Badis Tabarki

The Fetish of Novelty

On Our Old Hunger for the New

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Badis Tabarki
Jun 23, 2025
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In a world where the new is celebrated and the old is swiftly discarded, one might wonder: when did we become so obsessed with novelty? We queue for the latest device, yearn for the freshest trends, and scroll endlessly in search of the next post that will catch our fleeting attention. This piece invites you to pause and reflect: is our craving for the new a sign of progress—or a symptom of an unfulfilled inner life?

Digital culture and consumer capitalism have conspired, often subtly, to transform novelty from a curiosity into a compulsion. New versions, new collections, new updates—each promises to solve a dissatisfaction it helped to create. The result? A population that constantly looks forward to the next upgrade, but rarely looks inward.

This essay offers more than critique: it proposes an alternative way of seeing. Could the path to genuine fulfillment lie not in the endless pursuit of the next thing, but in the deep and attentive engagement with what we already have? Could we rediscover contentment not in novelty, but in nuance?

If this resonates—if you too feel weary of the treadmill of upgrades and eager for richer reflection—I invite you to join this community as a paid subscriber. Together, let us explore ideas that nourish rather than merely distract, and rediscover the beauty of the enduring over the merely new.

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