On Thickets, Enclosure, and Leaving

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past few months I have discovered and written about the idea of thickets and have been wondering what the practice of thicketing looks like. At its core the idea behind thicketing is to create and dwell in systems that resist capture and defy legibility. Weirdly this is not some anti-establishment move but a simple desire to just be and return to a state where you had your own corner, your friends, and your thoughts. Over the past few hundred years, with the ascent of modernity, legibility and legibilizing have been treated as the norm and a default good thing. However the pattern which has emerged (not just on the internet) is that systems position themselves as commons, invite people to enjoy themselves and slowly initiate capture mechanisms under the guise of some or the other security. Not all of this is bad, much of the modern world would not function without security and minimal enclosures.

The Kernel and the Ark

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 08:28:42 +0000

I. The Wall and the Infinite #

It is possible that the history of the modern West hinges on a single, melancholic misreading of Voltaire. When Candide, exhausted by the Lisbon earthquake and the brutalities of the Seven Years’ War, finally withdraws to the banks of the Propontis to utter his famous dictum—“Il faut cultiver notre jardin”—he is not proposing a program of agricultural management. He is issuing a plea for containment. To cultivate a garden, in the shadow of such overwhelming chaos, is an act of stoic resignation. It is an admission that the world is too vast, too violent, and too unintelligible to be governed by reason. One builds a wall against the infinite, and within that limited circumference, one tends to the soil. The garden is a refuge from nature.

Enclosure on Aneesh Sathe

On Thickets, Enclosure, and Leaving

The Kernel and the Ark

I. The Wall and the Infinite #