Toby Shorin's Website, Year 2026,  Blog
Alexander Rothaug, Poetry
Alexander Rothaug, Poetry

I write broadly about cultural change, community formation, and meaning-making. In the past three years I've been exploring the history of psychiatry, and emerging movements in mental health, wellness, and spirituality.

The current work continues some of the themes I developed between 2016 and 2024 on my old blog, Subpixel Space. For a list of essays relevant to my current thinking, check out the Favorites list at tobyshorin.com/archive.

Newsletters go out occasionally, whenever I publish a new essay or talk. At the current pace, that's once every few months.

The painting is Poetry by Viennese painter Alexander Rothaug (1870–1946). It depicts a classical stone ruin in a forest, overgrown by ivy and grasses. On a stone bench sits a female figure with a lyre, likely Erato, the muse of lyric poetry. She extends her hand toward a deer and a blackbird, who appear enraptured by her presence. Despite the decaying ruins, the scene teems with life and motion.

I have chosen this emblem for the blog because it seems to me that the question of spirituality today is similar to the question of poetry: amidst the detritus of classical civilizations and the rummage room of modernity, how are new meaningful wholes to be made? The practice of poetry is a kind of magic, which creates new wholes out of nothing. And poetry is itself a technology of healing; to write poetry is to make oneself more whole.

Latest
Theory of Social Forms

Theory of Social Forms

Social forms are the templates for ordered, formal, rule-based, and productive spaces of social practice....

12 min read

Recent Posts

Theory of Social Forms

Social forms are the templates for ordered, formal, rule-based, and productive spaces of social practice.

12 min read

Prototyping Social Forms of Care

Social innovators are experimenting with new social forms of care: centers, campuses, parlors, and practices.

19 min read

Interview: Jared Zhang of Fresh Air

Jared Zhang is a conceptual artist and community designer. He and his collaborator, writer and spiritual entrepreneur Ireland Adgate, ran a 30-day pop-up educat

14 min read

Protocols for Emus

Aggressive, egocentric, emu behavior is a social invariant. How have protocols evolved to handle it?

12 min read

Notes on Buddhist Modernism

How Buddhism has transformed in order to address Western spiritual problems.

12 min read

How do Words Heal?

How is “healing” different than “curing?” I like the definition of noted cancer care specialist Michael Lerner: “Curing means to take a disease of a problem awa

13 min read

Practice Review: Peoplehood

The much-written-about "SoulCycle without the bike" is a thin practice with an even thinner mythology.

18 min read

Book Reviews, Spring 2024

Most of my reading these days is focused on psychology and deepening my understanding of cultural determinants of health. I keep a digital bookshelf of things I

9 min read

The Loneliness Apparatus

The notion of “loneliness” is playing an increasingly prominent role in public health discussions around the world. What will happen when the loneliness propaganda is fully internalized?

14 min read

Field Report: Vitalia, The City of Life

Experts and enthusiasts from around the world have gathered on the island of Roatan to discuss longevity: the science and art of extending lifespan. I dropped into their two-month "pop-up city," Vitalia, to get a taste.

19 min read