I’m Just Not Very Interested Anymore

I’ve taken a step back from social media recently, including this blog.

Why? For one thing, I came to realize that forums like Facebook and Instagram were rotting my brain in exactly the same way that TV was rotting my brain fifteen years ago. What began as a medium with the potential to enrich has gradually become a receptacle of lowest-common-denominator thinking and behavior. If reality television had run its course in the early 2000s, social media – which is for all intents and purposes a constant, ongoing reality TV broadcast – has now runs its course several times over.

Think about a woman or man you find particularly attractive. You see them every once in a while. Part of the appeal is the mystery of who they are, everything about them that you don’t already know. The fun of getting to know a new romantic partner is learning about their interests, their hobbies, their quirks, and their beliefs. Over time, this morphs into even the smallest details, from the way she stirs scrambled eggs with a spatula to the way he clears his throat every time he’s about to say something sarcastic. The mystery can go as deep as you want it to, but the relationship often thrives on that mystery. As time goes on, the surprises wane, but there’s no mistaking their role in falling in love.

 

If you were allowed to follow a potential romantic partner around via live video feed, twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, observing and evaluating them, and becoming acquainted with even the minutest detail of their daily behaviors, it’s unlikely that any such partner would pass the test. The mystery would be removed before it ever served its purpose. It would no longer inspire conversation. Rather than bother asking anyone about themselves, you’d simply tune in to the video feed and answer the question yourself, through direct observation. You might even come to believe that you know that person in a superior way than you would have if you had relied on face-to-face conversation and personal interaction.

In this way, the always-on world of social media plays itself out to boredom. But it need not be this way. You could uninstall Facebook and go back to asking people what they’re up to when you see them. The mystery would return. You’d pass the time in conversation, rather than in observation. This won’t cure all social ills, of course, but it will help you retain the value of really sitting down and talking to someone.

There is an element of this in my relationship to my blog, too. Early on, the blog helped me organize and catalog my thoughts. This was important when my thoughts needed better organization. It produced a rather extensive personal philosophy, which I refined over the course of ten years, and which I have implemented in my own life. It helped me keep track of important running- and fitness-related ideas that I could refer back to later. It even inspired me to conduct some formal research in pursuit of serious knowledge.

Now, though, I’m familiar with my thoughts and my ideas. They’re still evolving, but much less needs to be stated explicitly. These days I am more apt to apply existing principles than develop new ones to handle new situations. So the value of explication is much lower, and as a result of that, I’ve discovered that I’d much rather do than say. I’d rather be out there, exercising, running, playing music, playing with my daughter, having a good and fulfilling life. I don’t really want to waste time talking about it, I want to live it.

Maybe I’m just older, and I see more value in carpe diem than in carpe dictum. Or maybe I’m finally getting comfortable with myself and no longer feel the need to justify every thought and action. Or maybe I’ve been running a blog without a real audience for ten years and have better things to do than figure out how to SEO my way into libertarian super-stardom.

Who knows? The point is, I’m not here. I’m out there.

Newspaper

He bought a subscription to the newspaper.

Every day, the paperboy delivered the newspaper. He’d walk outside on the porch step every morning, find the newspaper, bring it inside, and read it over breakfast. It was a simple pleasure, but he made it an important part of his daily routine.

It’s not that the newspaper was always full of lovely things that made him happy. Sometimes the newspaper made him sad. Sometimes the stories it told were more bad than good. But it wasn’t really about that. It was about how the ritual of interacting with the daily paper enriched his life. It made him a more informed person, a more well-rounded person. Damn it, it made him a better person.

Sometimes the paper came late. On those days, he might not get the chance to read the whole thing. Sometimes the paper didn’t come at all. If it happened a time or two too often, he’d wait until business hours, ring up the newspaper company, alert them to the fact that he hadn’t received his paper, and the company would correct the problem. He never faulted the paperboy for this, even though it likely was the paperboy’s fault. He reasoned, nothing and no one is perfect. Sometimes the news will make you upset. Sometimes the news won’t come at all. This is life, and life isn’t perfect. He was fine with that.

But, one day, the paper didn’t come, and he tried to get on with his day, even though he was really looking forward to reading the paper that day. He was a little bit rattled. Okay, he was annoyed. He admitted it. He wanted to read his newspaper. He paid for it! But he knew that sometimes these things happened, so he tried not to ruminate on it. The next day, though, the paper didn’t come. So, he rang up the newspaper company on the telephone to alert them.

“Hello,” he said, “I’ve not received my newspaper for the second day in a row. Please make sure I get tomorrow’s paper.”

“I’m sorry,” said the voice on the other end of the line, “but we didn’t print newspapers today or yesterday. We didn’t feel like it.”

He was a little taken aback. He hadn’t expected an answer like that. “Was there something wrong?” He asked.

No, the voice told him. They simply hadn’t felt like printing a newspaper that day. Maybe tomorrow. Then the line was disconnected. He had been hung-up-on.

The next day, he received the newspaper. He received it again the following day. He decided it was just an anomaly.

The following week, however, it happened again. Two days in a row, no newspaper was delivered. He rang the newspaper company and was again informed that they hadn’t felt like printing newspapers that day. Then they hung up before the man could protest.

Then, again, the newspaper was delivered reliably for the rest of the week.

This went on for several weeks. Eventually, the newspaper stopped arriving for a third day, and then a fourth. Frustrated, the man decided to pay a visit to the newspaper office. When he got there, he was greeted by a pretty woman who introduced herself as a general manager. He explained his problem to her, and she nodded with understanding. She let him vent out all his frustrations, and she listened kindly and attentively.

When he was finished talking, she replied, “I know this must seem very frustrating for you, but you see, sometimes we don’t feel like printing the newspaper. Sometimes we’re tired. Sometimes we’d rather do something else. Sometimes we just go to sleep. So that is what we do. We have delivered many newspapers for you over the years. Why, this year alone we have already delivered over one hundred newspapers to you! I understand your frustrations, but you really have no right to complain. Things change. People change. We used to produce newspapers every day, but now... Now we deliver two or three papers per week. You should make do with that.”

The man tried to protest, and they got in an argument. She ended up slamming the door on him. He went home. The next day, he received a newspaper, even though it was on an “off” day.

An off day, he thought to himself? I bought a subscription to a daily newspaper! What is this?

In time, the newspaper dwindled to once per week. Then once per month. Eventually, he was lucky to get a paper at all.

This was all very frustrating for him, of course, but a funny thing happened while he was not receiving his newspaper regularly: He replaced that part of his morning routine with a book of crossword puzzles he found at the bookstore. It wasn’t quite the same as his daily paper, but over time, it didn’t much matter anymore. The newspaper company wasn’t delivering a daily paper. No matter how frustrating it was, he had to accept it. Truth be told, he didn’t really even know if they were still charging him for the paper. The crossword puzzles were good enough for a morning routine. He adjusted. Life went on.

One morning, on a lark, he decided to go out for a morning jog. On his way out the door, he saw the paperboy. He had the morning paper in his hands. The paperboy said, “Hey, mister, I’ve got your paper, here you go.”

“No thanks,” said the man. “I’m going out for a jog.”

“You can read it when you get home,” said the paperboy.

“I know,” said the man, “but I won’t read it. I’m jogging today. I do crossword puzzles on the other days.”

“Well, what should I do with it?” Asked the paperboy.

The man gave the boy a puzzled frown. “I don’t really know.” He beeped on his watch and started off on his jog. “And I don’t much care,” he thought.

Swipe Right

I was thinking about 80s movies tonight, and how much narratives around romance have changed.

The core romantic conflict in 80s movies was either that the guy didn’t have the guts to ask the girl out, or he wasn’t cool enough for her to agree to go out with him. Really, this is two versions of the same story; after all, a cool guy wouldn’t lack the guts to ask a girl out. Over the course of the movie, the guy would have to figure out how to be cool enough to captivate her attention.

Initially, he’d start out by trying to fake it. He’d pretend to like the same music she likes, or have the same interests as hers. He’d act like a jerk, try to display some knowledge about her interests, and then she’d roll her eyes and say, “Get lost, you creep!” Then he’d fall down or something, and a crowd of people would laugh at him, underscoring the fact that he was not cool enough to get the girl.

But the movie would always offer our hero a path to being cool. Either he’d learn to display some skill or prove some talent, or he’d learn to stand up for himself in the face of various bullies (parents, rich squares, a school jock, that sort of thing). Often the girl he thought he wanted would turn out to be shallow; she’d like him only when the crowd liked him, and despite him otherwise. Meanwhile, the girl he ultimately gets ends up appreciating him for who he was even when he wasn’t cool. He’d realize by the end of the film that he’d been a jerk the whole time — a “jerk” here being a type of uncoolness. And by the end, they’d fall in love.

However, exactly, the old movies told these stories, it was basically the same narrative. What strikes me about this narrative in hindsight is that it offers a path forward to people who are unlucky in love: By demonstrating coolness, we find the people who appreciate us. “Coolness” is a broad concept that encapsulates whatever happens to be important to you: your talent, your dignity, your ability to triumph over adversity, whatever. Prove that you’re cool enough, and you’ll get the girl; and if you’re true to yourself, you might even get a better girl than the one you wanted in the first place.

Modern romance stories do not function like this.

For one thing, if you’re not already cool, you have no chance with the girl. The message conveyed is that if a woman isn’t interested you from the beginning, you shouldn’t try to win her affection through personal merit. No means no; get lost, you creep.

For another thing attraction is instantaneous in modern love stories. A lot of these stories mask this assumption by having either the guy or the girl be “unaware” of his or her own feelings, until late in the movie, when he or she realizes that the whole reason all that emotion was bubbling to the top in the first place is because he or she subconsciously loved the other person.

And finally, the hero may win or lose (he usually wins, of course), but winning has no direct relationship to getting the girl. Sometimes he gets the girl before he wins, and they lie together and brood. Other times, he gets the girl after winning, but only on her terms.

So the modern love story is about two people who are already in love, deciding to act on their feelings, while other important plot-stuff happens to them independently of the love story. The message this is bound to convey to young people who unfortunately end up learning about love from the movies is that love is something that just happens to the heroes of the story, and nothing anyone actually does has anything to do with it.

Swipe right.

A Message To My Prior Self -- Hair Edition

In my early twenties, I somehow managed to apply my will power to the project of growing my hair out. It took a long time, but eventually it grew out to the point where it could be considered “long hair,” could be assembled into a ponytail, etc. It only lasted this way very briefly, though. In a fit of self-consciousness, I shaved it all off and went back to short hair from then on out. From time to time, over the ensuing years, I’d attempt to grow it out again, quickly grow frustrated, and let it be short.

I most recently shaved my head last summer. I can’t really recall my reasoning, other than that I wanted a change. As it grew back out, I kept the sides short and let the top grow, until it became what they refer to in haircutting circles as an “undercut.” At that point, my wife suggested that I let it grow long and see what happens. I’ve been growing it out ever since.

There are a few things I’ve learned from this, which I’d like to share with all those who might consider growing their own hair out in the future.

First, there is no “awkward phase.” More precisely, nobody cares what your hair looks like, as long as it’s clean and combed. When your hair is short, you can put some gunk in it and mess it around, and it looks good no matter what, because that’s the style: messy. Once it achieves a critical length, you can start combing it. Comb it back, to the side, or whatever else. Whatever you do with it, it will look like hair that you take care of. It might fall short of your GQ Magazine dream, but no one is really evaluating your sense of style on that level. So, just relax about awkwardness. If you stand up straight, and comb your hair, it will only be as awkward as society’s tendency to weigh in on your hairstyle, which society almost never does. So you’re good.

Second, starting with an “undercut” was a good idea. I remember that the first time I grew my hair out, the back and sides always appeared longer than the top, risking a sort of mini-mullet look. That look persisted until my hair got long enough to need to be cut, mostly to correct this very problem. But starting with an undercut type style ensures that the top is always a bit longer than the back and sides. As it starts to grow longer, everything will have an overall more natural appearance, almost as though it’s all closer to one length (even though it isn’t). I wish I had had this foresight in my early twenties; if so, I might have had long hair for many years.

Third, you only need enough patience to grow your hair out to the point that it looks like it’s being grown out. After that, the eye perceives “long hair,” even though it’s short. Put another way, short hair that has grown too long looks messy; but long hair that isn’t long enough still looks like long hair. It took me roughly 9 or 10 months to get to this length, again, from a starting point of “completely shaven.” But a lot of that time was easy to sit through because I had clean-cut short hair styles during the period of growth. So it’s really powering through 2 or 3 months of final growth from “short hair” to “longish hair” that requires any patience. If you can keep yourself busy for those 2 months, then you’ll finally reach a point that requires no additional patience.

Long story short: If you want to grow your hair out, but you’re worried about how difficult it is, don’t worry. It’s surprisingly easy.

Sunk Costs; Don't Worry, Be Happy

David Henderson recounts an airline experience that could have made him upset. It could have, but it didn't, because Henderson elected to have a good attitude about it. Missing a flight is loss enough; missing it and then getting angry about it is a double loss.

As he puts it,

I could have got all pissy and woe-is-me about the cancelled flight, but what's the point? Then I would have paid for it twice: by missing a meal I had been looking forward to with some faculty and by having a fit. The loss due to the cancelled flight is a sunk cost.

When I have taught sunk cost in the past, I would sometimes remind my students of the expression "Don't Cry Over Spilt Milk." Then I would say that that wasn't quite the right expression. Maybe you need to cry, but recognize that it's spilt and that you can't get it back.

Now I think it's an apt expression. The crying over the missed flight would, as noted above, have added to the cost.

I learned a similar lesson about sunk costs while traveling on Greyhound buses in my college days. At least on the routes I used to travel, these buses are extremely slow, and connections are often late.

I remember traveling from Utah to California to see my sister. We made a stop/connection in Reno, Nevada and the connecting line hadn't arrived yet. It was hours late, and angry people were lining up at the customer service counter to... do something. Complain, mostly.

The sun had just risen. I was eating a breakfast bar and drinking a cup of coffee. I did not have to go to work that day. I had a good book. I was on vacation. I just sat down on a bench with my breakfast and my book and decided to enjoy myself.  It's not always pleasant riding a Greyhound bus, but it doesn't have to be miserable.

Comments Versus Blogs

I've been neglecting this blog. Instead of writing content here, I've been writing down my thoughts as comments under other people's blogs. I'm going to try to reverse that trend for the following reasons: (A) I have the sneaky suspicion that linking to websites abroad will increase my own traffic; the selfish motive revealed at last. (B) My gut tells me that removing myself from the fray of blog comments, at least when I'm making cogent and possibly useful points, will improve the cognitive time-horizon applicable to those points. Put differently, long-form thoughts are often of a higher quality than off-the-cuff improvising in commentary below the fold. (To be sure, there is gold to be mined in both media.) (C) Improving things along both of the aforementioned dimensions might improve my reputation in general, which is never a bad thing.

Alright, let's get started. I posted a long comment under a recent blog post, and after reading it, I realized it would have been better if I had written it here. So, with some modifications, here it is.

At Bleeding Heart Libertarians, Jason Brennan writes:

Public reason theorists do not think actual consent is necessary for coercive government policies. But they also deny that “The correct theory of justice says we should do P” is good enough. They want something in between.

But they face a number of problems, including how to deal with real-life citizens, who are often quite unreasonable (according to their theory of what counts as “reasonable”), who might lack any potential to converge on or have consensus on policies, and so on.

So, every theory ends up “idealizing” citizens to a certain degree.

Brennan then goes on to highlight some criticisms of this approach.

Full disclosure: I don't know enough about public reason theory or its criticisms to provide strong input on this particular matter. However, in reading Brennan's post I was reminded of a point Jordan Peterson makes in his book 12 Rules for Life.

Many attempts in political philosophy to conceive of an acceptable justification for government policy begin with a policy in mind and then proceed to model a set of conditions under which that policy is justified. "When do I get to shoot people?" is an absurd question, even after engaging in philosophical rigor, and even when ultimately concluding that "the only appropriate time to shoot someone is in self-defense of a credible existential threat." Here, there is nothing wrong with the conclusion, it's the question that's problematic. Why are we wondering when it's okay to shoot people?

Peterson might that we've gotten it backwards. The more pertinent question is, "Why not shoot people all the time, whenever you want to?" At first, this sounds like an even more ridiculous question; yet, it's in answering this question that we demonstrate why the first question is wrong. It's the answer to this second question that demonstrates a comprehensive philosophy of non-violence.

So, back to politics. It seems to me that political scientists and philosophers are often tempted to ask "When can I do X?" or "Under what conditions can society be forced into Y for its own good?" Wrong questions. The real question is Why shouldn't the government do X and impose Y on all of society all the time, irrespective of what anyone else thinks about it?

My guess is that, if you have a good set of answers to that question then the former questions and their possible answers are no longer relevant.

A Marginally Better Life

For a long time now, I’ve considered that my approach to life is best termed “getting better at being happy,” or perhaps simply, “Getting better at getting better.” Self-improvement has always featured prominently in my psychology; why, I cannot say exactly. At a certain point early on, I adopted the perspective that, if I push myself in a few important ways, I might be able to reach a mental position that would be – I’m not sure, exactly. “Better” than average.

The important caveat here is that it was never about being superior to other people, at least not in the sense of moral worth. I’ve always considered life to be a bit of a sport. Some people live well, and some do not. Among those who live well, some live better than others. The hypothetical happiest man is he who lives best of all, or so goes my mental framework, anyway. We need not get caught up in comparisons (the better man wouldn’t waste time comparing himself to those beneath him, anyway). The point is marginal. At any moment, we all have a choice to do better, or not. Thus, the guiding vision of my life so far has been: Identify as many of those choices as possible, as they come up, and then choose to do better.

When we’re young, this is easy. To be a better student is to study harder and more effectively. To be a better athlete or musician is to practice more. Our personal relationships in youth are often quite simple, consisting of people and situations that are relatively easy to read, where doing the right thing is not so difficult to intuit.

As we grow older, though, maturity and the complexities of adult life combine to make our relationships much more complicated. Wooing a potential date can be hard, but it’s nothing compared to keeping a spouse happy for decades. The former involves making a good impression; the latter involves reading complex and subtle emotional cues every day for the rest of your life. The workplace, too, demands more as we grow. Early in our careers, we’re tasked to perform well. Later in our careers, we’re assigned more responsibilities, encouraged to mentor the younger employees, expected to rise in the ranks, entrusted to build confidence among our clients, and so forth. As for things like art and athleticism, our bodies age and our potential for artistic achievement narrows, so our goals transition from vying for “first prize” to something more introspective: “Being the best I can be.”

This is the landscape I’m in today. I still want to be a continually better person, but it’s no longer so simple as practicing hard and putting in more effort. Nowadays, it’s a matter of trying to identify the margins most in need of improvement, and working at those margins to the exclusion of others. For example, I have a good job and a good amount of savings now; but how can I better invest that savings? Would I be better served to further my career to increase my income, or invest more wisely the income I already have? If the latter, then which is the better investment?

Or, physically speaking: I’m not winning any races any time soon, but how should I best invest my time for managing my health? Is it better to accept that I only have time for [whatever], or should I make more time to build more muscle, increase some running speed, etc.? If the latter, how hard can I push before I start to risk injury or long-term damage? What can I get away with before it becomes counterproductive?

Or, morally speaking: Now that I have adopted the basic healthy patterns of a moral individual – consistent honesty, integrity, conscientiousness, the living of my life in accordance with my values – what, then? What next? Can I afford to give more to charity? Am I investing enough time in training my child to become a moral person? Am I doing enough to promote my values within my community? If not, what more can I do?

In all aspects of life, these are tough questions. The answers don’t come easy, at least not to me, and I can sink a lot of time into chasing unsatisfactory answers. Given that, I have to ask myself what the most practical approach is to solving all my dilemmas?

I don’t know for certain, but I’ve come upon an approach that seems to work. The approach relates to a concept I wrote about on this blog years ago: Stop Beginning. In that post, I discussed how to transition from being a novice runner to being someone who no longer needs to learn or establish the basics. It’s only at that point that a person can undertake to solve some of the “next-level” problems associated with running, like how to increase your speed and endurance after getting to the point where you can finish a 5K without issue. So, it’s not “how to run,” but rather, “how to run better.”

We can apply this same principle to any aspect of life, of course, including the over-arching idea of “living a good life.” If you accept that you are no longer a young person still learning the basics, then you can transition away from tackling the basics, and spend your time addressing more mature problems. The issues change from “how can I invest my money” to “how can I improve my investment portfolio?” Or better yet, “What small change can I make to my portfolio that will get me a decent improvement in my savings plan?”

But the key is not to ask the big question. The key is to sit in the moment and make a simple, utility-maximizing decision. You’re sitting at a restaurant, wondering whether to order another beer. At the margin, this will make you a little drunker, a little fuller on empty calories, and a little poorer. You have to make a choice in the moment: Which decision – to buy the beer, or not – is more consistent with your idea of living the good life? Are you someone whose life will be enriched by another beer? Or, are you someone who could stand to have a glass of water instead? Don’t just ask yourself the questions, envision both scenarios. What would they look like? What would they feel like? How are you likely to feel about your decision tomorrow, when you’re eating breakfast? Take stock of how and to what extent your present circumstances reflect “the good life,” the life you want to lead. Then, make the right choice for living the good life. Maybe have that beer, or maybe not, based on your own personal vision of the good life.

This simple, marginal, low-effort approach can help you make slight course-corrections toward a better life. If you do this often enough, your choices will add up, and you’ll be living an even better life in no time at all.