But what can we do?
This, more than anything, is the question I hear around me. The despair — about creeping authoritarianism, environmental ruin, AI run amok, algorithmic tyranny — is everywhere. But what can be done?
The stock answers are well known to you: Join a movement. Call Congress. March.
But Gal Beckerman, of The Atlantic, has a provocative intervention on the subject that points toward a different answer — even, in fact, a different starting question.
Before you ask what you can do, ask how you should be. The art of being a dissident, he suggests in his new book, involves a certain kind of being as much as doing.
“How to Be a Dissident” is a powerful book with lessons not intuitive. Beckerman, a subtle thinker, knows subtlety doesn’t always work when attention spans are short. So he gives us ten simple-to-remember lessons, for the kind of being that fights back.
Be alone.
Be pessimistic.
Be funny.
Be rational.
Be watchful.
Be reckless.
Be loyal.
Be presumptuous.
Be human.
In our conversation above, we dig into each of these ten lessons. Don’t miss it.
And we’re going to experiment with keeping this post open to all, in the hope that some of you will step up and become supporting subscribers anyway. We are proud dissenters here at The Ink, and we invite you to stand up for dissent by joining us.
