Charles Hugh Smith's Substack

Charles Hugh Smith’s Substack

The Joyless Pantomime of Optimizing Ennui

The joyless pantomime of optimizing our alienation is not a substitute for authentic fulfillment.

Charles Hugh Smith's avatar
Charles Hugh Smith
Aug 05, 2026
∙ Paid

We all know that geopolitics, the stock market, AI, the unemployment rate and all the rest of what’s presented as “explaining” everything is “important,” but all these analytic abstractions ignore what we actually experience. This divide between what we’re told we should be experiencing and what we are actually experiencing is what I call the politics o…

User's avatar

Continue reading this post for free, courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith.

Or purchase a paid subscription.
© 2026 Charles Hugh Smith · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start your SubstackGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture