Friends,
Two centuries ago, it took a year to send a message around the globe. Now it takes a fraction of a second. We have no idea what this means or what the consequences may be. Man’s knowledge and ability have dangerously exceeded his capacity to understand either.
— Dee Hock, founder of Visa, writing in his journal at an advanced age sometime in the 1980s or 90s.
This is from the opening chapter of Neil Postman’s eerily prescient Amusing Ourselves To Death:
The information, the content, or, if you will, the “stuff” that makes up what is called “the news of the day” did not exist-could not exist-in a world that lacked the media to give it expression. I do not mean that things like fires, wars, murders, and love affairs did not ever and always happen in places all over the world. I mean that lacking technology to advertise them, people could not attend to them, could not include them in their daily business. Such information simply could not exist as part of the content of culture. This idea – that there is a content called “the news of the day” – was entirely created by the telegraph (and since amplified by newer media), which made it possible to move decontextualized information over vast spaces at incredible speed. The news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination. It is, quite precisely, a media event. We attend to fragments of events from all over the world because we have multiple media whose forms are well suited to fragmented conversation. Cultures without speed-of-light media – let us say, cultures in which smoke signals are the most efficient space-conquering tool available – do not have news of the day. Without a medium to create its form, the news of the day does not exist.
Postman’s book, a long essay really, is one of the most profound I’ve ever read. It’s lessons serve as user notes for the world we see around us today. Like close-captioning for our eyeballs. (my book notes)
It took me awhile to find that quote because the compressed version I had in my mind is stored as a prescription for myself not a transcription. You can trace my version back to Postman’s sentiment but its is optimized for usefulness not fidelity. It goes:
“Kris, there’s always something going on somewhere — you must choose what to focus on”
I conjured the Postman bit and the Dee Hock quote because a paradoxical byproduct of hyper-connectivity is isolation. It’s not just having your nose buried in your phone as you wait to order a matcha latte. It’s far more insidious.
Which brings us to this illuminating post:
Is Modern Mass Media A Mind Prison? (9 min read)
by jasonpargin
This is one of the those essays that puts a finger on the sense that we are all being played but struggle to point out the perpetrator. Of course if it were as easy as pointing out a single source of the strife, then it might also be solvable. The source unfortunately seems to be something like [waves hand in big circle] “incentives”. That’s my attempt to fill in what Jason doesn’t focus on. He skips right to diagnosis and cure which is the right approach anyway.
[My opinion: the cause is the most speculative part of the malaise around us and has so many facets we’d be playing a hopeless game of top-down whack-a-mole whereas addressing our individual responses is plausible.]
Excerpt from the end:
I actually believe this to be the single most successful technique for social control in the 21st Century, convincing those most eager for change that it can only come through thrilling and glorious action, a battle of pure good versus pure evil. “Why bother voting on this boring bond issue? I’m not leaving the house for anything less than a war to overthrow capitalism! And don’t ask me to hang out unless you agree, I don’t befriend class traitors.”
The truth that the system is so afraid of us learning—and that we’re happy to let them keep from us—is that actually changing the world requires a stunning amount of tedious, quiet work, of dry reading and learning and organizing and slowly changing obstinate minds. Mathematically, this includes engaging at least some minds you previously considered ignorant or hateful. And this persuasion occurs, not through flashy performative acts, but by slowly earning trust until your opponents want to agree with you.
The system wants you to equate tedious work with neutered slavery and to equate liberation with sexy drama because it knows the opposite is true, that if you restrict yourself to flashy and dramatic solutions, you will be exactly as useful to the status quo as any other sedentary daydreamer. There is a reason the system has no problem feeding you a steady stream of fantasies about violently overthrowing it.
The reality is that the amount of focus and desire required to blow up the occasional building or pipeline is nothing compared to the lifetime of quiet labor required to understand the system well enough to actually build a better one. And that better world, if it arrives, will require the cooperation of some truly unpleasant people, because all of civilization is nothing but truly unpleasant people learning to peacefully cooperate.
From My Actual Life
I taught my 5th grader’s math class on Thursday (lesson plan). I did a dry-run with a group of 3rd-5th graders the night before.
Yinh was like “baby Boiler Room” vibes. I promise I didn’t throw my car keys on the table. My favorite comment: Illegal SF Algebra Speakeasy
The following morning: I survived!
Look, today’s letter was admittedly dystopian. Guilty as charged. But that’s no way to start a week. And I heard there’s a void in lifehacking advice this week what with the no-alcohol guy putting out fires with the ladies and all. So I’ll step in with an antidote to the exhaustion —> [try new morning routine] —> end up where you always do cycle:
Cold plunges, manifesting, sound baths, chakras. Meh. The original chicken soup for the soul is just share with your neighbors. Remember you can “just do stuff”. You have gifts. Activate them. It’s nice for others. It’s great for you.
Don’t forget the gist of what Postman said — there’s always something going on. It’s news because they made it news and put it in in front of your face. And what they put is not random. You can find any fact on any day to feel aggrieved. If you aren’t going to do something about “the news” anyway, close the tab. Don’t let the algos choose how you spend the next minute. Outrage is a choice. You can pick literally anything else.
Maybe it’s that freedom that scares you.