Episode #482 from 4:26:05
Kafka
I'd like to use this opportunity to talk about Franz Kafka, one of my favorite writers. The reason he has been on my mind is that his work The Trial and the case of Pavel Durov in France has, let's say, eerie parallels, both metaphorically and literally. Of course, The Trial is a work of fiction, but I think it is often useful to go to the surreal world of literature, even over-the-top dystopian variety like 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Trial, The Castle Metamorphosis, even The Plague by Albert Camus, all to understand our real world and the destructive paths we have the potential to go down together, which also hopefully helps us understand how to avoid doing so. So let me zoom out and speak about Franz Kafka. Who was he? He was an insurance clerk who wrote at night. He died young and almost completely unknown, and he asked for his manuscripts to be burned. Luckily for us, his friend, Max Brod refused to do so, giving us the work of what I consider to be one of 20th century's greatest writers. In his work, Kafka wrote about the cold machine-like reduction of humans to case files through the labyrinth of institutional power. He wrote about an individual's feeling of guilt even when a crime has not been committed, or more generally, he wrote about the feeling of anxiety that is part of the human condition in our modern, chaotic world.
Why this moment matters
I'd like to use this opportunity to talk about Franz Kafka, one of my favorite writers. The reason he has been on my mind is that his work The Trial and the case of Pavel Durov in France has, let's say, eerie parallels, both metaphorically and literally. Of course, The Trial is a work of fiction, but I think it is often useful to go to the surreal world of literature, even over-the-top dystopian variety like 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Trial, The Castle Metamorphosis, even The Plague by Albert Camus, all to understand our real world and the destructive paths we have the potential to go down together, which also hopefully helps us understand how to avoid doing so. So let me zoom out and speak about Franz Kafka. Who was he? He was an insurance clerk who wrote at night. He died young and almost completely unknown, and he asked for his manuscripts to be burned. Luckily for us, his friend, Max Brod refused to do so, giving us the work of what I consider to be one of 20th century's greatest writers. In his work, Kafka wrote about the cold machine-like reduction of humans to case files through the labyrinth of institutional power. He wrote about an individual's feeling of guilt even when a crime has not been committed, or more generally, he wrote about the feeling of anxiety that is part of the human condition in our modern, chaotic world.