Aeon Magazine » Living Together

Survivors

Ben Faccini — Thu, 16 May 2013 05:00:55 +0000

Years ago, along the cacophonous roads leading from Ramses Train Station in Cairo, I came across a small girl with a bright red headscarf weaving her way in and out of the slow-moving traffic, her bare feet shrouded in a haze of exhaust fumes. I watched as she banged on the windows of vehicles, the [...]

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In Tunis

Rachel Shabi — Thu, 09 May 2013 05:00:44 +0000

The Tunisian torture choir, as I dubbed them for convenience, should have been competing for sound-space with the group of rappers and streetdancers wearing V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes masks. But somehow it all blended pretty well amid the sprawling outdoor space at Tunisia’s World Social Forum, an annual gathering of international civil society organisations. [...]

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On the road

Maria Bustillos — Thu, 02 May 2013 05:00:43 +0000

The most beautiful way to drive between Los Angeles and the Bay Area is generally reckoned to be along Highway 1: the Pacific Coast Highway, the first State Scenic Highway (so declared in 1964), which clings to the coastline all the way up to an intricately winding section above the glorious and terrifying cliffs of [...]

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There is no alternative

Henry Farrell — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Last September, Il Partito Democratico, the Italian Democratic Party, asked me to talk about politics and the internet at its summer school in Cortona. Political summer schools are usually pleasant — Cortona is a medieval Tuscan hill town with excellent restaurants — and unexciting. Academics and public intellectuals give talks organised loosely around a theme; [...]

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An empty passion for war

Tom Feiling — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 05:00:32 +0000

In October 2012, the Colombian government sat down to peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) — among the last of Latin America’s left-wing guerrilla armies. Hopes were high that an end to a conflict that has raged for close to 50 years might be at hand. Colombians, weary of decades of [...]

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The future of the city

Leo Hollis — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 05:00:21 +0000

Earlier this spring, I found myself walking through Lower Manhattan. There was still a chill in the air; a few flakes of snow had fallen the night before but nothing had settled. As I wandered, I was interested to see whether there were any residual signs of Hurricane Sandy, which had struck the island on [...]

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This is humankind

Polina Aronson — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 05:00:51 +0000

It has been seven years now since I moved from Russia to Germany, and not a month goes by without me landing in the same predicament. A party is in full swing. The plates and bottles are half-empty, the hurdle of small talk has just been overcome, and everybody is in pursuit of one, imperative [...]

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An iCure?

Alexander Masters — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:00:14 +0000

The days of the middle-man are numbered. You can borrow money from peer-to-peer lenders such as Zopa without the bloated intervention of banks; read the news without the patronising control of newspaper editors; and now, through crowdfunding, you can bypass the opaque institutions that control the financing of cancer research and direct world-class medical work. [...]

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City of Kismet

Youssef Rakha — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 06:00:14 +0000

Unconsciously, it seems, I had waited a lifetime for Kismet. This was not my first attempt at a family of my own but, though I never resisted the idea, one way or another, fatherhood had eluded me. And for some reason I never thought I would have a daughter. When the sex of the foetus [...]

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Losing my voice

Chika Unigwe — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 06:00:49 +0000

The year I graduated from the university, I married a man, J, whom I had known for two years. Some of my friends thought it was too soon, especially as he was not ‘from here’. My father wondered if I had thought it through, marrying a foreigner. I said I had. When J wanted to [...]

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