The Barbell Shape of Modernity

Why we live in the best of times and the worst of times simultaneously—and how to live a good life in a world of extremes.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,” wrote Dickens in the famous opening A Tale of Two Cities.

It’s the most Girardian opening to any novel ever written. René Girard, the great social theorist who first articulated the phenomenon of mimetic desire in human society, realized that we are living in a world where things are simultaneously the best they’ve ever been and the worst they’ve ever been — yet very few people seem capable of holding this paradoxical coincidence of opposites in their mind at the same time.

Instead, there is knee-jerk absolutizing of almost everything: things are quickly labeled either “the best” or “the worst”. (It seems to be a national pastime, for instance, for journalists to label every American President either “the best” or the “the worst” in history after about six months in office. This absolutizing tendency has now extended to everything from Bitcoin, sports…