(via Harpers. An Essay by Mark Slouka)
[…]
It’s a play I’ve been following for some time now. It’s about the increasing dominance—scratch that, the unqualified triumph—of a certain way of seeing, of reckoning value. It’s about the victory of whatever can be quantified over everything that can’t. It’s about the quiet retooling of American education into an adjunct of business, an instrument of production.
The play’s almost over. I don’t think it’s a comedy.
state of the union
Then there’s amortization,
the deadliest of all;
amortization
of the heart and soul.
—Vladimir Mayakovsky
[…]