Thomas Chatterton Williams, Don’t Censor Racism Out of the Past:

Creative expression of any quality… must perform several important functions that are not reducible to advocacy—even and perhaps especially when it comes to groups that have been mistreated. Setting aside the idea that intellectuals and artists ought to be free to state even ugly and mistaken sentiments, it is downright odd to presume that any idea conveyed within a work of art benefits from its endorsement. The cliché exists for a reason: Art holds up a mirror to society, one that does not and ought not merely reflect back its most flattering aspects. Through honest engagement with impure reality, we can perceive and also confront our deepest failings.

James Baldwin famously argued that “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Axiomatically, a history of racism that is not preserved cannot be faced. The people and institutions who attempt to wash away all past ugliness are condescending to audiences, and the audiences who accept these erasures are self-infantilizing.

Adam Smith, Observing Limits to Re-enchant a Mute World: A Review of The Uncontrollability of the World:

Some people who have heard me speak glowingly of “limits” might get confused when they hear me complain mightily about “rules.” If I like “limits” so much, why do I talk trash about bureaucrats and administrators and other professional limit-mongers? What’s the difference between what I want and what they’re selling?…

If you think of a “limit” as “something that controls people,” then yes, it’s hard to see the difference between what we like and what we don’t. But of course that’s not what we have in mind. By “limits” we mean, very explicitly, limits to control. We have in mind the limits to our ability to control our circumstances by making rules and procedures, systems and machines… The crucial difference between limits and controls is the subject of Hartmut Rosa’s The Uncontrollability of the World… For Rosa, as for many others, the modern project at its core is the transgression of limits in pursuit of control. Most modernity critics argue that what is lost in this pursuit is the wide range of essential goods that can only be enjoyed when limits are respected.

Margaret Renkl, I’ve Spent 28 Years Pondering the Wild World of My Home:

I am always watching and listening, but the more I learn about the creatures with whom I share this ecosystem, the more I understand how much I do not understand. Why is the tail of one squirrel completely bald? How has the white chipmunk, who has no camouflage at all, managed to escape the many predators here? Why has a different chipmunk started hanging out with the skinks on our front stoop? I don’t know, but there they are, afternoon after afternoon, dozing in the sun together. Their delight is my delight, too.