Sam Kriss connects what we now call “vibes” to Hegel's philosophy of “Geist”, and explores various metaphorical "vibe machines,” that attempt to explain how they shift. Just like vibes, this piece flows between being playful and serious. “We need another universal theory of vibes” he writes, maybe because “because of the vibes is not actually a very impressive explanation.”
It’s a hazy thing, bodiless, ghostly, but at the same time it moves around the heavy stuff of the world—armies, monuments, empires—like they’re nothing. For Hegel, the fall of Rome didn’t have to do with imperial overextension or steppe migrations, it was because Rome had bad vibes.
The vibe shift is also a shift towards vibes.