The Point is a magazine of philosophical writing on everyday life and culture. Rather than having a political or social agenda, it tries to explore different points of views.

The Point

I attended Donald Trump’s failed rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago as a mole, hoping I could slip in unnoticed among his thousands of supporters and get a look at the inner workings of a movement whose size and intensity has become a source of international fascination.

Scott Ciscon

Fear and Loathing: first person experience at a Trump rally

We now listen to Daniel Luban’s essay from The Point Magazine, where he provides us with an indepth and fascinating examination of Francis Fukuyama and his theories.

Simon Mattacks

Forward with Fukuyama

The victory of Donald Trump has left the liberal demographic in a state of mourning and the Democrats in disarray. Malloy Owen writing in The Point Magazine looks to an unlikely source – the German legal theorist Carl Schmitt – for guidance on the way forward. It is time to stop using apparently pragmatic arguments against discrimination and to start repoliticizing, he writes.

Michael Bott

Don’t mourn, Repoliticise!

The UK will be leaving the EU. But how was the prospect of such a political rupture seen months before the vote even took play? From February 2016.  

Sharon Bott

Brexit and the facts

Writing in The Point Magazine, David Unger describes his experiences at a three day Failure Festival: a chance to let things go horribly wrong in public, and challenge society’s obsession with success.

Jonathan Booth

Fail again: First person account from the failure festival

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is the seminal book written by Marie Kondo on the Japanese art of decluttering, a process she likens to the discipline of meditating while standing under a waterfall. But, writes Laurel Berger in The Point Magazine, while Kondo may be brilliant on closets and unwanted furniture, her push for decluttering just cannot work with books. Kondo seems to completely ignore the soothing pleasure in dipping again and again into books we have already read.

Emma Powell

The magic of untidiness: Can Marie Kondo's philosophy of decluttering be applied to books?

Writing in The Point, Meghan O’Gieblyn ponders Gabrielle Glaser's famous 'takedown' of Alcoholics Anonymous in Atlantic, published in 2015. Glaser wrote “The problem is that nothing about the 12-step approach draws on modern science”. Is that true? And if it is, does that matter?

David Riley

The insane idea

Megan Marz writing in The Point Magazine offers us an examination of the advice column, with a special insight into Kristen Dombek and Heather Havrilesky – columnists who have elevated the advice column to a literary form, while “seeking to help you without driving you further into yourself”.

Hillary Huber

How should an advice column be?

Adam Bright reflects on one of the New Age movement’s more prominent thinkers.

Jan Cramer

Here, now: The story of one of the New Age movement’s more prominent thinkers

We live in an age where every holiday taken is a moment, a memory to be shared on Instagram and Facebook. Charles Comey writing in The Point Magazine writes about honeymoons, specifically his honeymoon, and the pressure it creates on the participant to be something special. And just how enjoyable and special does it end up being then?

Gary Furlong

Against Honeymoons: the pressures they create to be something special

Getting along with others is, of course, a natural impulse. But it is also a high-wire act. The risk is that you might not be able to distinguish your sense of self from your longing to be admired. One of the reasons I have avoided Facebook is that I can sense the software has been coded to nurture precisely these sorts of anxieties.

Guy Hanson

Starving: Getting along with others is, of course, a natural impulse. But it is also a high-wire act

PETA is widely known to kill almost all of the animals it takes in, a practice that has expectedly generated immense debate, with PETA itself claiming that it only kills animals that are suffering and have no alternative. Using this as a backdrop, Gary Francione writing in The Point Magazine examines the moral question behind killing animals.

On Killing Animals: What are animals for?

Christopher Fenwick delves into the world of quizzing and explores the workings of the mind of the avid quizzer. 

The totality of facts: delving into the world of quizzing

In 1949, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia decided to honor Stalin by building a monument to him in Prague. A contest was held to decide who would have the honor of designing it. Every sculptor in Czechoslovakia was required to participate. Most sabotaged their chances on purpose by portraying the great leader in unsuitable poses, smiling or spreading his arms like Jesus. Otakar Švec who learned the art of sculpture as a child from his pastry-chef father, took the extra precaution of getting blind drunk. Unfortunately for him, he won anyway.

Stalin's Finger

As we seem to be reaching a critical time for democracy, where so many Americans seem exhausted enough with it that they see substance in all of Trump’s incoherence, Danielle Charette writing in The Point Magazine, revisits Robert Penn Warren, the American poet and author. As a poet who could acknowledge the pitfalls of populism and go on to write for a democratic audience anyhow, his work offers up a form for holding up our democratic discontent, she writes.

Demagoguery and poetry: navigating with the pitfalls of populism

Frank Guan writing in The Point Magazine, examines poetry, its class character, racial bent and political power. He praises poet Claudia Rankine, 2016 Macarthur Fellow, for her “transformation of the lyric nature poem” into a medium for political expression.

Class dismissed: In praise of the poet Claudia Rankine

Why do we love books? Not those things you can read on your Kindle, but the ones you can see and feel and touch and smell? Jake Bittle, writing in The Point Magazine, investigates.

Paper Chasing: Why do we love physical books?

Palme d'Or-winning Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami died on the 4th July 2016. We revisit a profile of the veteran director, screenwriter and producer by Kyle Smith, first published by the Point Magazine back in 2010. 

Abbas Kiarostami’s Transcendental Style

Small talk or idle talk is often looked down upon as inauthentic and mindless. Dora Zhang writing in The Point Magazine engages in an indepth examination of small talk. Does superficial talk reduce the space for deliberate and deep conversation that requires thought, or does small talk actually serve an essential purpose of socialisation?

Small Talk: does small talk actually serve any purpose?

Why do people scale the world’s tallest mountains? What are they hoping to find at the summit?

Jacob Mikanowski, writing in The Point magazine, tells the remarkable stories of two climbers, Wanda Rutkiewicz and Tulshuk Lingpa, who, in their obsession with climbing mount Kanchenjunga, led themselves to untimely deaths, and speculates about what drove this consuming passion.

Andy Field

Climbing Kanchenjunga, one of the world's deadliest mountains

The renowned author's explanation of the 2008 crash offers lessons for today's economic landscape.

Hannah Rosefield, writing in The Point Magazine, dissects the writing of Michael Lewis and contrasts his approach with the approach of those who brought his bestseller, "The Big Short" to the big screen.

Who did it: Michael Lewis and The Big Short

A thoughtful essay on being a parent and a commitment to the passing of generations.

Surprised by his own atypical reaction to his daughter's birth, Jonny Thakkar writing in The Point magazine contemplates what it means to raise a family. Examining both ancient philosophers and smug parenting books he comes to understand parenting in a new and peaceful light.

Quiet time

Is a declining human population really something to regret?

In an increasingly insecure world, more people are making the decision not to have children. And the debate is sparking some uncomfortable truths about what the world will look like if we want humanity to survive. Samuel Scheffler explores in The Point Magazine.

Karl Miller

A world without children

Greil Marcus’ book is a fascinating insight into the distinctly crass and fleeting modern American dream.

Inspired by Marcus' book "Under the Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment and the Stubborn Myth of the Great Gatsby", Jackson Arn reflects for The Point magazine on the seemingly intrinsic connections between F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic, "The Great Gatsby", and American patriotism.

"This little book about another little book wouldn’t be worth the trouble if Marcus weren’t right on the main point: the recent history of the American Dream is a history of people reading The Great Gatsby. To tell stories about wealth, passion, crime and power is to stand in Fitzgerald’s shadow, whether you know it or not. But not all Gatsby-infused art is created equal, and the recent examples, taken together, suggest some disturbing truths: that the pursuit of happiness, celebrated for its own sake and unchecked by duty to family, community or God, leads to a country of three hundred million islands; that, if we’re not at that point yet, we’re pretty damn close; that no country can go on this way for long. Marcus knows this, or at least senses it. But his response, by and large, is to do what previous generations have done: mourn the American Dream so intensely he winds up worshipping it."

American greatness

Exploring the late David Graeber's thoughts on why we work.

"His book, Bullshit Jobs, is one of many contributions to this rethinking. Slapdash and anecdotal, it reads like a parody of a pop-business manual, an anarchist take on Charles Duhigg or Malcolm Gladwell." Jonah Galeota-Sprung analysis of the late David Graeber's writings for The Point magazine offers as much wisdom now as it did upon publishing in 2019.

Bullshit jobs

What is so special about humanity and our ability to think?

Reflecting on the book "Thinking and Being", by Israeli philosopher Irad Kimhi, associate researcher at Worcester College in Oxford, Steven Methven, argues in The Point magazine against a whole tradition of philosophical thought.

"Why is thought so special? Consider the natural world, which consists just of things and how they are: the breeze is warm, the lawn is lush, the bees buzz. Thinking, however, is not only about how things are — the warm breeze and the buzzing bees — but also about how they aren’t. Though the weather is fine, I can think of it being grim — I can think what is false. And while the breeze is warm, I can think, truly now, of many ways that it is not — for instance, chilly — simply by thinking that it is 'not' chilly. When I entertain a falsehood, or consider how things are not, what I think is not anywhere out there in the world. So it seems that thought, which involves what 'is not' as well as what 'is', may be nowhere in nature. In which case, what is it?"

Parricide

A new strategy for dealing with damnation.

Writer Meghan O'Gieblyn reflects in The Point magazine on the elasticity of Hell as a concept, exploring why it still remains one of society's most resilient metaphors for the evil both around and within us.

This story was originally published in The Point in November 2014.

"The various depictions of hell over the centuries tend to mirror the earthly landscape of their age. Torture entered the conception of hell in the second century, when Christians were subjected to sadistic public spectacles. Roman interrogation methods included red-hot metal rods, whips and the rack — a contraption that distended limbs from their joints. The non-canonical Apocalypse of Peter, a product of this era, features a fierce and sadistic hell in which people are blinded by fire and mangled by wild beasts. Dante’s Divine Comedy has traces of the feudal landscape of fourteenth-century Europe. Lower hell is depicted as a walled city with towers, ramparts, bridges and moats; fallen angels guard the citadel like knights. The Jesuits, who rose to prominence during a time of mass immigration and urban squalor, envisioned an inferno of thousands of diseased bodies 'pressed together like grapes in a wine-press.' It was a claustrophobic hell without latrines, and part of the torture was the human stench."

Andi Arndt

Hell

How the vital functions of culture have changed.

What does the politicisation of society mean after the Trump era? In this deeply reflective piece, Greg Jackson considers how the past eight years of politics have launched an entirely new meaning behind the “personal is political” and how our cults of thinking have become our way of life.

Mark Deakins

Sources of life

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to lead a life of abstinence?

"The life of the monk is a life of longing, of not yet entirely consummated love for God. The ecstatic eroticism of the Song expresses something of the intensity of the soul’s love story with God." In this personal piece for The Point magazine, Cistercian monk Edmund Waldstein reflects on his love of God, as well as his chosen life of celibacy.

Chris Brinkley

A deeper longing

Analysing the sexual libertinism of the Weimar Republic, and why it's celebrated in contemporary cultures.

In a world that both celebrates queer sexual freedom yet ruthlessly punishes the slightest perceived infraction, historian Samuel Clowes Huneke reflects for The Point magazine on how we can learn from the homosexual rights movement of 1920s Berlin.

Sean Crisden

Seduced by respectability

A marvel that stops us in our tracks becomes only an apparent marvel once explained.

"Therein lies the paradox of wonder: it is the beginning of inquiry (Descartes remarks that people deficient in wonder 'are ordinarily quite ignorant'), but the end of inquiry also puts an end to wonder." Lorraine Daston considers in The Point magazine the consequences that transformations of wonder have for scientific inquiry.

Wonder and the ends of inquiry

A reflection of the worker and the artwork.

Sophie Beck toiled over Joan Miro and his work. She was looking for something worth telling about the Catalunyan artist who kept working without pause from age 19 to 90 — interestingly, it is in this precise detail that she understood how the incomprehensible can also be beautiful. She explains how for The Point magazine.

Regarding Joan Miró

A remarkable, personal reflection on understanding where we come from.

"I always wonder how I first learned that we were different, that we didn't come from the city we had always known but from a faraway, perfect place, of which maps were framed and hung on our walls or around our necks. This was a place, we were led to believe, where injustice, misfortune and even our daily-life problems would have not existed. A place "where none of this can happen," as Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani wrote in his novella Returning to Haifa." Riham Alkousaa shares her personal story in The Point Magazine.

Monita Rajpal

Returning to nowhere

Is New Work going to change the world?

Tim Peters writes in The Point Magazine about tracking down Frithjof Bergmann, the man behind the social and economic philosophy called “New Work” culture, and his conversations with Bergmann. What exactly does he find?

The Point magazine

New Work: The man behind the social and economic philosophy called 'New Work'

Stories can connect us, and often changes us. So why not teach it at work?

"I rediscovered short stories several years ago when I began working for a nonprofit called Books@Work. During the Thursday lunch hour, every other week for eight weeks, I discussed Steinbeck stories with employees at a manufacturing company in Lorain County, Ohio." Laura Baudot writes in The Point magazine.

Betsy Foldes Meiman

Closer reading

A reflection on Iran's modern history through the life of activist and filmmaker Haroun Yashayaie.

From his youthful outspoken activism to his later life revolutionary patience, his life and work encapsulate a period of huge political transformation. Written by Nargol Aran in The Point magazine.

The defender

In light of the #MeToo movement, Nora Caplan-Bricker, writing in The Point Magazine, revisits a utopian novel from 1915 about a society composed entirely of women.

The Point Magazine

Leaving Herland: Can we even imagine a world without sexual harassment? 

We reflect on Bill Cosby's fall from grace after his October 2019 trial.

Jonathan McDaniel writing in The Point Magazine reflects on the fall from grace of actor, author, singer-songwriter and stand-up extraordinaire Bill Cosby.

Himself

When masses of people come together in protest, what is it that brings them together? A sense of combined solidarity? Or are they all actually “alone with everyone?” And what does that mean? Sustained activist, Miranda Trimmier writes about all of that and more, in The Point Magazine.

Crowd Love: When people come together in protest, what brings them together?

Donald Trump supporters earn more than Hilary Clinton supporters. On the whole, his adherants cannot be captured accurately by traditional demographic predictors. Professor of Religious Studies at Yale, Kathryn Lofton, meditates on the success of Trump, contrasted with the false beliefs held by liberals about his supporters. She argues in The Point magazine that actually understanding the other side is crucial and radical, even if it endangers one’s own assumptions.

Molly Ward

Understanding is dangerous: understanding the other side is crucial, even if it endangers one’s assumptions

As Salah Abdeslam, one of the key suspects in the Paris attacks is jailed in Belgium, we revisit an essay on the terrible night.

The time of the assassins: Bataclan Paris attacks

Nicholas Kristof, the Pulitzer prize winning New York Times journalist, is best known for his compassionate, human-centric reporting from regions of extreme conflict – like Darfur and Chad. Rachel Wong examines the effects of his approach and the controversy it has generated.

Hearts and minds: Meditations on the human-centred reporting of Nicholas Kristof

What should we do with our lives? Follow our dreams and passions? Or take the more certain route towards money and power, so our lives can have more “effect”? Jonah Galeota-Sprung’s deeply personal piece from The Point Magazine – one of The Atantic’s “Slightly More than 100 Exceptional works of Journalism” from 2015.

Effected: How do we decide what we should do with our lives?

The ersatz dialogue which occurs on Twitter can give the misleading impression that all opposing opinions have been given a fair hearing, and thus that the dominant opinion at the end of the day must be the inherently superior one. At the same time, if you maintain a bit of critical distance, watching the construction of conventional wisdom on Twitter can teach you plenty. 

Outrage: reflections on the popularity, and political potency, of outrage

The strength of the iceberg lies unseen and submerged, like Freud’s sub-conscious or Hemingway’s theory of writing. George Philip LeBourdais travels to Greenland and meditates on the cultural significance of the now melting ice.

Icebergs: reflections on the submerged

America. The open road. It’s the setting for many of the 20th century’s great stories. Jacob Hoerger explores the limits of the road-trip as a source of inspiration. 

Aaron Landon

Driving America: The end of the road trip

We are constantly monitored, not just by the NSA, but by every website we visit, every app we use and every message we send. As being monitored becomes a part of everyday life, Lowry Pressly writing in The Point Magazine examines the meaning of the term privacy and what it means to be monitored.

Nick Camm

Being Known: Is there harm in being observed if I never find out about it?

As talk of the Chinese bubble bursting becomes louder, we see that this isn't the first time there has been such speculation about China. We revisit this 2013 article from The Point Magazine to see how much truth there was to the rumours the last time around.

The People’s Republic:  not the first time there has been speculation about China

Taxidermy literally means “the arrangement (taxi) of skin (derma).” It is the precise splitting of skin into hide, hide into pieces of hide, and then the reassembly of this hide upon the bones to form a reimagined body.

Helen Lloyd

What's left over

Reviewing Michael Clune's book 'Gamelife' in The Point Magazine, Andrew Blevins relays the author’s long relationship with video games. Much unlike Clune’s addiction to heroin (on which he elaborated in his previous book), Clune has no regrets about his addiction to video games.

Gamelife: Videogames and addiction

Not all aspects of women’s labour need more public recognition. Dawn Herrera Helphand reflects on the sheltering power of privacy in childbirth. 

Ashley Klanac

Into the cave: labour, privacy and maternity

Thomas Berenato writes in The Point Magazine to celebrate the English poet Christopher Logue, best known for his account of several books of Homer.

War Music: celebrating the English poet Christopher Logue

How Iraqi fiction closely reflects the very real conflict that surrounds it

Penny Andrews

Now They Were Corpses: How Iraqi fiction closely reflects the conflict that surrounds it

The myth of the melancholy genius. Montaigne, van Gogh, David Foster Wallace: society celebrates the aesthetic insights of depression

Melancholy: The myth of the melancholy genius

Twenty years on Moira Weigel reconsiders 'Kids': the 1995 New York teen drama, set in the context of the AIDS epidemic, which became one of the most controversial films of its time.

Kids: revisiting the the most controversial film of the nineties

Is there anything to be said in defense of arseholes? I’d imagine that if you’re inclined to label someone as such in the first place, you’d probably think, “no, there isn’t.” But Jonny Thakkar, a self-identifying arsehole, makes the case.

On Being an Arsehole: A defense

Space used to signify pure tomorrow, an infinite frontier unrolling in all directions. Now, for those few who still nurse them, the arc of those daydreams has doubled back toward the past, bent by nostalgia.