"He is the One who perfected everything He created. [...]" As-Sajdah, 7. Recently, while thinking about mediocrity again, I wrote the following on Twitter: "I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm making a claim…"
"My son Behçet, do you know what the bankruptcy of a civilization is?" Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Mahur Beste, p. 118. The series of essays titled "Our Great Mediocrity," which we began by searching for ways to earn without labor…
"Anyway, in this brief final analysis, let us once again set aside the introduction that wounds us so. Like every proper Turkish youth — that is, like every decent, weary-of-life citizen whose relationship to sport has never gone beyond watching a match…
A clarification, prompted by friends who found the previous piece arrogant: the problem was never dog-drinking-bowls or those who need them cheaply — it's the mindset that turns every long-range ambition into a short-term hustle, and every hustle into everyday small injustices.
A quest for quick money leads two dentists through Amazon affiliate links, TikTok video-watermark removal, plastic button molding, and Chinese dog-drinking-bowls — and toward an uncomfortable diagnosis: it isn't the products that are shabby, it's the vision.