18 May 2018 - Graham
previously: what is basic?
I think most people work too much on projects they don’t care about. And I think I am lazy.
I’d like to call this newsletter something else. Please send suggestions!
May 25th: Reflections on being a barista
June 1st: Joining the Mari Kondo cult
You can check out prior issues here
Melissa B. called for more compassion for the Basic. And Rachel T. shared concerns about the costs of judging:
Basically (har har), I’ve decided that the “basic vs. non-basic” (and “iconoclast vs. conformist” and “authentic vs. poseur” etc.) mode of thinking is fundamentally flawed and deeply soul-sucking. Among other things, you end up constantly examining every choice you make to avoid being part of the reviled “conformist” group, which is just a really exhausting way to live.
I agree that it’s wise to abide by the maxim: judge not, lest you judge yourself, and fall into a bottomless chasm of anxiety. But I still believe, and suspect you do too, that the Basic are awful. Sometimes I hope the Basic will stay exactly the same because then they won’t be able ruin any more of my stuff. And I’m tempted to avoid criticizing the Basic because their conformity makes them easy to identify and thus easy to avoid. But if I decide not to judge or criticize them, then I am, in effect, giving up on them. Placing the Basic outside of my community of concern seems like a much worse form of othering than judgement.
Mel C. wrote a powerful poem about the way Basic DC others her:
“Other”
eachother
another
other
lover
over the city
sinking
dwelling.
against
beside
reaching.
loving memories of
brown and melanin
against bright
colors, reflective
of our language -
culture.
vulture.
much like eachother.
i tried to stay
you tried to stay
we stayed.
under.
over the
ignorance
blindness
greyness.
so we became other.
together.
over and over
green sprouts
grow on
our skin
is that what makes us other?
the grey sky today
reflects
the homes
they chose
for themselves.
perhaps,
reminiscent of ashes
we are the fire
of other
our ancestors
our colors
our love
our culture.
your glances
let me know you
think i’m
another, other.
my colors,
forage -
creativity
and difference
and life
and beats
greater than
the grey box.
You may have noticed that there wasn’t an issue last week. It was supposed to cover whether we can be generalists, but I didn’t have anything meaningful to say on the topic. If you have things to say about it, feel free to write in.
In the last two years, I’ve often found myself trapped in a negative spiral of unproductive guilt - guilt for not being productive enough, which makes me less productive, which makes me feel worse, and so on.
My moods are considerably improved since I left a job that was somehow both extremely boring and stressful. Since then, I’ve mostly not worked: 6 months of travel followed by 6 months of (at most) 3 days a week at a coffee shop plus a few hours of LSAT tutoring. Yet I still find myself alternating between bright productive stretches and days mired in the do-nothing-swamp-of-guilt. Coffee helps, exercise too especially yoga, and so does this newsletter, but I’m still not in control of my days.
One reason for my mood swings might be the lack of structure. As Frederic Gros writes:
Boredom is dissatisfaction repeated every second, disgust with beginnings: everything is wearisome from the start, because it’s you who starts it.
A lack of external accountability (and forgiveness) might be one reason I’ve had such a hard time working on Potluck. In fact, the best way I’ve found to escape the destructive spiral of guilt is by temporarily giving up the expectation that I’ll work on Potluck at all.
It’s scary to find that I am happier when I put aside this world-changing project full of meaning and spend my flexible schedule on more selfish pursuits like reading too many books; waking up late and eating my oatmeal very slowly; spending 2-5pm at the Hirshhorn and then going to yoga; taking siestas, and staying at shows until late on a Thursday. This free life is terrifying because I have, for the last decade at least, imagined myself as person who needs to do work that makes the world better.
I’m concerned because diverse religions agree that it is dangerous to try to approach happiness directly. Finding purpose, Viktor Frankl persuasively argues, is a wiser pursuit and, paradoxically, one more likely to result in durable happiness.
But the Stoics, some of the earliest and strongest advisors against the pursuit of momentary happiness, also advise against too much work. Seneca writes:
Aren’t you ashamed to keep for yourself just the remnants of you life, and to devote to wisdom only that time which cannot be spent on any business?
Seneca sharply criticizes the hedonist who tries to ignore their own mortality with wine and sex. But he also criticizes the rich, powerful and famous for thinking that wealth, politics, or glory can protect them from the vagaries of life. If anything, more money or status simply means they will suffer greater losses.
In his compelling 1932 essay, In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell knows exactly who to blame for our toxic morality of work.
There are men who, through ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are idle, and I might therefore be expected to praise them. Unfortunately, their idleness is only rendered possible by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have every wished is that others should follow their example.
86 years later, we have an even stronger faith in this gospel. The wealthy leisure class have been replaced by an even wealthier supermanager class who justify their riches by the insane hours they work. For the rest of us, work is still dependent on the whims of the upper crust and even more scarce and unstable:
On the increasingly hierarchical social ladder, busyness measures individual worth. To be insufficiently busy risks falling off the bottom and becoming superfluous. (See, mass incarceration, automation, opioids, and welfare reform.)
I can afford to step off the dirty hamster wheel of modern work thanks to my considerable privilege. But this only makes me feel more guilty! I’ve been given so much, don’t I have an obligation to use my remaining time to make the world better? Probably, but thinking that way doesn’t seem to help me fulfill that duty, which means I need to find a different way to think about it.
A burned (thanks, Andrew W.) copy of Aesop Rock’s Labor Days (spotify) was often in my red discman in the 10th grade. Or maybe I had an iPod by then? In any case, it appears to have influenced much of my thinking in this issue. I am a bit queasy crediting white hip-hop with being unusually eloquent, but this album does have some very clever lyrics.
If you’re in a funk like I described above, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers’ Sidelong (spotify) is a country album with just the right mix of blues, meanness, and wit to help snap you out of it.
You can see selections from past album recommendations and add your own to this collaborative spotify playlist.
I’ve recently started keeping track of the books I most enjoy on this tumblr. It’s easy to set up with this theme, which I found thanks to Austin Kleon. If you make your own, you should tell me about it.
next post: barista theory