ordinary people into agents of chaos—into what the film metaphorically frames as “weapons.”

    Weapons begins in a seemingly different register—a folk-horror narrative involving children, trauma, and community superstition—but it ultimately reveals itself as a story about the same phenomenon: collective panic filling the void left by failed institutions. When mysterious events shake the town, people reach not for evidence, reason, or communal deliberation, but for myths. Rumors calcify into “truth,” grief mutates into paranoia, and the community turns against itself in a desperate search for someone to blame. In this atmosphere, children, grief-stricken parents, and unstable townspeople all become susceptible to narratives that promise clarity and purpose, even at the price of cruelty. Like Eddington, Weapons suggests that the human need for certainty can be exploited, turning vulnerable people into instruments of violence.

    Both films take place in communities that feel abandoned—by government, by truth, by stability, by the social contract. In Eddington, the pandemic reveals a town already primed for collapse: neighbors distrust each other, public servants abuse their power, and media ecosystems churn conspiracies at a devastating pace. In Weapons, the terror centers on mysterious disappearances and supernatural dread, but the underlying cause is similar: when people feel unmoored, they grasp at stories—however irrational—that make sense of suffering. In both cases, the crisis is not just external; it is psychological, emotional, and cultural. These films argue that a society that no longer shares a framework of truth inevitably begins producing its own monsters.

    Your task is to write a comparative, argumentative essay that analyzes how both Eddington and Weapons depict the collapse of shared reality and the transformation of ordinary individuals into “weapons”—tools of fear, ideology, grief, or superstition. You will argue how each film uses different storytelling techniques to illuminate the same cultural trauma: a nation where trust in institutions has eroded, where truth is increasingly privatized, and where communities respond to uncertainty with tribalism, scapegoating, and paranoia.

    To frame your argument, consider the following thematic questions:

    1. Epistemic Crisis: What happens when communities no longer share the same reality?

    In Eddington, the pandemic becomes a catalyst for unraveling collective trust. Sheriff Joe Cross exploits the crisis for personal power, leveraging fear and resentment to undermine public-health directives. Misinformation spreads faster than illness, and political theater replaces governance. In Weapons, suspicion and folk belief dominate; characters construct supernatural explanations for grief they cannot otherwise process. How do these fictional communities illustrate the broader national struggle to maintain a shared understanding of truth?

    2. Scapegoating and Manufactured Monsters

    Both films show societies that create monsters when reality becomes intolerable. In Weapons, grief and superstition lead to scapegoating—outsiders, children, even supernatural entities become symbols of community anxiety. In Eddington, “the monster” is political: masks, mandates, immigrants, liberals, conservatives—whatever the tribe defines as the existential threat. Analyze how each film uses its respective genre (horror vs. political drama) to critique the human impulse toward blame when confronted with collective fear.

    3. The Weaponized Individual: When people become instruments of chaos

    Sheriff Cross turns himself into a political weapon; Vernon weaponizes conspiracy thinking; Brian transforms a viral video into a career. Meanwhile, characters in Weapons become pawns of rumor and superstition. How do the films examine the way individuals can be radicalized or repurposed by fear, trauma, or ideological narratives?

    4. Institutional Failure and the Vacuum It Creates

    In Eddington, institutions collapse under pressure: public health, municipal leadership, local law enforcement, media, and even basic civic trust. In Weapons, institutions either fail or play no meaningful role, leaving individuals to fill the void with folklore and violent improvisation. Compare how each film portrays the consequences of institutional breakdown—and how that vacuum shapes community behavior.

    5. The Loss of Humanity in a Post-COVID World

    Even though Weapons is not explicitly a pandemic film, its emotional landscape reflects post-COVID anxieties: loneliness, grief, mistrust, and the longing for clear explanations. Eddington addresses the pandemic head-on, depicting how fear strips people of empathy and connection. In both films, humanity erodes as people prioritize survival, identity, or belonging over compassion. Analyze how each story portrays this transformation.

    6. The Role of Media, Algorithmic Influence, and Storytelling

    Eddington explicitly critiques media spectacle and algorithmic manipulation; Weapons does so more subtly through mythmaking and rumor. Compare how each film reveals the power of narrative—factual or fictional—to shape belief, identity, and behavior. What does each film suggest about the modern American hunger for stories that confirm our fears, validate our tribal loyalties, or simplify our grief?

    7. The Nietzschean Last Man: A Society Without Higher Purpose

    For extra depth, you may choose to integrate the concept of Nietzsche’s “Last Man”—the individual who seeks comfort over purpose, safety over meaning, distraction over responsibility. Which characters in each film exemplify this drift toward nihilism? Does each film suggest that the Last Man is a symptom of cultural decay—or part of its cause?

    Write a comparative essay of 1,800–2,200 words that argues how Eddington and Weapons portray the following intertwined themes:

    • the breakdown of shared reality
    • the rise of tribalism and paranoia
    • the transformation of ordinary people into “weapons”
    • the creation of monsters—psychological, political, or supernatural—to fill the void left by institutional failure
    • the erosion of humanity in a culture defined by fear, spectacle, and algorithmic influence

    Your thesis must make a clear, debatable claim about what these films reveal about post-COVID American society. You must support your analysis with close reading of key scenes, comparison of cinematic techniques, and sustained argumentation.

    Your essay must also include:

    1. A Counterargument

    Acknowledge at least one opposing view—for example, the claim that Eddington is primarily about political extremism while Weapons is primarily about horror and grief, and therefore the comparison is forced. Then rebut that view by showing that genre differences sharpen, rather than undermine, the thematic parallels.

    2. A Rebuttal

    Explain why your central claim still holds. You may argue that both films are ultimately parables about epistemic breakdown and human vulnerability in the absence of trusted institutions.

    3. A Conclusion That Opens Outward

    Discuss what these films suggest about where American culture may be heading if fragmentation, mistrust, and weaponized narratives continue.

    Your writing should demonstrate:

    • analytical depth
    • clarity
    • engagement with cinematic detail
    • strong comparative structure
    • thoughtful paragraph organization
    • precise sentence-level control

    This essay invites you not only to compare two compelling films, but also to reflect on the cultural moment that shaped them—and the uncertain landscape we now inhabit.

  • The Gospel According to Fran Lebowitz

    The Gospel According to Fran Lebowitz

    To stay young, I don’t just need a healthy body—I need a mind that isn’t turning into attic storage. My role model in this department is Fran Lebowitz, the humorist who travels the world armed with nothing but her brutally honest intelligence. Her worldview is diamond-cut: she adores New York and despises technology. She refuses to drive a car, touch a smartphone, or even acknowledge a laptop’s existence. Writer’s block? She treats it like a houseguest who overstays for a few decades. Talking is her chosen weapon, so potent that publishing books has become optional.

    Fran is an atheist—not the timid, hedging kind, but a certifiably confident one. She has no worries about the soul, no anxieties about the afterlife, no guilt about her misanthropy. Her biggest spiritual concern is locating a decent bagel.

    Her lack of religiosity hasn’t hindered her friendship with Martin Scorsese, the Catholic titan of cinema. They linger in New York together, trading stories about the old city and reveling in their shared devotion to art—and to complaining eloquently about everything else.

    My mind would be far less cluttered if I possessed Fran’s secular serenity, but I’m built more like Scorsese. I’m a tormented soul, forever plunging into questions about sacrifice, guilt, depravity, and redemption. I couldn’t live like Fran even with a decade of training. I’m hopelessly Marty. But at least I can imagine that if I ever met Fran, she wouldn’t dismiss me for my melancholic leanings. She might dismiss me for my mediocrity or any bland remark that escaped my mouth, but at least her reasons would be earthly.

    To spend an hour at dinner listening to Fran Lebowitz would be a balm—more philosophically satisfying than any bestselling thinker’s 700-page tome. It will never happen, of course. But fortunately, I can find Fran Lebowitz on YouTube. 

  • French Kiss and the Death of Romance: When Below Deck Became a Funeral

    French Kiss and the Death of Romance: When Below Deck Became a Funeral

    Lionel Richie’s memoir Truly apparently shocked a reviewer who couldn’t fathom how a man who wrote love ballads for The Commodores and crooned “Hello” into the hearts of millions might secretly doubt the existence of love. If the critic wants evidence, there’s no need to psychoanalyze Lionel; just watch the single most soul-evaporating hour of television I’ve ever endured: Below Deck Mediterranean, Season 10, Episode 8—“French Kiss.”

    Normally I treat Below Deck like a sushi boat of human dysfunction: the ostentation, the vanity, the moral anemia. It’s a circus, and I laugh at the performers. But this episode wasn’t a circus. It was a funeral for romance. The premise is already laughable: a 47-year-old bachelor named Joe “auditions” several women to be his wife. He speaks to them like he’s onboarding interns at a failing startup. He uses phrases like “I need your input” and “I’m sorry you find this challenging,” as though he’s gently disciplining HR for mishandling toner orders.

    The beloved stewardess Aesha started off as the show’s only beacon of naive hope. She snacks on popcorn and chirps, “Watching people find love before my eyes—how could I be anything but happy?” By midpoint, that optimism has withered. She, like the viewer, recognizes the obvious: there is no love—only a clumsy negotiation between bored women and a man who reeks of conditional stock options.

    The contestants have the haunted eyes of veterans who’ve survived multiple seasons of “influencer courtship.” They aren’t seeking affection; they’re calculating ROI. Joe himself looks twenty years older than his claimed 47. He carries the aesthetic of a divorced CFO who hasn’t smiled sincerely since the recession. He is oily without passion, exhausted without wisdom—exactly the kind of man who believes communication is a spreadsheet. Instead of a heartbeat, he has a lexicon of “deliverables.”

    His problem, though, isn’t age or looks—it’s the dead chill of someone who sold his soul years ago and is now smug about the deal. He assumes that murmuring corporate jargon at the women like an AI trained on LinkedIn posts will hypnotize them into matrimony. It doesn’t. They recoil. They see a man who mistakes “calm negotiation” for charisma, and professionalism for intimacy.

    Bravo should have buried this episode in a vault. It is the franchise’s Everest of bad judgment. Aesha says as much near the end, visibly deflated, calling the whole experiment depressing. And then comes the exit: Joe limps away from the yacht, placing an arm around one contestant who tolerates him the way one tolerates a damp dog during a neighborhood walk. The moment the cameras cut, you know she’ll ghost him with the velocity of a SpaceX launch.

    If you adore Lionel Richie but want to taste the sour, loveless void that haunts his darker thoughts, skip the therapy and watch “French Kiss.” Romance will die before your eyes, and you’ll understand exactly why a man who wrote “Endless Love” now wonders whether love exists at all.

  • Thanksgiving Heart Attack

    Thanksgiving Heart Attack

    Thanksgiving Day, 2025. My wife and twin daughters were applying their final cosmetic and sartorial flourishes before we drove to Los Alamitos for the obligatory family pageant, and I had a half-hour window of solitude. I sat at my Yamaha piano, eager to play a song I’d written years ago—“The Heartbreak of Micky Dolenz”—a melancholic tribute to a Monkees episode that shattered my five-year-old psyche. In it, Micky pumps iron to steal a blonde beach goddess from a sun-bleached bodybuilder, only to discover she has evolved into a Proust-reading aesthete and now prefers intellectuals who collect first editions. It was my first lesson in the absurdity of desire: you can train, sweat, and transform yourself into a bronze Adonis only to watch beauty run away with a man who hides behind Remembrance of Things Past. That moment was my first crack in the façade of childhood—when I faintly understood life might be crueler and more ambiguous than birthday cake and Saturday morning cartoons.

    Halfway through the song, I felt a stabbing pressure in my left chest—an alarm bell that whispered, “heart attack.” It was the kind of pain you ignore for twenty seconds until the fear gets loud. Maybe it was simple anxiety: I am sixty-four, three semesters from retirement, and just endured Sam Harris complimenting Christian fundamentalist Doug Wilson for possessing the courage of his biblical barbarities. As an agnostic torn between admiration and nausea, I crave certainty the way addicts crave relapse—but God gives me ambiguity, Paul gives me guilt, and the afterlife gives me indigestion.

    Ethics don’t spare me, either. I eat yogurt and whey protein while pretending I don’t hear the screams behind factory-farmed supply chains. My “plant-leaning” diet is a moral performance piece—vegan cosplay with a dairy chaser. Every spoonful tastes like cognitive dissonance.

    The day before, a sports doctor diagnosed my left shoulder with rotator cuff syndrome and biceps tendinopathy. She promised I might avoid surgery if I did her rehab exercises. She printed out eleven medieval torture movements, most of which lit my shoulder up like a Roman candle. Should I push through the pain, I wondered, or was I already guilty of kettlebell blasphemy—retracting the tendon until I doomed myself to the orthopedic gulag?

    So I sat there, convinced the pain in my chest was an omen. But when my wife stepped into the living room and asked me—without ceremony—whether her boots matched her dress, the pain evaporated. The piano, the Monkees, Sam Harris, Paul, vegan sins, and torn tendons all vanished. Her question grounded me. It was the kind of mundane interruption that reminds you the world is still here, indifferent to your melodramas. My imaginary heart attack surrendered to domestic reality.

  • How to Shut Up a Yacht Critic: Feed Them Into Oblivion

    How to Shut Up a Yacht Critic: Feed Them Into Oblivion


    My wife and I have been watching the current season of Below Deck Mediterranean and have been impressed with the consistent food preparation of the eccentric chef Josh Bingham. He stormed off the boat when one of the charter guests, Carlos, lectured Josh on his inferior vegan fare. Too much starch, not enough creativity, not enough this, not enough that. One of the excruciating pleasures of this show is watching people whose expectations run so high that they become obnoxious. They spent so much money, they feel entitled to push the chef and other crew members to extremes in order to justify the price of a premium yacht adventure. 

    Josh’s food on this charter looked disappointing, a melange of mediocrity. The meals had no identity. He was trying to please too many palates. 

    One thing occurred to me: There are always a few vegans who charter these yachts. Some are more fake than others. They want the vegan halo but not the vegan austerity. In other words, they want rich, decadent meals, just as inviting as steak and lobster. They crave butter-rich sauces, glazed proteins, and seductive textures, only delivered via tofu and oat milk so their consciences remain stainless.

    Therefore, if I were Josh or any chef on one of these luxury yachts, I would have an emergency toolkit of go-to rich and decadent vegan meals. One that immediately comes to mind would be Thai peanut Satay with fried tofu and white rice. Serve it with Sichuan green beans and broccoli lacquered in sesame oil, give them some fresh sesame rolls dipped in olive oil and garlic, and that would surely shut them up and induce them into a long, satisfying nap. 

    If I were a chef on this show, I would want to create food so luxurious, decadent, and soothing, it would induce the charters into a deep sleep and thereby allow me and my fellow crew members to take a well-deserved break. 

  • How Black Mirror Imagines the Stupidification of Social Media

    How Black Mirror Imagines the Stupidification of Social Media

    Write a 1,700-word argumentative essay examining how the Black Mirror episodes “Joan Is Awful” and “Nosedive” dramatize the forms of “stupidification” Jonathan Haidt describes in “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Your task is to make a focused, debatable claim about how these episodes portray digitally amplified stupidity. Do they exaggerate our anxieties for shock value? Do they rely on sensationalism that weakens their insight? Or do they capture the very real psychological and social pathologies reshaping our digital lives? Craft a thesis that clearly stakes out your position on the relationship between social media and stupidification.

    Introduction Requirement (200–250 words):
    Define “stupidification” using Haidt’s central ideas—his Babel metaphor, the incentives for outrage, the breakdown of shared reality, the rise of identity performance, and the tribal signaling that fuels online conflict. Then connect Haidt’s concepts to one concrete example from your own life or observations, such as a social-media argument, an online trend, or a family dispute shaped by digital platforms. Conclude your introduction with a precise thesis that evaluates how accurately “Joan Is Awful” and “Nosedive” reflect the pathologies shaping contemporary social media.

  • How Pre-Digital Cinema Imagined the Stupidification Social Media Perfected

    How Pre-Digital Cinema Imagined the Stupidification Social Media Perfected

    Write a 1,700-word argumentative essay analyzing how The King of Comedy (1982) and/or The Truman Show (1998) anticipate the forms of “stupidification” depicted Jonathan Haidt’s “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Make an argumentative claim about how one or both of these earlier films relate to today’s digitally amplified forms of stupidification. Do they function as prophetic warnings? As examinations of longstanding human weaknesses that social media later exploited? Or as both? Develop a thesis that takes a clear position on the relationship between pre-digital and digital stupidification.

    Introduction Requirement (about 200–250 words):

    Define “stupidification” using Haidt’s key concepts—such as the Babel metaphor, outrage incentives, the collapse of shared reality, identity performance, and tribal signaling. Then briefly connect Haidt’s ideas to one concrete example from your own life or personal observations (e.g., online behavior, comment sections, family disputes shaped by social media). End your introduction with a clear thesis that takes a position on how effectively the earlier films anticipate the pathologies depicted in Haidt’s essay. 

    Be sure to have a counterargument-rebuttal section and a Works Cited page with a minimum of 4 sources. 

  • When Mortality Breaks the Watch Hobby Spell

    When Mortality Breaks the Watch Hobby Spell

    I’ve forged more friendships online over watches than I ever expected — grown adults bonded by steel bracelets, dial colors, and the feverish belief that the “perfect collection” is one watch away. It’s a strange brotherhood: half enthusiasm, half rehab circle. We compare scars from impulse buys and premature flips; we laugh at the madness and whisper, half-serious, that maybe this time we’re cured.

    My own watch delirium began in 2005, when I was 43 and convinced mechanical timekeepers were little machines that could somehow fix the machinery inside me. Twenty years vanished in a blur of rotating bezels and just-in-case divers. Then, at 63, mortality tapped my shoulder. Suddenly the hobby’s siren call softened. The obsession didn’t die — it continued to burn brightly. But after 20 years, desire finally dimmed, replaced by a quiet awareness that timepieces were no match for time itself.

    The feeling reminds me of a scene from Battlestar Galactica: a traitor is sealed behind glass, pleading as the airlock hisses and the crew looks on, solemn and unmovable. A ritual exile. That’s what aging feels like — not tragic, not pitiful, just inevitable. There comes a point when people still inside the warm illusion of endless tomorrows unconsciously edge away from those who’ve glimpsed life’s shrinking horizon.

    A pane descends — not hostile, just real. You tap the glass and wave, wanting back into the cockpit of youth’s delusions, but the craft has sealed. No reentry. Only the quiet work of dignity: embracing your season, building meaning instead of collections, and being useful to the younger travelers who can’t yet see the void but will one day meet it too.

  • What True Crime Teaches That Fiction Won’t

    What True Crime Teaches That Fiction Won’t

    For the past few months, I’ve been devouring true crime docuseries with tireless fascination. The more I watch, the deeper my appetite grows—not for gore, but for the raw human stories that unspool behind every case. There is, of course, a price for such voyeurism. Nearly every episode revisits the same dark origins: homes scarred by domestic abuse, children numbed by neglect, and adults who turn to drugs and alcohol to quiet the pain. Whole worlds of criminality form around these wounds—ecosystems where cruelty becomes normal, even rational.

    Then there’s law enforcement. Most detectives and officers I see in these stories are decent, sharp-minded people pursuing justice through an endless fog of human wreckage. They face so much depravity that it exacts a psychic toll. They carry the collective sorrow of others, walking the earth with hearts cracked open by everything they’ve witnessed.

    There’s a strange repetition to these lives of crime—an awful sameness—but also a singular fingerprint on each story. Some criminals are narcissists, intoxicated by their own chaos. Others are the broken offspring of violence, haunted by demons they now unleash on others. Many strike out in panic, wielding a mallet where a scalpel would have sufficed.

    I’m reminded of Tolstoy’s line: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I’d transpose it this way: All paths to decency share a pattern—discipline, love, structure—but the paths to ruin twist in countless variations, each marked by a wound that never healed.

    This is what keeps me watching. Too many fictionalized crime dramas can’t resist the tidy seduction of redemption—some tearful confession, some sentimental coda of forgiveness. True crime spares me that. It denies me comfort. No background music softens the horror, no clever dialogue redeems it. These stories show the human condition not as we wish it to be but as it is: excruciating, broken, and endlessly complex.

    In that sense, I find myself siding less with Steven Pinker’s optimism and more with Robert Kaplan’s realism. Pinker argues that humanity is improving—that violence is receding and irrational behavior is on the decline. Kaplan, in Wasteland: A World in Permanent Crisis, sees something else entirely: that the struggle between good and evil is eternal, and evil often enjoys the advantage because it fights without restraint and acts as if it has nothing to lose. Kaplan isn’t a pessimist. He’s a realist.

    If I’m to prepare for life, I’d rather confront the world as Kaplan does—without illusion, without sentimentality, without anesthetic. Pinker’s optimism feels like comfort food for the mind. Kaplan, like true crime, gives me the bitter taste of reality—and that’s the kind of nourishment that lasts.