The Point Magazine

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A magazine founded on the suspicion that modern life is worth examining. thepointmag.com

“The will was not effective in the realm of inner change, or maybe even counterproductive,” Meghan O’Gieblyn tells John Palattella. “In some cases, it feels like the harder you work on those problems, the more likely you are to fail. It’s almost like you’re getting in your own way.”

Rejecting Enlightenment | The Point Magazine

“I felt the need to tell my story, and to do so in public, where I’m held accountable by the moral gaze of another person—but at the same time not to reduce it, or simplify it.”

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“This notion that the self is an illusion, and that thinking is just noise, and it’s your actions that count, is obviously very popular now, not only because of the rise of technologies that emulate human intelligence without any sort of internal experience.” A conversation with Meghan O’Gieblyn:

Rejecting Enlightenment | The Point Magazine

“I felt the need to tell my story, and to do so in public, where I’m held accountable by the moral gaze of another person—but at the same time not to reduce it, or simplify it.”

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“To the young man disgusted with the cropped-down society that democracy has created and who longs for a manly, aristocratic spirit to return to the West, I say to you: stay well away from politics and focus on the real aristocratic way of life—studiously useless aestheticism.”

Flowers for Frank | The Point Magazine

The End of History and the Last Man is famously talked about more than it is read; as a teenager, however, I did not know this, so after seeing it referenced on multiple blogs, I assumed I had to trud...

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Help us find out what health is for! For our next issue we’re conducting a survey of healthcare practitioners, broadly construed—physicians and nurses, EMTs and psychoanalysts, hospice workers and acupuncturists, to name just a few possibilities.

What is health for? | A survey from The Point magazine

This fall, The Point, a Chicago-based magazine of politics and culture with a national readership, is publishing a symposium on the question “What is health for?” As part of this symposium, we would l...

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“Like any religious practice, it can be more or less demanding, communal, mystical, stringent or bonkers, depending on who you ask.” Harry Levov reports from Effective Altruism Global—and on his own conversion to the movement:

Getting Good | The Point Magazine

On a dark, gray day in October 2025, the first dozen attendees of the Effective Altruism Global conference make their way to the Sheraton Hotel just north of Times Square in New York City.

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Effective altruists have managed to irritate Americans from all walks of life—including, most recently, the Trump administration. So what’s drawn so many young people to the movement anyway? Harry Levov reports from EA Global 2025:

Getting Good | The Point Magazine

On a dark, gray day in October 2025, the first dozen attendees of the Effective Altruism Global conference make their way to the Sheraton Hotel just north of Times Square in New York City.

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“If we fail to insist that certain kinds of decisions—whether in personal, political or professional contexts—must come from human beings, words like fraud, authenticity and deliberation will cease to mean anything we might recognize today.” thepointmag.com/letter/on-ra...

On Radical Preservation | The Point Magazine

Our contention is that, if we fail to think through and delimit the role of AI in our lives, we risk undermining the intelligibility of our own guiding cultural concepts, and thus initiating a period ...

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What distinguishes today’s microcolleges are their efforts to revitalize two distinct visions of education grounded in overlapping traditions of Progressive thought—one that emphasizes the universality of the human condition, and one that emphasizes our rootedness.

A Vital Education | The Point Magazine

This past January, I traveled to a small town in Wisconsin’s Driftless region, the southwest corner of the state the glaciers missed, to join a summit of representatives from the far-flung universe of...

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“I’m not actually friends with Ben; I’ve never spoken with him, never seen him besides on a screen,” writes Zach Marcus. “But then, forming a parasocial attachment to a stranger dying on the internet is quite a common experience for people my age.”

How Should a Person Die? | The Point Magazine

I’m waiting for Ben to die, and I’m getting a little annoyed with how long he’s taking. Last December he announced a diagnosis of stage […]

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