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I’ve had a meditation practice for about 15 years now. I have a bit of a highly tuned nervous system, and I went into it thinking it would calm me down. And it has done that.
But over time, and in the periods when the practice is a bit deeper, when I have a little bit more grit under its tires, the thing it really seems to do is alienate me from my own mind.
I watch what is playing on the projector of my psyche, and I think: Why? Why did I — or some part of me — load up that particular film and, at least in the way my mind works, do so again and again and again and again?
There are people who have been thinking about and exploring the strange way the mind performs for a very long time. One of them, Mark Epstein, is someone whose work I’ve long been interested in.
Epstein is a Buddhist and a psychotherapist. His first book, published in 1995, was called “Thoughts Without a Thinker.” His 2022 book is “The Zen of Therapy.”
Now a lot of people go to therapy. The fact that today it might have all these dimensions of mindfulness and awareness in it would seem normal and natural. But some people built that bridge, and Epstein was one of them.
I’ve thought for a while that it would be interesting to ask him, after his decades of therapeutic practice and intense meditation, what he has learned about the mind. How does he think about how the mind works?
What is the relationship you have to your own thoughts when you realize you’re not the one controlling them?
Ezra Klein: Mark Epstein, welcome to the show.
Mark Epstein: What a pleasure.
So tell me, after all these years of practice: What do you think a thought is?
My meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein — I was on a retreat with him last year — said: A thought is just a little something more than nothing. So I really liked that. I thought: Oh, that’s coming out of 60 years of his meditation experience.
So I’ve been repeating that to myself: “a little more than nothing.”
Your first book had one of my favorite titles for a book: “Thoughts Without a Thinker.” And I think that’s the part of this that I want to get at — that strange sense that thoughts just happen.
Why do they happen?
Well, the person is in a predicament in that they find themselves in a body with a mind, having to make sense out of being in the world. And conscious, internal, subjective thought seems to come along with that realization.
So thoughts are, in some way, what we would call the ego trying to figure out: Oh, my God, what do I do in this predicament?
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The ego mediates between inner and outer and between lower and higher. That’s the function of the ego. And thoughts, in this way of thinking, would be an extension of the ego, a tool of the ego.
I would prefer it if they felt like a tool well used. The thing that I find very alienating, when my meditation practice is a bit deeper and I’m a bit more aware, is the recognition that I’m constantly thinking about things that, if I really were trying to figure out how to live in this world in a productive way, I would not be thinking about all the time.
The tendency of thoughts to get stuck, for them to attract the negative imaginings of the future — it’s very strange when you begin being attentive to not just that they’re arising but that there are certain patterns that you would not choose. You’re not sure then who chose them or how they’re being chosen, and it doesn’t feel like you have a lot of control over that process.
It can be a mistake, from the Buddhist point of view, to see thoughts always as the problem. A lot of people who get interested in meditation start to value the empty mind, the mind with no thought, as if that’s some kind of great achievement.
One of the first Buddhist texts that made a big impression on me when I was still in college talked about the untrained mind as being the problem. A disciplined mind, they said, was the road to nirvana, the road to enlightenment.
The point of spiritual practice, of meditation, of psychotherapy, isn’t to make you more stupid. It’s to make you more aware or more conscious so that you actually have choices about the way you live your life.
You started that answer by saying that it can be a common mistake to fetishize the empty mind. Why?
There’s something very appealing about stumbling into an experience of: Oh, the mind is something more than just the thinker of thoughts. It’s actually very peaceful to have that experience of the empty mind. And we’re all looking for something different than what our everyday experience is, so it’s easy to get attached to what feels like a brief transcendental experience or a drug experience and then to go chasing that.
So it’s not about getting rid of thoughts or devaluing thoughts. It’s about cultivating thoughts that are useful.
One of my most profound experiences on a silent meditation retreat was about five days into the retreat. My mind was analyzing what the food was going to be for breakfast. And it was like: OK, the food is fine — it’s yogurt and oatmeal and peanuts and raisins. But where’s the bread? What we really need is a piece of toast. That was preoccupying me.
On about the fifth day, bread appeared. And I put it in the toaster and made a plate with butter and jam and sat down and took my first mindful bite: very focused, no thinking, just the taste of the toast — so delicious.
And then, my mind wandered. The next thing I knew, I looked down and I was like: Who ate my toast? It had disappeared. And where my mind went immediately was: Who did this to me? You know, searching for someone to blame.
I think that’s the kind of insight, actually, that precipitates out of a deep meditation experience where we see that so much of our mental activity is trying to protect ourselves or trying to find someone to blame for whatever it is that happens that we’re uncomfortable with.
So much of thinking is from a self-centered place like that, and with enough meditation practice, we start to wade through a lot of that [expletive].
In a way, this podcast’s genesis is that I was in a used bookstore in the East Village, and I came across “Thoughts Without a Thinker.” It came out, what, in the 1980s?
Nineteen ninety-five.
Ninety-five. OK. I’d always meant to read it. Then, when I did read it — it’s very Freudian.
Yes.
And so I want to start bringing in the other side of your work here. I think now a lot of us look at Freudian work, Freudian theory, and think: Man, it is strange people got excited about that.
But Freud is a big influence on that first book. What do you still find valuable about the way Freud understood, or what he did, for psychotherapy or understandings of the subconscious? And what do you look at with a bit of: Well, we all got carried away?
Well, I don’t think we all got carried away, but a whole generation got carried away.
Freud has been a big influence on all of my books. The whole way we think about the mind, about the self, the unconscious, the instincts — that’s all Freud. The 20th-century, 21st-century conception of the mind, whether we agree with everything that Freud said about sexuality and whatnot, is all Freud.
Freud, in a way, was a meditator. He was snorting cocaine and using that heightened awareness to observe his own dreams, his own mind —
[Chuckles.] Wait, I’m sorry — really?
You know all this! Come on.
I do not know all this!
Yes.
My Freudian knowledge is paper thin.
Oh, Freud. There’s a rich —
So what you’re proposing here is that the correct way to understand the mind is to take a bunch of cocaine and then observe? [Laughs.]
I’m not proposing that at all, but many people are doing that, and it leads them into meditation.
But no, Freud’s whole thing — at the beginning of his career, after he was studying fish, he got into cocaine.
A classic progression. [Laughs.]
[Laughs.] It can come out of many different directions.
In his book “The Interpretation of Dreams,” which was published around 1900, he engaged in one of the first self-analyses and began to really chart his dreams, examine his dreams and interpret his dreams.
His whole method of free association and evenly suspended attention — the purpose of which was to get the rational mind, the thinking mind, the judging mind out of the way, so that you could go deeper into your own personal experience — that led him into the discovery of what he called the unconscious.
The unconscious is where all our secrets are stored and the aspects of ourselves that come up in our dreams and in our fantasies. Like, what is that? And where’s that coming from? Freud called it the unconscious.
Then he proceeded to develop a method of probing the unconscious through psychotherapy, which was a revolution. He promised too much — the same way that psychedelics are currently promising too much or Prozac promised too much or meditation promises too much. Because people want something that will cure everything, and psychoanalysis couldn’t do that.
When I read things that are heavily influenced by Freud now — I’ll read the stories he’s telling, the ideas he’s spinning out: You talk in your book about his taking a walk with some friends and just ending up, as they seem a little bit dissatisfied, spinning out a very profound and intense theory about their relationship to the passage of time.
It’s a beautiful little paper called “On Transience,” and Freud ends it by saying: Is a flower that blooms for only a single night any less beautiful because of the short duration of its life?
When I read that story in your book — and I’ve read other Freudian stories — what I think immediately is: Well, how does he know?
I feel like now there is a tendency to prize forms of knowing that can be validated in some external way. Whereas Freud always seemed to be a very insightful storyteller.
But you either bought into the story — or you didn’t.
Oh, totally. Same with meditation.
Tell me about that.
Well, there’s a big effort now to document the scientific benefits, to prove in the lab that when you’re meditating, something is really happening in the brain.
I started out in my career working for a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, Herbert Benson, who did physiological measurements of transcendental meditators showing that their blood pressure could be lowered and their heartbeat slowed and their carbon dioxide output diminished. So I understand the value of: Oh, this is a real thing. Science tells us it’s a real thing.
But my experience of going on my first couple of silent meditation retreats — a week or 10 days of not talking, not making eye contact and just looking at my own internal experience — that’s what showed me that meditation was a real thing, experientially. Like: Oh, my mind is capable of more than just my usual thoughts. There’s a whole, vast, both interior and external, experience that I have never allowed myself that is opening up.
Science, if it were going to try to document that, might be able to measure my heartbeat, but it couldn’t get close to the poetics of the experience.
If science can’t find it, how would you describe what it is that science can’t find?
Love.
In meditation?
Yes, in meditation. The great revelation that can come out of meditation is: Oh, you start to experience yourself as a loving being.
Why do you think that is?
I don’t know. I think because we are fundamentally loving beings. That’s our true nature.
I’ve always been a little bit — I don’t want to say turned off — but the idea that the good nature is underneath, that we’re just trying to pull off all the crust and the crud and the stories — is that what you’re getting at?
I have little kids. Sometimes they’re really loving and great, but sometimes they’re slightly tyrannical.
Totally tyrannical. By the time they’re little kids, it’s already happening.
So it’s just when we’re babies that our good nature is there? [Chuckles.]
What is that thing underneath? And do you actually believe it is underneath? Or do you believe it is a thing we are shaping? And then it feels like it was always there in sufficiently advanced meditation or moments of awakening.
I had a conversation once with Ram Dass — you know, Richard Alpert, blah, blah — I’ll let you explain. [Chuckles.]
Yes, Ram Dass — a great, eventually Hindu-influenced mystic, also a crucial figure in the psychedelic revolution, alongside Timothy Leary. One of the most fascinating lives of the 20th century.
Started out as a psychology professor at Harvard.
Yes.
I met him when he was already in his Ram Dass incarnation, but I was just at Harvard. I was in my early 20s. And then I went to medical school, became a psychiatrist, didn’t see him for 20 years. He had a bad stroke, could hardly talk. I went to visit him, and he always sort of joked with me. He was, like: Oh, are you a Buddhist psychiatrist now? I was like: I guess so.
He said — and he had trouble making the words because he’d had a stroke: Do you see them — meaning my patients — do you see them as already free?
And it took me up short. Like: Do I see them as already free? I had to say yes. That’s what I had gotten from the meditation side of things.
But the mind is capable of something so beyond what we normally think of our minds as doing, that the shorthand for that would be love.
Are you talking about something we would understand as the mind, or something more like what we would understand as like the shards of a soul?
From the Buddhist side, they use the same word to talk about mind and heart. Put that together, and I think you get a soul. So if there’s any purpose behind our incarnations as humans, the purpose would be to come in contact with that greater potential of the mind. And that’s what all this work is about, is uncovering, to let it shine through.
Well, this gets to a symmetry that you point out between how Freud advised the therapist to show up and how Buddhist meditation advises meditators to show up — which is with this unusual spirit of nonjudgment.
Yes: Suspend judgment and give impartial attention to everything there is to observe. That’s Freud, sounding like a Buddhist teacher.
So tell me what is valuable about that orientation.
What that mental, emotional, even spiritual state permits is an openness to the other. So when I’m being a therapist, I’m just really curious and really trying to make room for — if you were my patient — whatever it is that’s happening truthfully for you in this moment. That’s what I’m encouraging.
Hopefully there’s no hint of judgment. I think that’s something that Freud was very clear about: Suspend judgment and give impartial attention to everything there is to observe.
That makes space for someone, and it’s very unusual that we engage in that kind of way with each other.
And how about from the meditative standpoint? I think most people who initially get into meditation get into it from a highly judgmental place of their own emotional experience.
Yes.
That’s very true for me. I would like to not feel the way I am feeling all the time — anxious, spun-up, pulled along by the current of my own thoughts — and I had been told this can help.
Sometimes it does. But sometimes it does the opposite and makes you more aware of actually how stirred up you are.
Then you start telling this to more experienced meditators and they say: Oh, right, yes, this was missold to you. This is about being aware of what’s going on, not about attaining this much more equanimous state that you were showing up instrumentally to grab hold of.
Yes. It’s not just about being aware of what’s going on, it’s about changing the way you relate to what’s going on.
Coming into meditation, all I could see was my own judgmental mind: I’m judging myself, I’m judging the other people there, we’re not even talking, I’m not even looking at them, I’ve got an opinion about everything — that’s what’s occupying my mind.
With meditation, just be mindful, see what’s there, see what you’re feeling, see what your mind is doing. Gradually, you see those go-to conditioned responses to one’s world — that doesn’t have to be the last word in how you relate.
And it doesn’t feel good — that’s the main thing. You start to feel: Oh, this doesn’t feel good. And there’s an alternative: I don’t have to be judging.
Well, you say that. That’s not my experience of it. I often will hear meditation teachers and, for that matter, therapists say something like this: The implication is that how I feel about things, what emerges into my mind, is under my control.
I understand that I can be less reactive to what I’m thinking or what I’m feeling, but the feelings are still there. They just then feel like they’re bouncing around inside of me.
Yes. The feelings are still there — I think that’s the common experience. The wish is that they’re just going to go away and you’re going to become a different person.
But the much more common experience is that you just are who you are. The reactions are still there. But as a one-time teacher of mine used to say: At one point they were these big monsters, and the monsters became like little shmoos in the mind.
So you’re trying to cultivate equanimity. The Buddha talked about gain and loss, pleasure and pain, sorrow and so on, as the great winds that blow through us. It’s trying to get your mind into a place, like on the top of a great mountain or under a big tree, where all the ebbs and flows, all the fluctuations, are part of what the mind can tolerate.
How much is this emerging from the — I don’t know how to describe it — the lack of identification with what we normally think of as the self? You have a line:
The more you examine your experience, the more mysterious, and elusive, the self becomes.
This is an enriching, if also a sobering and humbling, realization.And it’s a bit where I started, but this feeling: Oh, I might be feeling this way, but I’m not choosing it, and I don’t necessarily have to follow it — it’s both valuable, and it’s very strange. It’s very self-alienating.
Ten, 15 years into having a meditation practice, I’m much less certain of why the things happening in my head are happening than I was before, when I didn’t question them. And I just assumed that what was going on in my head was the outcome of some cohesive process and self and set of intentions that were: I was thinking about this, and that’s what I should be thinking about.
Well, I think it’s a really nice thing to be less certain. That little bit of freedom that I was talking about before? That’s associated with being a little less certain about everything, certainly about the self.
In Buddhist psychology, one of the main principles is selflessness. It has taken me a long time to get my head around self, selflessness, ego, egolessness.
But the principle that helped me the most is that in order to understand selflessness, you first have to actually find within yourself, you have to locate within yourself, the self that doesn’t exist.
And that helped you understand it? [Laughs.]
That helped me understand it. Yes. Because when I looked down at my toast that wasn’t there — Who ate my toast? — that was really me, upset. Like: No toast, what happened? Who can I blame?
They say in Buddhist psychology that the best time to find the self that doesn’t exist is when someone who you love hurts your feelings, accuses you of doing something that you really didn’t do. And this thing in you seizes up, like: How could you think that about me? I didn’t do that! That “me” or that “I” — we’re all conceited like that.
When those situations happen and you feel really gripped by that sense of injustice, from the Buddhist point of view, you can turn your mind and look at that feeling. And there’s the self. There’s the self that doesn’t exist. That feeling of “me” is just a little bit more than nothing.
As Joseph said, at the beginning of our conversation: It’s just a feeling that, under the power of self-observation, starts to break up.
I’m married. I’ve had experiences of feeling upset with my partner.
No!
I’ve had it with my friends. I’ve had it with myself. I’m constantly pissed off at myself. And if there’s ever a time when the self feels strong and stable, it is when it is under threat.
I don’t know how stable it feels when the self feels strong and indignant and angry.
So what about looking inward opens your patience?
Sometimes when I’m in that mode, the thing that I just hear is the endless recitation of why I’m right in my own head.
Exactly.
And I’m not sure it’s helpful —
It’s not helpful.
[Chuckles.] But it’s definitely something I can locate. [Laughs.]
Yes, exactly. That’s my point. So that the self is actually intrinsically relational.
The self wants to be in relationship to the other, but that feeling of “She hurt me,” that feeling of righteous indignation, pushes your self into an isolated, defensive, rigid, self-important, judgmental place. That’s not a happy place. As right as you feel about it, it’s not a happy place.
So what’s my role as a therapist? One, to support the feeling, because I’m sure you’re right.
Always.
And second, your marriage is important, and your relationship is important, and you care about whoever it is who hurt you.
But at what point are you seeing that the self does not exist?
I understand the part of your sentence where you located the self. I don’t understand yet the part of your sentence where you located the self that does not exist.
Everything appears more real than it really is. We see the world as: This is all totally real.
But it’s not. It’s much more evanescent. It’s much more impermanent. It’s much less stable than we want it to be.
Like the final words of the Diamond Sutra: This is how you should experience: this fleeting world — a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream.
What I’m after: When you come in and you’re putting yourself in that place — that fixed, certain, hurt, angry place — I’m trying to loosen that up for you. I’m trying to loosen up that identification with being you — the angry you, the hurt you, the judgmental you, the you that you know. Because — and this is Freud’s contribution — there’s so much about you that you don’t know.
You had a line I thought was interesting where you said:
Traditional therapy unpacks in order to make sense. Meditation asks us to stop making sense so that we can find where happiness truly abides. Therapy examines the accumulated self, the only one that is shaped by all the defenses we’ve used to get through life.
Meditation asks us to divest ourselves of those very defenses.Tell me a bit about that tension. You’re setting them up as almost, not quite opposite ways of knowing, but one mode is very cerebral and takes the stories very seriously, and the other mode is, in some ways, trying to get you to loosen your grip and be very skeptical of the stories your mind tells.
Yes. I was trying to channel David Byrne there with “stop making sense.”
Taking the story — one’s own personal story — seriously is superimportant. And there’s a real tendency among people who don’t have a psychotherapeutic interest but are coming strictly from the meditative point of view to diminish the importance of everything we’ve learned from a hundred years of psychotherapy: Early childhood experience, emotional pain, even traumatic events — those are all just phenomena to be observed. Don’t make too big a deal.
I think that’s a mistake. I think we need to take ourselves seriously and understand ourselves as best we can, and then begin to loosen the attachments that we all have to the various events that have formed us.
From the spiritual side, freedom from identity is the goal. And we can see what happens in the world when people are unable to free themselves from their identity. It’s a big cause of conflict and pain. But those identities are superimportant to be able to make sense of, too. So that’s one of the ways that I see these two worlds really helping each other.
When I tend to exit therapy, it’s often because I notice that it now feels like it is reinforcing stories I don’t want to tell.
Mm-hmm.
It is a space where I come in, and it feels like there’s a pull to say whatever I’m upset about that week, and I leave feeling more upset and somehow more entrenched in my upsetness. There’s one part of me — maybe the meditative part of me, I’ll identify it as — that wants nothing more than to loosen the stories I tell about myself.
And then going into this place where I tend to keep telling them — even if only to examine them — over time it becomes very hard to say: Well, am I getting better? Or am I getting worse? Or am I getting more concretized in this one narrative?
And I’ve definitely watched people get stuck in therapy. They’re probably there for much too long, and it almost becomes a place of ego, with somebody to just listen to you and reflect back at you.
How do you think about when talk therapy is helpful and when it can become harmful?
Well, I’m not sure the length of time that somebody stays in therapy is the right measure.
When therapy is good, one thing it can be good for is that it’s a real relationship. And it can, at its best, be a surprising relationship that continues to provoke and enliven and nourish. So I wouldn’t judge it necessarily by the length of time.
It’s very tempting as a therapist to just sit back and be supportive of the person in their struggle. I’m sure I fall into that sometimes.
But I’m also very aware of being provocative in some kind of way. I’m always looking for how to undermine the narrative and coax somebody into a perspective that they might not have had, if not for the conversation that we are having.
A lot of the patients who have given me any feedback about what they’ve gotten out of being in therapy with me, they all tend to say: Oh, you always surprised me, and that’s why I kept coming back. Because I always thought you would say one thing, but you said another thing.
That feedback makes me feel like: Oh, maybe I’m actually doing something helpful.
I’m about to sound like a big skeptic of therapy, and I’m not. I’ve been in therapy with many different therapists and have gained hugely through those relationships.
But one thing I wonder about is: We have a society right now that is much more therapeutic than it has been at any other point in history — much more influenced by therapy, there are more therapists, people go to it more often, it’s more destigmatized. And you might think having spread this treatment so far that you would see this huge reduction in the things that therapy most obviously treats: depression, anxiety, other kinds of disorders you might find in the D.S.M.
And we seem to not be seeing that. We seem to be seeing a more therapeutically informed society where this has almost become more of people’s self-definition, particularly among young people, where sometimes people’s anxiety is almost an identity.
How do you think about that tension? I mean, you know from your own work that therapy can do great good. And yet somehow we have had a much larger societal dose of therapy, during a much more comfortable time to be a human being than 100 years ago in this country, and we don’t seem to be doing great.
There’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying. We had a series of conferences a couple of decades ago about Buddhism and psychoanalysis, bringing R.D. Laing and Ram Dass and people like that together.
One of the conclusions that came out of those conferences was that one of the things that psychoanalysis or psychotherapy and Buddhism or meditation — one of the things they really share are that they’re two methods that don’t work.
[Laughs.]
Because what people want from them is beyond what either of them can do.
So to try to answer your question: Neuroscience, science, psychopharmacology — we really don’t understand the mind or the brain or any of the major psychiatric disorders — bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, O.C.D., even post-traumatic stress. There’s a lot of talk about the neurophysiological correlates, and there’s a lot of work to be done, but the genetics of it — we don’t understand anything. So in terms of treatments, even the drug treatments, are very crude.
Then there’s a whole class of people, since the advent of Prozac and the S.S.R.I.s and so on, who are hoping that this medication or that medication will free them in some way from thoughts or feelings that have been plaguing them. Sometimes those medicines really help.
I have an ear for when they might, and what I usually find is that either they’re going to help — or they do nothing. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that people aren’t just magically better.
Plus being a person is really difficult. Having a marriage is difficult. Having children is difficult. Having parents is difficult. Being in this world politically is difficult. Even when the country is at peace, it’s difficult.
So psychotherapy is like a miracle in our culture — that two people could come together in a room with no purpose other than to talk about what’s happening between them or in each of their lives. So there’s a kind of comfort in it — which might really be what it’s good for.
It’s a relationship where you can be yourself. And how many of those do we really have?
It’s true that it is hard to be a person, and it’s also true that we don’t understand much about people and the mind or the brain or these disorders. And it’s also true that both therapy and, in a different way, meditation are very alert to stories.
Something I have wondered over the years is to what degree the therapeutic stories we are telling are contagious. The more we become, as a society, alert and validating of the experience of anxiety, the more people begin to notice their anxiety. Noticing it makes you more sensitive to the fact that you’re anxious, and it begins to build from there. I have felt that has happened to me at times.
Or trauma is something we didn’t talk about nearly as much 30 years ago as we do today. Now my grandparents’ generation, my great-grandparents’ generation — they had far more trauma in their lives, when I think about what happened to them, what they escaped from, what they dealt with.
And if you talked to them — and I did when I was younger — they did not describe themselves as traumatized. That was not their self-definition. And some of them — I mean, I’m Jewish — had gone through terrible things.
And today, trauma is omnipresent. You’ve written a whole book on trauma. You describe in your book on this that trauma is a kind of omnipresent feature of everyday life.
How do you think about that, this rise of people believing that their trauma is definitional to them? Despite the fact that I don’t think one could really defend the proposition that people who grew up in the ’90s and 2000s, or the ’80s and the ’90s, are net-net going through more things we would objectively describe as traumatic than the people who grew up in the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s?
Well, I think, first of all, the pendulum has swung about trauma — like you were saying. So coming out of World War I, even coming out of World War II, the norm was not to talk about it. The men who came back from war and from the trenches or from the planes or wherever — the norm was not to talk about it.
That worked for some people and didn’t work for other people and led to a lot of alcoholism and secrets and acting out in ways that people didn’t understand. And the therapeutic culture that we’re a part of came around and began to see what the downside was of that way of coping.
The intrinsic tendency of the ego, of the self, the intrinsic defense mechanism is to look away. The Buddha used the word “dukkha” to describe suffering — life is tinged with a sense of unsatisfactoriness or suffering.
The actual word “dukkha” can be broken apart and translated as “hard to face.” And the problem with that is that we never put words on it. When trauma — either a little trauma of second grade being difficult or a big trauma of losing a child or a partner or a piece of your body or whatever — my sense of what can be therapeutic in those conditions is to help a person who has been through something like that begin to articulate what the experience really was.
And once it’s articulated, it can either become a thing that gets overarticulated, like you were saying, where it becomes the defining narrative. Or it can take its place in a person’s history so that they have the understanding, and they can begin to file it away in a conscious place, rather than it being stored in some kind of unconscious place where it leaps out in the shadows and wrecks their life.
So the over-articulation of the anxiety that one could say is a normal part of being a human is just as much a problem as the suppression or repression. Because once you’re overidentified with any aspect of your experience, then you’re falling into the trap of conceit or of self, and that becomes a limiting factor.
It’s making me think about the swings of the pendulum in terms of infants and parents and the infants’ sleep. When we had kids, it was all about Ferber, and you had to Ferberize your child and let them cry, and then the pendulum swung and it’s like: Sleep in the same bed. There are problems on either side.
Let me try a thought on you and see what you think of it. In the people I have known who have gone through profoundly terrible things, things people should not have to go through, the people I’ve known who, it seems, have emerged the healthiest — in some cases, I feel like they’re much healthier than I am with my more gentle existence — are the people who have eventually turned the work they were doing inward into work they’re doing outward.
Something about what they went through and the way they processed it became a way they began to interact with others, and they made meaning out of it. It became part of the way they give their own gifts into the world. And it has deepened their own sensitivity and empathy and the set of tools that they use to help others.
The people I’ve known who have struggled more, I feel like they’ve gotten trapped on the internal part. It has become not just a story about them but a story that has kept them trapped inside themselves. And it has become a way they don’t have to engage as much with other people and other people’s experiences, because theirs has remained so overwhelming.
There’s something about being able to turn the internal experience into something external that seems important. But my sample size here is limited.
I think you’re totally correct. The common tendency, when some horrible thing happens that we feel should never happen to anyone — but those kinds of things are going to happen to everyone because we all face old age, illness, death, separation from the loved, etc. — but when it happens in an obvious, extreme way, the common psychological tendency is to feel like: I’m the only one who this is happening to.
They call it a sense of singularity. And that is very imprisoning. It’s totally normal. Like the floods at the camp in Texas — that should never be happening. All these parents are losing their kids, and each one is going to feel like the singularity of that experience, like: No one is going to be able to relate to this.
There are a couple of great Buddha stories, where the Buddha comes upon a woman whose child has died, who won’t put down her dead baby. And everyone — the villagers — are scared of her. She’s acting like a crazy person. She says: Is there anyone who can help me? And they point her toward the Buddha.
And the Buddha says: I’ve got medicine for you. All I need is a mustard seed from anywhere, from a family in the village where no one has lost a husband or a wife or a parent or a child. Just bring me the mustard seed.
And she goes and talks to everyone, and she can’t find anyone who hasn’t experienced this kind of loss.
One of the great benefits of working in a psychotherapeutic way with an event like that is that sometimes you start to feel like, even though this horrible thing has happened to me, this is a window into all the horrible things that are happening everywhere to everyone.
I don’t have the quote from you in front of me, but in the book about trauma, you write something that is like: Trauma is a terrible experience that is not relationally held.
Yes. What makes it a terrible experience is that it’s not relationally held. The need is for the holding in the aftermath of something like that.
Tell me about the relational dimension of it, though.
We’re relational beings. That’s the great revelation. We think we’re isolated individuals, locked inside our heads with our thoughts, in competition with everybody else, but we’re not.
From the beginning, from infancy, we’re relational beings. We know ourselves through the reflection, the mirroring of the parent. We are constantly in relationship to our world. We’re not separate from the world — we are of the world, and we are of each other. So we need each other to make sense out of our experience.
Needing each other — it’s such an interesting dimension of being human. In the classic origin story of the Buddha, he goes out and sees old age, goes out and sees sickness, sees death, sees loss.
It’s not just that it will happen to you — it will happen to everybody. And it makes being in a relationship with anybody very frightening.
All the way down to the small bits of it, which is — far before you face any of that — just the knowledge that, on the one hand, you need people terribly, and on the other, you won’t always get what you want from them.
The nature of other people is they cannot fully give you what you want because they’re someone else. And there’s always going to be that gap between the two of you.
Yes.
You have a book about desire, which is a very important concept in Buddhism. It’s sort of all about this. Can you give me a little bit of that thesis?
The book about desire was written to try to defend desire from the Buddhists who kept saying, when they talk about the Four Noble Truths: The first truth is suffering, the second truth is the cause of suffering, and the cause of suffering is desire.
So all these people I knew who were Buddhists were running around denying their desire, or in deep conflict about their own desires, especially their erotic desires.
But my understanding of the Buddha’s teaching was not that he was saying that the cause of suffering was desire but that the cause of suffering was clinging or craving or ignorance. And the clinging or craving or ignorance had to do with trying to get more from one’s desire than desire was able to yield, which is what you were paraphrasing there.
Desire often, if not always, leaves a gap — and Freud wrote about this very beautifully — the gap between what’s imagined, what’s desired and what’s actually possible. Freud called that the reality principle, and the pleasure principle runs into the reality principle. The Buddha talked about the same thing.
In the book about desire, you have this quote that I found very moving: “Love is a revelation of the other person’s freedom.” Tell me what that means to you.
That’s the best quote in the book. The wish, the inclination of erotic desire, is to fully possess, or become one with, the loved object, person, body — however you want to say it. The revelation is that the other person’s subjectivity can never be totally known. No matter the desire, no matter the love, there’s a separation there which can’t be breached.
Love means you allow that, and you actually experience it, first as a disappointment and then as a release.
Tell me what you mean when you say “experience it as a release.” What does it mean, not just to have the revelation of the other person’s freedom but to actually respect another person’s freedom?
Love that allows the other person’s freedom means that you can let them go away with the faith and the understanding that they will return. So that permission and that faith are an essential part of love.
You talk about there always being a residual of loneliness in all relationships. And you say: “In the revelation of another person’s freedom is a window into a state of nonclinging.” You go on: “While desire yearns for completion, and seeks it most commonly in love, it can find the freedom it is looking for only by not clinging.”
What does that mean?
The space between — the liminal space, the space of disappointment, the space where you’re thrown back on yourself — is a spiritual place. It’s a very important place to explore. It takes you deep into the self in an unscripted and potentially nourishing way.
In that book, I quoted the poet Anne Carson, who has a beautiful book called “Eros the Bittersweet,” where she quotes Sappho. Carson is a scholar of ancient Greek, and she says the Greek word for “bittersweet” is actually “sweetbitter,” that it’s turned around in English. The sweetness comes first, but then, because there’s always a little bit of a letdown, that’s where the bitterness is.
The Buddha, in his teachings, was actually saying that gap is interesting. And that, if instead of turning away or getting angry or getting frustrated or trying to squeeze more out of the object of desire, if instead we can settle our minds into that gap with less judgment, there’s an important lesson there that will help us with old age, illness, death and any other tragedies that are going to befall us.
You have a lovely image — I think it comes from the teacher Stephen Batchelor in that book. He talks about this difference between holding a coin in a clenched fist and holding it with an open palm. I found that to be a very resonant visual for me.
How do you understand that difference? Because nobody is saying — you’re not saying — that people can or should get rid of desire or that the suffering will go away, or any of it really, but that there’s some difference between clenching things and still holding them but there being some space around it.
What creates space?
For me, one of the prime motivations of desire is the need of the self to come in contact with its own mutability. It’s the need of the self to merge temporarily with the other, to loosen its boundaries. So the clenching that can come with desire is basically holding on too tight, as we say in psychoanalytic language, to “the object of our desire” — even though it’s a person, not an object. Which tends to alienate the other or push them away or actually get in the way of the experience of the other.
Holding the other with an open hand allows space around both of you so that there’s room for the inevitable moving away.
But pull out of the metaphor of the holding — let’s literalize that. We all have things that we want, we desire. And then when they don’t happen — or they happen, but not the way we were hoping they would happen — we get upset: I wanted this night to go this way, I wanted this trip to not get canceled, I wanted this promotion to happen — whatever it might be.
And I understand that the clenched fist is a kind of anger: I wanted this thing, and I didn’t get it. Or I didn’t get it in the way I wanted to get it, and now I’m upset, and I’m trying to change it. Or I’m angry at people for it, or I’m angry at myself.
What is the actual experience of being open-palmed about it? Because I try sometimes. [Laughs.] And I almost feel like what I end up doing is white-knuckling through my own emotional response. It’s like: I know that I’m trying to be open-palmed, and so I’m just going to sit here and endure it.
This is a good metaphor, because we all understand what it means to open and close a fist. But emotionally, internally, what are you talking about?
Emotionally, internally, what I’m saying is all of those feelings are going to come — the frustrated ones that you’re talking about — but they don’t have to hold you tight. Because the spaciousness that comes from opening up the palm is what allows you to move into the new reality.
But how do you do it?
Just by opening the palm.
OK. But there’s no palm in this. We’re not actually holding things. [Laughs.]
[Laughs.] The palm is in your mind.
My experience of emotions having a hold on me, to get very specific about it, is: I’m upset about something, and I can’t stop thinking about it. It just plays and replays and replays and replays. And every time I catch myself, I’m like: Oh, there’s a thought again.
But it just keeps happening. It feels like a storm inside me. Like energy. And I can let it out — yell at somebody, yell at myself — and I don’t. I’m actually pretty good at controlling that kind of thing usually. But it’s still there.
I don’t know what it would mean in that moment to open my palm. I don’t feel like I have control.
Yes. I’m not saying that we actually have control over our emotional responses to things. If something is making you angry, you’re going to get angry before your thinking mind can tell you not to.
I think it’s trickier than that. It’s that once the difficult emotion is aroused, we don’t have to completely indulge it. There’s always a moment when self-awareness kicks in. And it’s at that moment — when self-awareness kicks in — that we have a choice.
So, really, you could try visualizing opening your palm — literally. What some cognitive-behavioral people might have you do is actually try to think those thoughts consciously more, rather than: Ugh, I can’t stop them, and they keep coming.
So you could play with it in various ways. The idea is to begin to play with the reactions, rather than feeling besieged by them. And you might have to try five different things.
Is that something that you feel over your life, over your practice, over your therapy, you’ve gotten much better at? What is the difference between how Mark Epstein handles an upsetting situation today versus when you were in college?
There’s not much difference.
All this work you’ve done, all this meditation, and you’d say you’re in the same place?
When I’m upset about something, I’m upset in much the same way. Hopefully, it doesn’t go on as long.
So what was all this for then?
Well, something to do!
[Laughs.] Come on — either you don’t believe what you’re telling me, or this undermines the book somewhat.
I don’t think so. I think it’s all in the attitude that one has toward one’s experience.
Well, but that might be the difference.
That is the difference.
So what is the difference between the attitude you would have had when you were 20 and the attitude you would have now?
Oh, I have much more of a sense of humor about myself, at least in the immediate aftermath of whatever it is that has been so upsetting. I mean, I definitely get upset about what I get upset about, and the people who are close to me have to live with that.
So you’ve not become nonreactive? You’ve not —
Oh, no. I don’t think that’s a possibility.
So what is the possibility here? If you do a lifetime of this work and it goes well, what have you achieved at the end of it, aside from that it was interesting? And I agree that meditating is interesting.
Yes. Oh, what have you achieved? Peace of mind.
But it doesn’t sound like you have peace of mind. It sounds like you’re stormy.
No, I have peace of mind. Definitely.
Match those up for me.
Within the storminess, I’m not trying not to be stormy.
So people are dealing with your being stormy. They have to handle that you have the temper you always had and the upset you always had.
What part of you has peace of mind during that? Or is it just later that you are better at returning to something more equanimous?
Well, it’s not a part of me that has peace of mind. Either I have it, or I don’t have it. Because there’s only one of me — if there is one of me.
[Chuckles.]
But I have confidence in the people who are around me that they know me and cannot be destroyed by me. So that’s very reassuring. I have permission from the environment that I’m not so bad that I’m going to destroy. So that’s very helpful as a container. And I know that the frustrated, violent, angry, sad reactions are just reactions and not really who I am.
There’s always a part of me that’s looking at it like: If I were going to write something, how would I portray this?
So the peace of mind is a subtle de-identification with the experience you’re having?
Yes, absolutely.
And what does that do for you?
It makes me less afraid.
Of what?
Of myself.
And you used to be more afraid of yourself?
I don’t know if I was consciously aware of that, but I was anxious.
And so that has created a — you do not find those experiences as —
It has created a buffer.
“Buffer” is an interesting word. In the periods when my meditation is going well — which is not always — the thing I have is a buffer. It’s very slim, but it’s just like a little bit of separation. And it’s very valuable. And it’s very hard to maintain. But it is just a couple of milliseconds between me and my reactions.
The thing that comes with that is a kind of humor, which is very helpful when dealing with oneself, since we tend to take ourselves so seriously.
So I think that’s the other way to answer your question — like: What has changed? I think I have a little more of a sense of humor about myself or about situations, as terrible as they can be.
Doesn’t Joseph Goldstein have a line that’s something like: Enlightenment is lightening up? And I’m not saying that you’re enlightened, but you’re getting at something like that, which is that there’s a lightening up here.
I think in terms of, What does all this really do? — I think that the lightening up is probably as good a way of talking about it as any.
I had a friend — he’s deceased now — a psychotherapist named Jack Engler. He was already into the meditation stuff. Took all the psychological testing — the Rorschach tests, projective tests — went to India. Gave all those tests to a control group — beginning meditators, advanced meditators and meditation teachers — and what he found was, even in the most advanced meditators, there was no diminution of internal conflict. There was just a greater willingness to acknowledge the conflict.
He was a little disappointed. But I think that plays into what I’m saying. Like, you’re still you. No matter what you’re doing, you’re still you. But maybe there’s a little change.
Do you feel that there’s a difference in what your mind or your awareness attaches to?
And here’s what I mean by that: Even in my own experience, if I get a really good night of sleep and my kids are being challenging, my ability to look at that challenge with humor, or even be with them in it, is extremely different than if I got a bad night of sleep. And that is holding what they’re doing completely constant.
And then there are people I know who have much deeper meditative practices and other kinds of practices than I do. And I’ll sometimes be with them and I’ll notice that their mind will incline toward the things they like in a situation, in almost the same way mine will incline toward the things that dissatisfy me in a situation.
And I wonder sometimes if the point of this path, of this work, is to try to change what is attracting you, change what you’re noticing, change what you’re fixating on: the beauty of the moment rather than the edginess of it.
Do you feel that is true? Is that a viable thing to hope for? Is that too much?
I liked what you were saying about when you get a good night’s sleep, your way of relating to the kids is different, because I think what meditation is trying to give us is the equivalent of a good night’s sleep.
It doesn’t guarantee a good night’s sleep, but the attitude that you found in yourself when dealing with the kids — that’s how we’re training ourselves to be with our own minds in meditation. It’s very analogous.
That thing that you’re describing, of benevolently looking to the good, supporting that, recognizing but not judging too critically what you don’t like — all of that is beneficial for the mind.
Always our final question: What are three books you would recommend to the audience?
A new book called “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs,” by Ian Leslie. Do you know that book?
I’ve heard of it, yes.
About the Beatles, about: You think you know the Beatles, but you don’t know the Beatles.
It did seem to me we needed another book about the Beatles. [Laughs.]
Who thought! But it’s so good.
I’ve heard this actually from other Beatles lovers.
Not just from a Beatles person. In terms of the mutability of the self and the creative act and love — it has everything. It’s fantastic.
Donald Hall, the poet: “Essays After Eighty.” Donald Hall was, like, a straighter poet than the Beat poets but of the same time period. He was married for many years to Jane Kenyon, who was younger, and everyone said to her: What? Why are you with this old guy? He’s going to die.
But then she died, and so he was alone. He stopped writing poetry, but he kept writing essays from his farmhouse in New Hampshire. And the essays are incredible — about having lived a whole life, some of them about being 80 and some of them reflecting back to when he was young. It just gives a sense of someone who has a cohesive life and a wonderful voice. Totally inspiring.
And the third book is a novel called “Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck, who’s a German writer, so it’s translated. And it’s a wonderful novel about the breakup of Berlin, the wall falling in Berlin. It’s a love story about a 19-year-old girl and a 50-year-old man that is incredibly compelling.
Mark Epstein, thank you very much.
Thank you, Ezra. Great to be here.
==Phrack Inc.==
Volume 0x10, Issue 0x47, Phile #0x11 of 0x11|=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
|=-----------------------=[ Calling All Hackers ]=-----------------------=|
|=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
|=--------------------------=[ cts (@gf_256) ]=--------------------------=|
|=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
--[ Table of Contents
0 - Preamble
1 - About the Author
2 - The Birth of a Shitcoin
3 - How Money Works
3.1 - Fixed Income
3.2 - Equities
3.3 - Shareholder Value
4 - Startup Blues
5 - Takeaways
6 - Thanks
7 - References
8 - Appendix
--[ 0 - Preamble
Hi.
I'm cts, also known as gf_256, ephemeral, or a number of other handles.
I am a hacker and now a small business owner and CEO. In this article,
I would like to share my experience walking these two different paths.
A hacker is someone who understands how the world works. It's about
knowing what happens when you type "google.com" and press Enter. It's
about knowing how your computer turns on, about memory training, A20,
all of that. It's about modern processors, their caches, and their side
channels. It's about DSi bootloaders and how the right electromagnetic
faults can be used to jailbreak them. And it's about how Spotify and
Widevine and AES and SGX work so you can free your music from the
shackles of DRM.
But being a hacker is so much more than these things. It's about knowing
where to find things. Like libgen and Sci-Hub and nyaa. Or where to get
into the latest IDA Pro group buy. Or which trackers have what and how
to get into them.
It's about knowing how to bypass email verification. How to bypass SMS
verification. How to bypass that stupid fucking verification where you
hold your driver's license up to a webcam (thank you, OBS virtual camera!)
Having an actual threat model not just paranoia. Knowing that you're not
worth burning a 0day on, but reading indictments to learn from others'
mistakes.
It's about knowing where to buy estradiol valerate on the internet and how
to compound injections. Or the "bodybuilder method" to order your own
blood tests when your state requires a script to do so. It's about knowing
which shipments give the US CBP a bad vibe and which don't.
It's about knowing what happens when you open Robinhood and giga long NVDA
FDs. I mean the actual market microstructure, not "Ken Griffin PFOF bad".
Then using that microstructure to find an infinite money glitch (high
Sharpe!). It's about knowing how to get extra passports and reading the
tax code.
It's about knowing how to negotiate your salary (or equity). It's about
knowing why things at the supermarket cost what they do. Or how that awful
shitcoin keeps pumping. And why that dogshit startup got assigned that
insane valuation. And understanding who really pays for it in the end
(hint: it's you).
My point is, it is not just about computers. It's about understanding how
the world works. The world is made up of people. As much as machines keep
society running, those machines are programmed by people--people with
managers, spouses, and children; with wants, needs, and dreams. And it is
about using that knowledge to bring about the change you want to see.
That is what being a hacker is all about.
--[ 1 - About the Author
I have been a hacker for 13 years. Prior to founding Zellic, I helped
start a CTF team called perfect blue (lately Blue Water). We later became
the number one ranked CTF team in the world. We've played in DEF CON CTF.
We've won GoogleCTF, PlaidCTF, and HITCON. It's like that scene from
Mr. Robot but not cringe.
In 2021, we decided to take that hacker friend circle and form a security
firm. It turned out that crypto paid well, so we worked with a lot of
crypto clients. In the process, we encountered insane, hilarious, and
depressingly sobering bullshit. In this article, I will tell some stories
about what that bullshit taught me, so you can benefit from the same
lessons as I have.
Markets are computers; they compute prices, valuations, and the allocation
of resources in our society. Hackers are good at computers. Let's learn
more about it.
--[ 2 - The Birth of a Shitcoin
I can't think of a better example than shitcoins. Let's look at the
crypto markets in action.
First, let's talk about tokens. What is their purpose? The purpose of a
token is to go up. There is no other purpose. Token go up. This is
important, remember this point.
Now the question is, how do we make the token go up? In crypto, there are
two main kinds of token deals. Let's call them the Asian Arrangement and
the Western Way.
The Asian Arrangement is a fairly straightforward pump and dump. It's a
rectangle between the VC, the Market Maker, the Crypto Exchange, and the
Token Project Founder.
The exchange's job is to list the token, bringing in investors. They
get paid in a mix of tokens and cold, hard cash. Their superpower is
owning the customer relationships with the retail users, and the
naming rights to sports arenas.
The market maker provides liquidity so the market looks really
healthy and well-traded so it is easy to buy the token. In good
deals, they are paid in in-the-money call options on the tokens,
so they are incentivized to help the token trade well. Their
superpower is having a lot of liquidity to deploy, and people
on PagerDuty.
The founder's job is to pump the token and shill it on Twitter.
They are the hype man, and it's their job to drum up the narrative
and pump everyone's bags. Their unique power is they can print more
tokens out of thin air, and this is in large part how they get paid
in this arrangement.
Lastly, the VC gets paid to organize the deal. They give the founders
some money, who in return give a pinky promise that they will give
the VC a lot of tokens once the tokens actually exist. This is known
as a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, or SAFT. Their superpower is
dressing up the founders and project so it seems like the Next Big
Thing instead of a Ponzi scheme.
Everyone gets paid a ton of token exposure (directly or indirectly),
and when it lists, it pumps. Then the insiders dump and leave with a
fat stack. Except retail, they end up with the bag.
Sometimes the listing doesn't go well for the organizers, in which case,
better luck next time. But retail always loses.
wtf??? LFG!!! to the moon
,o \oXo/\o/
/v | | |
/\ / X\ / \
crypto investors
^ |
| |
| v
+----------+ provides liquidity +--------+
| Crypto | <--------------------------------------- | Market |
| Exchange | ----------------------------------------> | Maker |
+----------+ maker fees +--------+
^ | ^ fees, | | listing options |
tokens | | / fees |
| | +-------------------------------------------------+
| v |
+---------+ tokens / SAFT / token warrants +---------+
| Token | ---------------------------------------> | Venture |
| Project | <--------------------------------------- | Capital |
+---------+ cash , intros to CEX / MM, shilling +---------+
This machine worked exceptionally well in 2017, especially before China
banned crypto. All those ICO shitcoins? Asian Arrangement. And it still
works well to this day, except people are more wary of lockups and vesting
schedules and so on.
Now let's discuss the Western Way. The Asian Arrangement? That old pump
and dump? No sir, we are civilized people. Instead, our VCs add value
to their investments by telling the world "how disruptive the tech is"
and how the "team are incredible outliers". And they will not blatantly
PnD the token, but instead they will fund "projects in the ecosystem" so
it appears there is real activity happening on the platform.
This is to hype up metrics (like TPS or TVL) to inflate the next round
valuation. Anyways, then they dump. Or maybe the VC is also a market
maker so they market make their portfolio company tokens. Overall it's
the same shit (Ponzi) but dressed up in a nicer outfit.
Asian Arrangement or Western Way--either way, if you're the token founder,
your main priority is to just GO TO MARKET NOW and LAUNCH THE TOKEN. This
is so you can collect your sweet bag and dump some secondary before
someone else steals the narrative or the hype cycle moves on.
This is one of the reasons there are so many hacks in crypto. The code is
all shitty because it's rushed out as fast as possible by 20-something-
year-old software engineers formerly writing Typescript and Golang at
Google. Pair that with some psycho CEO product manager. Remember, it is
not about WRITING SECURE CODE, it is about SHIPPING THE FUCKING PRODUCT.
Good luck rewriting it in Rust!
All of this worked well until Luna, then 3AC, Genesis, and FTX imploded in
Shitcoins do serve an essential need. They are an answer to financial
nihilism. Many people are working dead-end wage slave jobs that are not
enough to "make it". They feel trapped and forced to work at jobs they
fucking hate and waste their life doing pointless shit to generate
shareholder value. This kind of life feels unacceptable, yet there are
few avenues out. So what is the only "attainable" solution left? Gamble
it on shitcoins, and if you lose...maybe next paycheck will be better.
But enough about crypto, let's talk about securities.
--[ 3 - How Money Works
----[ 3.1 - Fixed Income
First, let's start with fixed income. I'm talking boring, old-fashioned
bonds, like Treasury bonds. A lot of people are introduced nowadays to
finance through equities (stocks) and tokens. In my opinion, this is
only half of the story. Fixed income is the bedrock of finance. It has
fundamental value. It provides a prototypical asset that all assets can
be benchmarked based on.
Fixed income assets, like bonds, boil down to borrowing and lending. A
bond is basically an IOU for someone to pay you in the future. It is more
useful to have a dollar today than in a year, so lenders charge a fee for
access to money today. This fee is known as interest, and how it is baked
into the equation varies from asset-to-asset. Some bonds come with
interest payments, whereas other bonds are zero-coupon. The most important
thing is to remember that bonds are essentially an IOU to pay $X in the
future.
Here is an example. Let's say you would like to borrow $100 to finance an
upcoming project. The interest rate will be 5% per year. To borrow money,
you would issue (mint) a bond (an IOU) for $X+5 dollars to be repaid 1
year in the future. In exchange for this fresh IOU, the lender will give
you $X dollars now.
On the lender's balance sheet, they will be less $X dollars worth of cash,
but will also have gained ($X+5) dollars worth of an asset (your IOU),
creating $5 of equity. In contrast, you would have $X more cash in assets,
but also an ($X+5) liability, creating -$5 of equity.
This example also works for depositing money at a bank. Here, you are the
lender, and the bank is the borrower. Your deposits would be liabilities
on their balance sheet, as they are liable to pay you back the deposit if
you choose to withdraw it.
Lender's Balance Sheet Borrower's Balance Sheet =========================== ===========================
Assets: Assets:
IOU-----------------X+5 Cash------------------X
Liabilities: Liabilities:
Cash----------------(X) IOU-----------------X+5
Equity: Equity:
Equity----------------5 Equity--------------(5)Fixed income assets are extremely simple. There are various risks (credit
risk, interest rate risk, etc.), but excluding these factors, you
essentially get what you pay for. Unlike a token or stock, the bond is not
going to suddenly evaporate or crash. (In theory.) Because of this, they
can be modeled in a straightforward way; a way so straightforward even
a high school student can understand it.
Let's say I have $X today. Suppose the prevailing (risk-free) interest
rate is 5%. What is the value of this $X in a year? Obviously, it would be
no less than $X1.05, as I can just lend it out for 5% interest and get
$X1.05 back in a year. If you gave me the opportunity to invest in any
asset yielding less than 5%, this would be a bad deal for me, since I
could just lend it out myself to get 5% yield.
Now, let's analyze the same scenario, but in reverse. Let's take that IOU
from earlier. What is the value today of a (risk-free) $X IOU, due in 1
year? It would be worth no more than $X/1.05. This is because with $X/1.05
dollars today, I could lend it out and collect 5% interest to end up with
$X again in the future. If I pay more than $X/1.05, I am getting a bad
deal, since I am locking up my money with you when it would be more
capital efficient to just lend it out myself.
You can probably see where I am going with this. The present value of an
$X IOU at some time t in the future is $X/(1+r)^t, where r is the
discount rate. The discount rate describes the "decay" of the value over
time, due to interest but also factors like potential failure of the asset
(for example, if the asset is a company, business failure of the company).
Now, if we have some asset which pays a series of future cash flows
f(t), we can model this asset as a bundle of IOUs with values f(t) due
in time 1, 2, 3, and so on. Then the present value of this asset is the
geometric series sum of the discounted future cash flows. This is called
discounted cash flows (DCF). Congrats, now you can do better modeling than
what goes into many early-stage venture deals.
+------+-----+-----+---------+---------+---------+-------+---------+
| Year | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ... | t |
+------+-----+-----+---------+---------+---------+-------+---------+
| Cash | CF1 | CF2 | CF3 | CF4 | CF5 | ... | CF_t |
| Flow | | | | | | | |
+------+-----+-----+---------+---------+---------+-------+---------+
| Disc.| CF1 |CF2| CF3 | CF4 | CF5 | ... | _CF_t__ |
| Val | | 1+r | (1+r)^2 | (1+r)^3 | (1+r)^4 | | (1+r)^t |
+------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+-------+---------+
IOU 1 IOU 2 IOU 3 IOU 4 IOU 5 ... IOU n
inf
_ f(t) 1DCF = \ ------- = (assume constant annual cash flow x) = --------- x
/_ (1+r)^t 1-1/(1+r)
t=0
= (1/r + 1) xCash flow multiple = (value) / (annual cash flow) ~= 1/r
(The astute reader might also find that they can go backwards from
valuations to estimate first, second, ... Nth derivatives of the cash
flow or the year-to-year survival chances of a company. And these can be
compared with...going outside and touching grass to see if the valuation
actually makes sense.)
At this point, you're probably wondering why I'm boring you with all of
this dry quant finance 101 shit. Well, it's a useful thing to know about
how the world works.
First, interest rates affect you directly and personally. You may have
heard of the term "zero interest rate environment". In a low interest rate
environment, cash flow becomes irrelevant. Why? Consider the DCF geometric
series sum if the interest rate r = 0. The present value approaches
infinity. If the benchmark hurdle rate we're trying to beat is 0%,
literally ANYTHING is a better investment than holding onto cash.
Now do you see why VCs were slamming hundreds of millions into blatantly
bad deals and shit companies during Covid? Cash flow and profitability
didn't matter, because you could simply borrow more money from the money
printer.
Here's a more concrete example. Do you remember a few years ago when Uber
rides were so cheap, that they were clearly losing money on each ride?
This is known as Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC. CAC is basically the
company paying you to use their app, go to their store, subscribe to the
thing, ... whatever. The strategy is well-known: burn money to acquire
users until everyone else dies and you become a monopoly. Then raise the
prices.
But here is the key point: this only works in a low-interest rate
environment. In such an environment, discounting is low, and thus, future
growth potential is valued over profitability and fundamentals at present.
It doesn't need to make sense today as long as it works 10 years from
now. For now, we can keep borrowing more money to sustain the burn.
Of course, when rates go back up, the free money machine turns off and
the effects ripple outward. You are the humble CAC farmer, farming CAC
from various unprofitable consumer apps like ride share, food delivery,
whatever. These apps raise their money from their investors, VC and
growth equity funds. These funds in turn raise their money from their
investors, their limited partners. These LPs might be institutional
capital like pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, or family offices.
At the end of the day, all of that wealth is generated somewhere
throughout the economy by ordinary people. So when some VC-backed
founders throw an extravagant party on a boat with fundraised dollars,
in some sense, you are the one paying for it.
And when the money machine turns off, anyone who had gotten complacent
under ZIRP is now left scrambling. Companies will overhire during ZIRP
only to do layoffs when rates go up.
+=========================+
| THE LIQUIDITY CYCLE |
+=========================+
VENTURE CAPITAL
_______________ ,.-^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^;,
,;===============>> E^ a16z LSVP Tiger '^3.
.;^ E^ FF Social Cap. '^3
// condensation .E Bain SoftBank Accel 3^
/|^ ^E KP Benchmark :^
|| ^;: YC Greylock GC ;3'
,.^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^;, ^.=.=_=_=_=_=_=_=_=_=_=_=^
E^ endowments family '^:. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ E^ offices '^3 \\\\\\\\\\
E' pension ^3. SOURCE \\ precipitation \
^; funds sovereign 3.' CAPITAL \\\\\\\\\\
E;: wealth funds ,3^ (LPs) \\\\\\\\\\
^;............,^ \\\\\\\\\\
/\
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ gamefi /\ /\ uber eats
| | | | | | | | shitcoins/::\/::\ /::::\ /\
| evaporation | / doordash/^^^^^^\ /^^\
| | | | | | | | ____ / \ / hello \
(poggers desu) /____ lime __ fresh __\
\o/ \oXo/\oXoXo/ o '==========' UNPROFITABLE CONSUMER APPS
| | | | | | /|\ Oo. /_/\ ,///
/\/X\/_XX_/_ /(@'w'@)____.,://'
SOCIETY \'''''''' -...-''''''''''''''''' surface
THE HUMBLE runoff
CAC FARMER
Second, credit is not inherently a bad thing if used responsibly. Take for
example those Buy Now, Pay Later loans. Now that you are equipped with the
concept of capital efficiency, wouldn't it technically better than paying
cash to take an interest-free BNPL loan and temporarily stick the freed
cash into an investment? (Barring other side effects, etc.)
Third, the concept of net present value--i.e., credit--is the killer app
of finance. It allows you to transport value from the future into today.
Of course, that debt must be repaid in the future, unless you can figure
out a way to kick the can down the road forever.
For now, let's get back to stocks.
----[ 3.2 - Equities
Now we have seen both sides of the coin. Asset value is twofold:
speculative and fundamental.
First, we saw speculative value as illustrated by crypto meme coins. Then,
on the other hand, we examined fundamental value as illustrated by, e.g. a
US Treasury. These two lie on two extremes of a spectrum. Some sectors and
stocks are more speculative than others; Nvidia is practically a meme coin
at this point, whereas something like Coca-Cola is like fixed income for
boomers (NFA BTW). Most assets have a blend of both.
Thinking about stocks, they (usually) have some fundamental value.
Equities represent ownership of some asset, like a business. The business
in theory generates dividends for shareholders, and this cash flow (or the
net present value of future ones) represents the fundamental value of the
business. As we've seen, assets with better cash flows are more valuable.
In practice, buybacks can be used to create what is effectively a
shareholder dividend in a more tax-advantaged way. Whereas with dividends,
they are taxed as income, and this is realized immediately. With buybacks,
they are taxed as capital gains, but crucially the gains are not realized
until the asset is sold. This could be indefinitely far in the future, so
it's more capital efficient. It has the added benefit that it helps pump
the token, and imo this is kind of cute because it marries both the
fundamental and speculative aspects.
Meanwhile, like tokens, stocks are also supposed to go up. Here's an
example: imagine a generic meme coin. Apart from Go Up, what does it do?
Nothing. Even if it's a Governance Token, who cares when the founders and
VCs hold all the voting power? Anyways, I'm describing Airbnb Class A
Common Stock. Here's an excerpt from their S-1 [1] [2]:
We have four series of common stock, Class A, Class B, Class C, and
Class H common stock (collectively, our "common stock"). The rights of
holders of Class A, Class B, Class C, and Class H common stock are
identical, except voting and conversion rights ... Each share of Class A
common stock is entitled to one vote, each share of Class B common stock
is entitled to 20 votes and is convertible at any time into one share of
Class A common stock ... Holders of our outstanding shares of Class B
common stock will beneficially own 81.7% of our outstanding capital
stock and represent 99.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital
stock immediately following this offering, ...
Name of | Class B | % | % of Vot-
Beneficial Owner | Shares | | ing Power-------------------------------------+------------+-------+-----------
Brian Chesky | 76,407,686 | 29.1% | 27.1%
Nathan Blecharczyk | 64,646,713 | 25.3% | 23.5%
Joseph Gebbia | 58,023,452 | 22.9% | 21.4%
Entities Affil. w/ Sequoia Capital | 51,505,045 | 20.3% | 18.9%
Why do people buy tech stocks with inflated valuations? Some may because
they believe that they will go up, that they will be more dominant,
important, and valuable in the future. Like tokens, a large part of
stocks' value is speculative. They are expressing their opinion on the
future fundamentals. Others may simply because they believe others will
believe that it is more valuable. Not fundamentals, this is an opinion
about pumpamentals.
Importantly, unlike fundamental value, speculative value can be created
out of thin air. It is minted by fiat. Fundamental value is difficult
to create, whereas speculative value can be created through hype and
psychology alone.
----[ 3.3 - Shareholder Value
For stocks, there are usually laws in place to protect investors, pushing
the balance between "speculation" and "fundamentals" towards the latter.
As a result, firms are generally legally obligated to act in their
shareholders' best interests. This is good because normal people will be
able to participate in the wealth generated by companies. And obviously,
companies should not defraud their investors.
However, the biggest stake holders in a business, are usually (in order):
The employees. No matter what, no one else is spending 8 hours a day,
or ~33% of their total waking lifespan at this place. Whatever it is,
I guarantee you the employees feel it the most.
The customers. The customers are the reason the business is able to
exist in the first place. Non-profits are not exempt: their customers
are their donors.
The local community / local environment / ecosystem. The business
doesn't exist in a vacuum. The business has externalities, and those
externalities affect most the immediate surrounding environment.
And in last place, the shareholders. They do not really do anything
except contribute capital and hold the stock. Of course capital is
important but they are not spending 8 hours a day here, they are not
the reason the business exists, and in fact they might even live in a
totally different country.
For large, publicly-listed companies, the shareholders have one more
unique difference from the other three stakeholders: liquidity. This
difference is critical.
Liquidity describes how easy it is to buy and sell an asset. A dollar
bill is liquid. Bitcoin is liquid. A house is relatively illiquid. Stock
in large, publicly-listed companies is also liquid. A shareholder can buy
a stock one day and sell it the next. As a result, the relationship is
non-commital and opens the opportunity for short-term thinking.
There are many things a company could do which would benefit shareholders
short term, while harming the other three stakeholders long term. While a
shareholder can simply dump their position and leave, the mess created is
left for the employees, customers, and community to clean up.
(The SPAC boom was a pretty good example of this. Not all SPACs are bad,
but a lot of pretty shit businesses publicly listed through SPACs then
crashed. This is sad to me because some of that is early investors and
founders dumping on retail like a crypto shitcoin, but dressed up because
it's NYSE or NASDAQ. Get liquidity then bail.)
Now, it is a misconception that stock companies must solely paperclip-
maximize short-term shareholder value. However, this is how it often
plays out due to fucked up shit in the public markets, like annoying
activist hedge funds or executive compensation tied to stock price. And
it is true that employees can be shareholders. And that is usually a good
thing! But few public companies are truly employee-owned.
Thinking about it from this perspective, the concept of maximizing
shareholder value seems somewhat backwards. But why would one make
this system where the priorities are seemingly inverted?
One benefit is that it would make your currency extremely valuable.
Suppose you want to do some shit on Ethereum (speculating on some animal
token?), you will need to have native ETH to do that transaction.
Similarly, if you want to invest in US securities you at some point need
US Dollars. If you want to get a piece of that sweet $NVDA action, you
need dollars. People want to buy American stocks. American companies
perform well: they're innovative; they're not too heavily regulated;
it's a business friendly environment. (Shareholder value comes first!)
The numbers go up.
Remember the token founder from earlier in the Asian Arrangement? Suppose
you are a country in the situation above, with a valuable currency. Not
only is your currency in demand and valuable, you are the issuing/minting
authority for that token. Similar to the token founder, you can print
valuable money and pay for things with it.
And speaking of being a founder, let's talk about that!
--[ 4 - Startup Blues
Based on what we've set up so far, I will discuss some of the problems I
see with many startups today and with startup culture.
Much of the problems stem from misalignment between shareholders and the
other stakeholders (employees, etc). A lot of this comes from the
fundamentals of venture capital. VC is itself an asset class, like fixed
income and equities. VCs pitch this to their limited partners, at some
level, based on the premise that their VC fund will generate yield for
them. The strategy is to identify stuff that will become huge and buy it
while it's still small and really cheap. Like trading shitcoins, it's
about finding what's going to moon and getting in early.
In a typical VC fund, a small handful of the investments will comprise the
entire returns of the fund, with all of the other investments being 0's.
The distribution is very power law. This means we are not looking for 1x,
2x, or 3x outcomes; these may even be seen as failure modes. We are only
interested in 20x, 50x, 100x, etc. outcomes. This is because anything
less will be insufficient to make up for all the bad investments that
get written down to zero.
For the same reason, it only makes sense for VCs to invest in certain
types of companies. Have you ever heard this one? "We invest in SOFTWARE
companies!...How is this SCALABLE? What do the VENTURE SCALE OUTCOMES look
like here?" This is because these kinds of companies are the ones with the
potential to 100x. They want you to deliver a 100x. Or how about this one?
"We invest in CATEGORY-DEFINING companies". At least in security,
"category-defining" means a shiny new checkbox in the compliance / cyber
insurance questionnaire. In other words, a new kind of product that people
MUST purchase.
The market is incentivized to deliver a product that meets the minimum bar
to meet that checkbox, while being useless. I invite you to think of your
favorite middleware or EDR vendors here. For passionate security founders
considering raising venture, remember that this is what your "success" is
being benchmarked against.
_.,------------------------------_
.%' '&.
.;' We partner with founders ^;
! building category-defining ;!
; companies at the earliest stages _;
^; _.^
''-.______________ __________.-'
/ /
/ /^
/ /^
/;^
/'
_________ _________
_-' '. _-' '.
,^ '^_ ,^ '^_
/' '"' /' '"'
^' ^\^ ^' ^\^
: ^| : ^|
: . . |) : . . |)
: \ |) : \ |)
: __\ ,; : __\ ,;
" ! ; " ! ;
" ^\ _____ /' " ^\ _____ /'
'| | ^\ _/^ '| | ^\ _/^
| ^'=====' | ^'====='
| . | | | . | |
_' |^__ _' |^__ ----------' U '-- --------------' U '-- -----
. .-' '-. .-' '-
':.' \ ; / ': .' \ ; / [4]
It's due to the thirst for 100x that there are painful dynamics. A
fledgling startup may have founders they really like, but the current
business may be unscalable. Bad VCs will push founders towards strategies,
bets, models that have a 1% chance of working, but pay out 200x if they
do.
In the process they destroy a good business--one which has earned the
trust of dutiful employees and loyal customers--all for a lottery ticket
to build a unicorn. They will throw 100 darts at the dartboard and maybe 5
will land, but what is it like to be the dart? You may have good expected
value, but all of that EV is from spikes super far away from the origin.
Is it pleasant betting everything on this distribution?
VC's want founders to be cult leaders. Have you ever heard this line? "We
invest in great storytellers." Like what we saw with stocks and tokens,
much of the easily-unlockable potential upside in assets is speculative.
In essence, value can be created through narrative. Narrative IS value.
Bad VC's will push founders to raise more capital at ever higher
valuations (higher val = markup = fees), using narrative as fuel for the
fire. Storytelling means "pump the token", and the job of the CEO is to
(1) be the hype man and to raise (2) cash and (3) eyeballs. For this
reason, Sam Altman and Elon are fine CEOs, regardless of other factors,
because they are great at all three.
Much to the detriment of founders' and their employees' psyche, investors
expect founders to be this legendary hype man. This requires a religiosity
of belief that is borderline delusional. Have you ever tried to convince
one of those Silicon Valley YC-type founder/CEOs that they are wrong? They
will never listen to you because they have been socialized to be this way.
It is what is expected of them, and it is easy to fall into this trap
without even becoming aware of it. But if you think about it, does it make
sense that to be a business owner, you need to be a religious leader? Of
course not.
All of these reasons are why so many startup founders are young. They have
little to lose, so gambling it all is OK. Being a cult leader may be
traumatizing, but they have time (and the neuroplasticity) to heal. And
lastly, they do not have the life experience to have a mature personal
identity beyond "I am a startup founder". All of this makes it easy to
accept the external pressures to build a company this or that way. And
perhaps not the way they would have wanted to, relying instead on their
personal values. The true irony is that the latter is what creates true,
enduring company culture and not the made-up Mad Libs-tier Company Culture
Notion Page shit that so many startups have. And of course, good VCs are
self-aware of all of the issues and strive to prevent them. But the
overall problem remains.
One last externality is for communities based around an industry. When you
add billions of venture dollars into an industry, it becomes cringe.
It's saddening to me seeing the state of certain cybersecurity conferences
which are now dominated by..."COME TO OUR BOOTH, YOU CAN BE A HACKER.
PLEASE VIEW OUR AI GENERATED GRAPHICS OF FIGURES CLAD IN DARK HOODIES
STATIONED BEHIND LAPTOPS". Here I would use the pensive emoji U+1F614
to describe my feelings about the appropriation of hacker culture but
Phrack is 7-bit ASCII, so please have this: :c uu . .
--[ 5 - Takeaways
The point is, all of this made me feel very small and powerless after I
realized the sheer size of the problems I was staring at. Nowadays, to
me it's about creating good jobs for my friends, helping our customers,
and taking care of the community. Importantly, I realized that this is
still making a bigger positive impact than what I could have done alone
just as an individual hacker or engineer.
To me, businesses are economic machines that can create positive (or
negative) impact in a consistent, self-sustaining way. There are many
people who are talented, kind, and thoughtful but temporarily unlucky.
Having a company let me help these friends monetize their abilities and be
rewarded fairly for them. And in that way I helped make their life better.
Despite a lot of the BS involved in running a business, this is one thing
that is very meaningful to me.
You can understand computers and science and math as much as you want, but
you will not be able to fix the bigger issues by yourself. The systems
that run the world are much bigger than what we can break on our laptops
and lab benches.
But like those familiar systems, if we want to change things for the
better, we have to first understand those systems. Knowledge is power.
Understanding is the first step towards change. If you do not like the
system as it is, then it is your duty to help fix it.
Do not swallow blackpills. It's easy to get really cynical and think
things are doomed (to AGI apocalypse, to environmental disaster, to
techno/autocratic dystopia, whatever). I want to see a world where
thoughtful hackers learn these systems and teach each other about them.
That generation of hackers will wield that apparatus, NOT THE OTHER WAY
AROUND.
Creating leverage for yourself. Hackers should not think of themselves as
"oh I am this little guy fighting Big Corporation" or whatever. This is
low agency behavior. Instead become the corporation and RUN IT THE WAY YOU
THINK IT SHOULD BE RUN. Keep it private and closely held, so no one can
fuck it up. Closely train up successors, so in your absence it will
continue to be run in a highly principled way that is aligned with your
values and morals. Give employees ownership, as it makes everyone aligned
with the machine's long-term success, not just you.
Raising capital. Many things do really need capital, but raise in a
responsible way that leaves you breathing room and the freedom to operate
in ways that are aligned with your values. Never compromise your values or
integrity. Stay laser focused on cash flows and sustainability, as these
grant you the freedom to do the things right.
HACKERS SHOULDN'T BE AFRAID TO TOUCH THE CAPITAL MARKETS. Many hackers
assume "oh that fundraising stuff is for charismatic business types". I
disagree. It's probably better for the world if good thoughtful hackers
raise capital. Giving them leverage to change the world is better than
giving that leverage to some psycho founder drinking the Kool-Aid. I
deeply respect many of the authors in Phrack 71, and I would trust them to
do a better job taking care of things than an amorphous amalgam of angry
and greedy shareholders.
For all things that don't need capital, do not raise. Stay bootstrapped
for as long as possible. REMEMBER THAT VALUATION IS A VANITY METRIC. Moxie
Marlinspike wrote on his blog [3] that we are often guilty of always
trying to quantify success. But what is success? You can quantify net
worth, but can you quantify the good you have brought to others lives?
For personal goals, think long term. People tend to overestimate what they
can do in 1 year, but underestimate what they can do in 10. DO NOT start a
company thinking you can get your hands clean of it in 2-3 years. If you
do a good job, you will be stuck with it for 5-10+ years. Therefore, DO
NOT start a company until you are sure that is what you want to do with
your life, or at least, your twenties/thirties (depending on when you
start). A common lament among founders, even successful ones, is:
"Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my twenties". There's an easy Catch-22
here: you may not know what you really want until you do the company; but
once you do the company, you won't really be able to get out of it. Be
wary of that.
Creating value. This is one of those meaningless phrases that I dislike.
Value is what you define it to be. Remember to work on things that have
TAMs, but remember that working on art is valuable too! It is not all
about the TAM monster--doing cool things that are NOT ECONOMICALLY
VALUABLE, but ARTISTICALLY VALUABLE, is equally important. There is not
much economic value in a beautiful polyglot file, but it is artistically
delightful. This is part of why people hate AI art: it may be economically
valuable, but it is often artistically bankrupt. (Some people do use
generative tools in actually original and artistic ways, but this is the
exception not the norm currently.)
Founders vs Investors. Here is my advice: Ignore any pressure from
investors to make company "scalable" or whatever. Make sure your investors
have no ability to fire you or your co-founder(s). Make sure you and
co-founder are always solid and trust each other more than investors. You
and your cofounders need to be BLOOD BROTHERS (/sisters/w.e). If an
investor is trying to play politics with one of you to go against the
other cofounder, cut that investor out immediately and stop listening to
them.
Any investor who pushes for scalability over what you think is the best
interest of the company is not aligned with you. High-quality investors
will not push for this because they are patient and in it for the long
game. If you are patient, you can make a very successful company, even if
it is not that scalable. High-quality investors will bet on founders and
are committed; only bad ones will push for this kind of shit.
I'm going to avoid giving more generic startup advice here. Go read Paul
Graham's essays. But remember that any investor's perspective will not be
the perspective of you and your employees. Pivoting 5 times in 24 months
is not a fun experience to work at: your employees will resign while your
investors celebrate your "coming of age journey"--unless everyone signed
up for that terrifying emotional rollercoaster from the start.
They say that "hacker" is a dying identity. Co-opted by annoying VC-backed
cybersecurity companies that culturally appropriate the identity, the term
is getting more polluted and diluted by the day. Meanwhile, computers are
getting more secure, and they are rewriting everything in Rust with
pointers-as-capability machines and memory tagging. Is it over?
I disagree. As long as the hacker ethos is alive, regardless of any
particular scene, the identity will always exist. However, now is a
crucible moment as a diaspora of hackers, young and old, venture out into
the world.
Calling all hackers: never forget who you are, who you will become, and
the mark you leave.
--[ 6 - Thanks
Greetz (in no particular order):
Finally, a big thank you to the Phrack staff (shoutout to netspooky and
richinseattle!) for making this all possible.
--[ 7 - References
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1559720/000119312520315318/
d81668d424b4.htm
[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1559720/000119312522115317/
d278253ddef14a.htm
[3] https://moxie.org/stories/promise-defeat/
[4] https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1622477273294336000
--[ 8 - Appendix: Financial institution glossary for hackers
(Not serious! For jokes... :-)
IB: Investment Bank. Basically collect fat fees to do up ("advise on")
M&As and other transactions. Help match buyers and sellers for your
private equity. They are like CYA for your deal.
PE: Private Equity. Basically buy not-overly-seriously ("poorly") run
companies, fire the management, then run it "professionally" (i.e.
make it generally shitty for customers and employees and community
for the benefit of shareholders)
HF: Hedge Fund. Trade out pricing inefficiencies
MM: Market Maker. Basically the same thing
VC: Basically gamble on tokens (crypto or stocks) and back cool and/or
wacky ideas that the rest of these people find too stinky to invest
in
PnD: Pump and Dump.
TVL: Total Value Locked. Basically how much money is currently in a
blockchain or smart contract system.
TPS: Transactions Per Second. A measure of how scalable or useful a
blockchain or database is. An oft-abused metric hacked by vaporware
shillers for hype and PnD purposes.
TAM: Total Addressable Memory Market. Basically how much money a
given idea can make.
NFA: Not finanical advice.
|=[ EOF ]=---------------------------------------------------------------=|
44 engineering management lessons
Oct 3, 2014
Welcome to engineering management. It’s fun, it’s exhausting, it’s rewarding — but most importantly it’s new! What worked for you before won’t work now. You’ll have to acquire a new set of skills, and shed some bad habits in the process. Here is a short guide to get you started.
Do
Attract, nurture, coach, and retain talent. Talk to engineers to tease out concerns early, then fix them if you can.
Communicate to every engineer the next most important issue for them to work on.
Be the tiebreaker when the development team can’t reach consensus.
Be the information hub. Know what every engineer is working on, and help connect the dots that wouldn’t otherwise get connected.
Provide administrative support. Schedule issues, coordinate releases, and make sure the bureaucratic machine keeps ticking.
Enforce behavioral and performance standards. Fire bullies and underperformers.Don’t
Personally fix bugs and ship features. You have to write code to remain an effective tiebreaker, but that’s where your coding responsibilities end.
Supervise the quality and volume of people’s work. Software engineering isn’t an assembly line. If you find yourself supervising too often, you haven’t attracted the right people or given them the right incentives.Motivation and culture
You’re the one who makes hiring and firing decisions. Everything that happens on your team is your responsibility.
Engineering is a seller’s market: people work for you because they believe in you. Access to their talent is a privilege.
Authority isn’t bestowed freely. It’s earned by making good decisions over time.
Don’t make decisions unless you have to. Whenever possible, allow the team to explore ideas and make decisions on its own.
Do make decisions when it’s necessary. Few things are as demoralizing as a stalled team.
Don’t shoot down ideas until it’s necessary. Create an environment where everyone feels safe to share and explore ideas. The folks writing the code have a lot of information you don’t. Rely on your team and you’ll make better decisions.
Building intuition on how to make good decisions and cultivating a great relationship with your team will get you 95% of the way there. The plethora of conceptual frameworks for organizing engineering teams won’t make much difference. They make good managers slightly better and bad managers slightly worse.Emotions and people
Management happens to be prestigious in our culture, but it’s a skill like any other. Prestige is a distraction — it’s fickle and arbitrary. Guard against believing you’re any better than anyone else. The sooner you get over prestige, the sooner you can focus on doing your job well.
Management also attracts scorn. Ignore it — the people who believe managers are useless don’t understand the dynamics of building a winning human organization.
If you feel something’s wrong, you’re probably right. Don’t let anyone bully you into ignoring your feelings.
If you find yourself blaming someone, you’re probably wrong. Nobody wakes up and tries to do a bad job. 95% of the time you can resolve your feelings by just talking to people.
Most people won’t easily share their emotions. Have frequent informal conversations, and tease out everything that might be wrong. Then fix it if you can.
Your team looks to you for leadership. Have the courage to say what everyone knows to be true but isn’t saying.
You’re paid to discover and fix cultural problems your team may not be aware of. Have the courage to say what everyone should know but doesn’t.
Hire great people, then trust them completely. Evaluate performance on monthly or quarterly basis, then fire if you have to. Don’t evaluate people daily, it will drive everyone (including you) insane.
Most intellectual arguments have strong emotional undercurrents. You’ll be dramatically more efficient once you learn to figure out what those are.Tiebreaking and conflict
Don’t judge too quickly; you’re right less often than you think. Even if you’re sure you’re right in any given case, wait until everyone’s opinion is heard.
Once everyone is heard, summarize all points of view so clearly that people say “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.” List any points of agreement with each view, and state what you’ve learned from everyone. Then make your decision.
Once you’ve made your decision, enforce it. Don’t let the team waste time going in circles to placate disproportionally strong voices.
Reopen the discussion if there is significant new information.
When disagreement gets personal or people don’t accept well-reasoned decisions, it turns into conflict.
Most conflict happens because people don’t feel heard. Sit down with each person and ask them how they feel. Listen carefully. Then ask again. And again. Then summarize what they said back to them. Most of the time that will solve the problem.
If the conflict persists after you’ve gone to reasonable lengths to hear everyone out and fix problems, it’s time for a difficult conversation.Difficult conversations
Have difficult conversations as soon as possible. Waiting will only make a bad situation worse.
Never assume or jump to conclusions. Never demonize people in your mind. Never blame, yell or vilify.
Use non-violent communication — it’s the best method I know of to critique people’s behavior without offending them. It smells like a management fad, but it really works (I promise).
Have the courage to state how you feel and what you need. People are drawn to each other’s vulnerability but repelled by their own. Vulnerability isn’t weakness.
Expect people to extend you the same courtesy. If someone makes you feel bad for stating your needs and feelings, it tells you more about them than about yourself.Rough edge
People will push and prod to discover your boundaries. Knowing when to stand back and when to stand firm is half the battle.
Occasionally someone will push too far. When they do, you have to show a rough edge or you’ll lose authority with your team.
A firm “I’m not ok with that” is usually enough.
Don’t laugh things off if you don’t feel like laughing them off. Have the courage to show your true emotions.
If you have to firmly say “I’m not ok with that” too many times to the same person, it’s your job to fire them.
Unless you’re a sociopath, firing people is so hard you’ll invent excuses not to do it. If you’re consistently wondering if someone’s a good fit for too long, have the courage to do what you know is right.
Don’t let people pressure you into decisions you don’t believe in. They’ll hold you responsible for them later, and they’ll be right. Decisions are your responsibility.
Believe in yourself. You can’t lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.Conditions de neige / vue satellite
Last week, I was watching some talks on Youtube and came across one that stood out to me. The talk was a Startup School lecture from Keith Rabois called How to Operate. Keith is widely known for his exec roles helping build some of the trademark tech companies of today like PayPal, LinkedIn, and Square.
In this talk, he introduces the concept of barrels and ammunition, which I thought was a really clever way to view organizations. I won't bury the lead here. This quote from Rabois summarizes the idea nicely:
If you think about people, there are two categories of high-quality people: there is the ammunition, and then there are the barrels. You can add all the ammunition you want, but if you have only five barrels in your company, you can literally do only five things simultaneously. If you add one more barrel, you can now do six things simultaneously. If you add another one, you can do seven, and so on.In short, the output of your organization is dependent on the number of people that can own projects and see them through to the end.
This often manifests itself in the form of Leads and Managers, but it isn't limited to just management roles. Barrels can be found in just about anywhere (though they will rise up the ranks quickly).
One example of this from Keith was an intern at a previous company that solved their smoothie problem, a problem that a handful of high-performers had already failed at.
Another common example is the engineer that brings ideas forward, gets the team behind it, builds the feature, and then evaluates the results. Note that they don't necessarily have to implement each part of this process on their own, as long as they have the ability to bring in resources elsewhere and manage them within the scope of the project. Rabois further describes this:
Finding those barrels that you can shoot through — someone who can take an idea from conception to live and it’s almost perfect — are incredibly difficult to find. This kind of person can pull people with them. They can charge up the hill. They can motivate their team, and they can edit themselves autonomously.He goes on to say that once someone demonstrates "barrel-like" ability, you should quickly put more on their plate. Keep pushing them until they hit their ceiling; everyone does at some point.
How to Identify Barrels
We've briefly described barrels as colleagues who own projects and take them from start to finish. This is a start, but it's important to break this down further into some common traits of barrels that you can be on the lookout for:
Barrels take initiative. They don't wait for approval or consensus.
Barrels ship high-quality work. They constantly looking for ways to improve.
Barrels value speed. They get the proof of concept out the door quickly and iterate on it.
Barrels take accountability. They are not only willing but excited to own the plan and the outcome.
Barrels are seen as a resource. Teammates frequently seek them out for help and advice.
Barrels work well with others. They know how to motivate teams and individuals alike.
Barrels can handle adversity. They push through friction and obstacles. It's not easy to find someone who gets excellent marks in each of these characteristics, and that's okay. This isn't a set of requirements, but rather a list of indicators that should set off your "barrel alarm" and tell you to pay that person a little extra attention.
Whenever you find a barrel, you should hire them instantly, regardless of whether you have money for them or whether you have a role for them. Just close them.How to Become a Barrel
People aren't born barrels while others are destined for life as ammunition. The question that I'm most interested in is still out there: How does one become a barrel? I think it comes down to a few things.
You should have an extremely sound mental model of the problem that your company or product is solving. This won't happen overnight, but you should be layering new insights, ideas, and learnings onto your model each and every day. This will help you identify opportunities out there, ideate on solutions, and prioritize accordingly.
Once you know what problems you should be solving, you need to take action. This could mean taking an “Ask for forgiveness, not permission” approach, depending on how your organization functions. It takes bravery to do this, but like anything else, it's a muscle that you can build up and improve over time. Don't be afraid to make the first move, the repercussions aren't as serious as you think they are.
You probably need to work with others in order to move the project forward. This takes many forms. Sometimes it might be selling others on the importance and impact of the idea. Other times, it might be burning some social capital and cashing in favors to make things happen. This step is much easier if you have built solid relationships with those around you already. If you are frequently helping others or have just been a friendly person, then most people will be happy to lend a hand.
Last but not least, barrels should be great at what they do. If you aren't in the top 10% of your domain, you should work on getting there as quickly as possible. This will make each of the previous steps a little easier. Others will respect you and look up to you. Not only will the output be better, but it will be easier to recruit partners and deliver impact in the end.
Let's quickly recap. In order to become a barrel in your organization, you should work on mastering each of the following steps:
Understand: Develop a mental model of the problem you're solving
Ideate: Think deeply about the problem and how to solve it
Take initiative: Create convincing proof of concepts for your ideas
Recruit others: Build relationships to bring in teammates to help
Deliver results: Level up your skills. Ship work that turns heads.This all sounds nice and snappy (hopefully), but it's not all that easy. I'm still on my path to becoming a barrel. I've been making good progress, especially over the last year or so, but the reality is that stuff like this doesn't happen overnight.
At the same time, it really seems learning to function as a barrel is a life skill that pays dividends in ways that I haven't even foreseen yet. It also seems surprisingly attainable. I'm excited to get there and look back on this. Can't wait to see you there with me.
There’s a phrase that’s been living inside my head lately, a brain parasite, some burrowing larva covered in thorns and barbs of words. When it moves around in there it churns at the soft tissues like someone’s stuck a very small hand blender in my skull. It repeats itself inside the wormy cave system that used to be my thoughts. It says you will not survive. You will not survive. You will not survive.
Earlier this year, an article in the Cut reported that the cool thing now is to have messy hair and smoke cigarettes again. You might remember it; the piece was widely mocked for a day or two, and then it vanished without a trace, which is how these things tend to go. But the headline was incredible, and it stuck with me. A Vibe Shift Is Coming. Will Any Of Us Survive It? Everyone else seemed to focus on the ‘vibe shift’ stuff, but the second part was much more interesting. To talk about survival—what extraordinary stakes, for a piece that was, in essence, about how young people are wearing different types of shoes from the shoes that you, as a slightly older person who still wants to think of themselves as young, wear. Everything is stripped back to the rawest truth: that you are a fragile creature perishing in time. And all you need to do is apply Betteridge’s Law for the real content to shine through. No. None of you will survive.
There was an ancient thought: that Zeus feeds on the world. ‘The universe is cyclically consumed by the fire that engendered it.’ Our God is a devourer, who makes things only for the swallowing. As it happens, this was the first thought, the first ever written down in a book of philosophy, the first to survive: that nothing survives, and the blankness that birthed you will be the same hole you crawl into again. Anaximander: ‘Whence things have their origin, thence also their destruction lies…’ In the Polynesian version, Maui tried to achieve immortality by taking the form of a worm and slithering into the vagina of Hine-nui-te-po, goddess of night and death.1 He failed. Hine-nui-te-po’s pussy is full of obsidian teeth; when she stirred in the night those teeth sliced clean through his body. He dribbled out again, a loose mulch of the hero who conquered the Sun.
You will not survive is not only a frightening idea. The things I hope for are doomed, and everything I try to create will be a failure, but so will everything I despise.2 These days, it repeats itself whenever I see something that’s trying its hardest to make me angry and upset. There’s a whole class of these objects: they’re never particularly interesting or important; they just exist to jab you into thinking that the world is going in a particular direction, away from wherever you are. One-Third Of Newborn Infants Now Describe Themselves As Polyamorous—Here’s Why That’s A Good Thing. Should I get upset about this? Should I be concerned? Why bother? It will not survive.3 Meet The Edgy Influencers Making Holocaust Denial Hip Again. Are we in trouble? Maybe, but even trouble is ending. Everyone That Matters Has Started Wearing Jeans Over Their Heads With Their Arms Down The Leg Holes And Their Faces All Cramped Up In The Sweaty Groin Region, And They Walk Down The Street Like This, Bumping Into Things, And When They Sit Down To Eat They Just Pour Their Subscription-Service Meal-Replacement Slurry Over The Crotch Of Their Jeans And Lick At The Dribblings From The Inside, And They’re Covered In Flies And Smell Bad And Also They’re Naked From The Waist Down Because Their Trousers Are On Their Heads, That’s Part Of It Too—We Show You How To Get The Look! How proud they are of their new thing. ‘The strong iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles, who would not live long.’
In fact, one of the things that will not survive is novelty itself: trends, fads, fashions, scenes, vibes. We are thrown back into cyclical time; what’s growing old is the cruel demand to make things new. It’s already trite to notice that all our films are franchises now, all our bestselling novelists have the same mass-produced non-style, and all our pop music sounds like a tribute act.4 But consider that the cultural shift that had all those thirtysomething Cut writers so worried about their survival is simply the return of a vague Y2K sensibility, which was itself just an echo of the early 1980s. Angular guitar music again, flash photography, plaid. We’re on a twenty-year loop: the time it takes for a new generation to be born, kick around for a while, and then settle into the rhythm of the spheres.
Every time this happens, it coincides with a synodic conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter, the triumphant present; Saturn, senescence, decline. The son who castrates his father, the father who devours his sons: once every twenty years, they are indistinguishable in the sky. Astrologers call this the Great Chronocrator. The last one was at the end of 2020, and it’ll occur twice more in my lifetime: when these witless trendwatchers finally shuffle off, they’ll be tended on their deathbeds by a nurse with messy black eyeshadow and low-rise scrubs. Jupiter and Saturn will burn above you as a single point, and with your last rattling breaths you’ll still be asking if she thinks you’re cool. You don’t get it. ‘For oute of olde feldes, as men seith, cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere.’ We are entering a blissful new Middle Ages, where you simply soak in a static world until the waters finally close in over your head.
The things that will survive are the things that are already in some sense endless. The sea; the night; the word. Things with deep fathoms of darkness in them.
The internet will not survive.
The argument
In 1977, Ken Olsen declared that ‘there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.’ In 1995, Robert Metcalfe predicted in InfoWorld that the internet would go ‘spectacularly supernova’ and then collapse within a year. In 2000, the Daily Mail reported that the ‘Internet may be just a passing fad,’ adding that ‘predictions that the Internet would revolutionise the way society works have proved wildly inaccurate.’ Any day now, the millions of internet users would simply stop, either bored or frustrated, and rejoin the real world.
Funny, isn’t it? You can laugh at these people now, from your high perch one quarter of the way into the twenty-first century. Look at these morons, stuck in their grubby little past, who couldn’t even correctly identify the shape of the year 2022. You can see it perfectly, because you’re smart. You know that the internet has changed everything, forever.
If you like the internet, you’ll point out that it’s given us all of human knowledge and art and music, instantly accessible from anywhere in the world; that you can arrive in a foreign city and immediately guide yourself to a restaurant and translate the menu and also find out about the interesting historical massacres that took place nearby, all with a few lazy swipes of your finger. So many interesting little blogs! So many bizarre subcultures! It’s opened up our experience of the world: now, nothing is out of reach.
To be honest, it’s difficult to reconstruct what the unbridled techno-optimists think; there’s so few of them left. Still, those who don’t like the internet usually agree with them on all the basics—they just argue that we’re now in touch with the wrong sort of thing: bad kids’ cartoons, bad political opinions, bad ways of relating to your own body and others. Which is why it’s so important to get all this unpleasant stuff off the system, and turn the algorithm towards what is good and true.
They might be right, but you could go deeper. The internet has enabled us to live, for the first time, entirely apart from other people. It replaces everything good in life with a low-resolution simulation. A handful of sugar instead of a meal: addictive but empty, just enough to keep you alive. It even seems to be killing off sex, replacing it with more cheap, synthetic ersatz. Our most basic biological drives simply wither in its cold blue light. People will cheerfully admit that the internet has destroyed their attention spans, but what it’s really done away with is your ability to think. Usually, when I’m doing something boring but necessary—the washing up, or walking to the post office—I’ll constantly interrupt myself; there’s a little Joycean warbling from the back of my brain. ‘Boredom is the dream bird that broods the egg of experience.’ But when I’m listlessly killing time on the internet, there is nothing. The mind does not wander. I am not there. That rectangular hole spews out war crimes and cutesy comedies and affirmations and porn, all of it mixed together into one general-purpose informational goo, and I remain in its trance, the lifeless scroll, twitching against the screen until the sky goes dark and I’m one day closer to the end. You lose hours to—what? An endless slideshow of barely interesting images and actively unpleasant text. Oh, cool—more memes! You know it’s all very boring, brooding nothing, but the internet addicts you to your own boredom. I’ve tried heroin: this is worse. More numb, more blank, more nowhere. A portable suicide booth; a device for turning off your entire existence. Death is no longer waiting for you at the far end of life. It eats away at your short span from the inside out.
But lately I’m starting to think that the last thing the internet destroys might be itself. I think they might be vindicated, Ken Olson and Robert Metcalfe and even, God forgive me, the Daily Mail.
In the future—not the distant future, but ten years, five—people will remember the internet as a brief dumb enthusiasm, like phrenology or the dirigible. They might still use computer networks to send an email or manage their bank accounts, but those networks will not be where culture or politics happens. The idea of spending all day online will seem as ridiculous as sitting down in front of a nice fire to read the phone book. Soon, people will find it incredible that for several decades all our art was obsessed with digital computers: all those novels and films and exhibitions about tin cans that make beeping noises, handy if you need to multiply two big numbers together, but so lifeless, so sexless, so grey synthetic glassy bugeyed spreadsheet plastic drab. And all your smug chortling over the people who failed to predict our internetty present—if anyone remembers it, it’ll be with exactly the same laugh.5
You know, secretly, even if you’re pretending not to, that this thing is nearing exhaustion. There is simply nothing there online. All language has become rote, a halfarsed performance: even the outraged mobs are screaming on autopilot. Even genuine crises can’t interrupt the tedium of it all, the bad jokes and predictable thinkpieces, spat-out enzymes to digest the world. ‘Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.’ Online is not where people meaningfully express themselves; that still happens in the remaining scraps of the nonnetworked world. It’s a parcel of time you give over to the machine. Make the motions, chant its dusty liturgy. The newest apps even literalise this: everyone has to post a selfie at exactly the same time, an inaudible call to prayer ringing out across the world. Recently, at a bar, I saw the room go bright as half the patrons suddenly started posing with their negronis. This is called being real.
Whoever you are, a role is already waiting for you. All those pouty nineteen-year-old lowercase nymphets, so fluent in their borrowed boredom, flatly reciting don’t just choke me i want someone to cut off my entire head. All those wide-eyed video creeps, their inhuman enthusiasm, hi guys! hi guys!! so today we’re going to talk about—don’t forget to like and subscribe!! hi guys!!! Even on the deranged fringes, a dead grammar has set in. The people who fake Tourette’s for TikTok and the people who fake schizophrenia for no reason at all. VOICES HAVE REVEALED TO ME THAT YOUR MAILMAN IS A DEMONIC ARCHON SPAT FROM BABYLON’S SPINNING PIGMOUTH, GOD WANTS YOU TO KILL HIM WITH A ROCKET LAUNCHER. Without even passing out of date, every mode of internet-speak already sounds antiquated. Aren’t you embarrassed? Can’t you hear, under the chatter of these empty forms, a long low ancient whine, the last mewl of that cat who wants to haz cheezburger?
When I say the internet is running dry, I am not just basing this off vibes. The exhaustion is measurable and real. 2020 saw a grand, mostly unnoticed shift in online behaviour: the clickhogs all went catatonic, thick tongues lolling in the muck. On Facebook, the average engagement rate—the number of likes, comments, and shares per follower—fell by 34%, from 0.086 to 0.057. Well, everyone knows that the mushrooms are spreading over Facebook, hundreds of thousands of users liquefying out of its corpse every year. But the same pattern is everywhere. Engagement fell 28% on Instagram and 15% on Twitter. (It’s kept falling since.) Even on TikTok, the terrifying brainhole of tomorrow, the walls are closing in. Until 2020, the average daily time spent on the app kept rising in line with its growing user base; since then the number of users has kept growing, but the thing is capturing less and less of their lives.
And this was, remember, a year in which millions of people had nothing to do except engage with great content online—and in which, for a few months, liking and sharing the right content became an urgent moral duty. Back then, I thought the pandemic and the protests had permanently hauled our collective human semi-consciousness over to the machine. Like most of us, I couldn’t see what was really happening, but there were some people who could. Around the same time, strange new conspiracy theories started doing the rounds: that the internet is empty, that all the human beings you used to talk to have been replaced by bots and drones. ‘The internet of today is entirely sterile… the internet may seem gigantic, but it’s like a hot air balloon with nothing inside.’ They weren’t wrong.
What’s happening?6 Here’s a story from the very early days of the internet. In the 90s, someone I know started a collaborative online zine, a mishmash text file of barely lucid thoughts and theories. It was deeply weird and, in some strange corners, very popular. Years passed and technology improved: soon, they could break the text file into different posts, and see exactly how many people were reading each one. They started optimising their output: the most popular posts became the model for everything else; they found a style and voice that worked. The result, of course, was that the entire thing became rote and lifeless and rapidly collapsed. Much of the media is currently going down the same path, refining itself out of existence. Aside from the New Yorker’s fussy umlauts, there’s simply nothing to distinguish any one publication from any other. (And platforms like this one are not an alternative to the crisis-stricken media, just a further acceleration in the process.) The same thing is happening everywhere, to everyone. The more you relentlessly optimise your network-facing self, the more you chase the last globs of loose attention, the more frazzled we all become, and the less anyone will be able to sustain any interest at all.7
Everything that depends on the internet for its propagation will die. What survives will survive in conditions of low transparency, in the sensuous murk proper to human life.
For a while, it was possible to live your entire life online. The world teemed with new services: simply dab at an app, and the machine would summon some other slumping creature with a skin condition to deliver your groceries, or drive you in pointless circles around town, or meet you for overpriced drinks and awkward sex and vanish. Like everyone, I thought this was the inevitable shape of the future. ‘You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.’ We’d all be reduced to a life spent swapping small services for the last linty coins in our pockets. It’s Uber for dogs! It’s Uber for dogshit! It’s picking up a fresh, creamy pile of dogshit with your bare hands—on your phone! But this was not a necessary result of new technologies. The internet was not subordinating every aspect of our lives by itself, under its own power. The online economy is an energy sink; it’s only survived this far as a parasite, in the bowels of something else.
That something else is a vast underground cavern of the dead, billions of years old.
The Vision Fund is an investment vehicle headquartered in London and founded by Japan’s SoftBank to manage some $150 billion, mostly from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which it’s poured into Uber and DoorDash and WeWork and Klarna and Slack. It provides the money that effectively subsidises your autistic digital life. These firms could take over the market because they were so much cheaper than the traditional competitors—but most of them were never profitable; they survived on Saudi largesse.
Investors were willing to sit on these losses; it’s not as if there were many alternatives. Capital is no longer capable of effectively reproducing itself in the usual way, through the production of commodities. Twenty-five years ago manufacturing represented a fifth of global GDP; in 2020 it was down to 16%. Interest rates have hovered near zero for well over a decade as economies struggle to grow. Until this year, governments were still issuing negative-yield bonds, and people were buying them—a predictable loss looked like the least bad option. The only reliable source of profits is in the extraction of raw materials: chiefly, pulling the black corpses of trillions of prehistoric organisms out of the ground so they can be set on fire. Which means that the feudal rulers of those corpselands—men like King Salman, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques—ended up sitting on a vast reservoir of capital without many productive industries through which it could be valorised. So, as a temporary solution, they stuck it in the tech sector.
It didn’t matter that these firms couldn’t turn a profit. The real function was not to make money in the short term; it was to suck up vast quantities of user data. Where you go, what you buy; a perfect snapshot of millions of ordinary lives. They were betting that this would be the currency of the future, as fundamental as oil: the stuff that rules the world.8
They were wrong, but in the process of being wrong, they created a monster. Your frictionless digital future, your very important culture wars, your entire sense of self—it’s just a waste byproduct of the perfectly ordinary, centuries-old global circulation of fuel, capital, and Islam. It turns out that if these three elements are arranged in one particular way, people will start behaving strangely. They’ll pretend that by spending all day on the computer they’re actually fighting fascism, or standing up for women’s sex-based rights, as if the entire terrain of combat wasn’t provided by a nightmare head-chopping theocratic state.9 They’ll pretend that it’s normal to dance alone in silence for a front-facing camera, or that the intersection of art and technology is somehow an interesting place to be. For a brief minute, you’ll get the sociocultural Boltzmann entity we call the internet. ‘But nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.’
The tables are already being cleared at the great tech-sector chow-down.10 Online services are reverting to market prices. The Vision Fund is the worst performing fund in SoftBank’s history; in the last quarter alone it’s lost over $20 billion. Most of all, it’s now impossible to ignore that the promise propping up the entire networked economy—that user data could power a system of terrifyingly precise targeted advertising—was a lie. It simply does not work. ‘It sees that you bought a ticket to Budapest, so you get more tickets to Budapest…All they really know about you is your shopping.’ Now, large companies are cutting out their online advertising budgets entirely, and seeing no change whatsoever to their bottom line. One study found that algorithmically targeted advertising performed worse than ads selected at random. This is what sustains the entire media, provides 80% of Google’s income and 99% of Facebook’s, and it’s made of magic beans.
A dying animal still makes its last few spastic kicks: hence the recent flurry of strange and stillborn ideas. Remember the Internet of Things? Your own lightbulbs blinking out ads in seizure-inducing Morse code, your own coffee machine calling the police if you try to feed it some unlicensed beans. Remember the Metaverse? The grisly pink avatar of Mark Zuckerberg, bobbing around like the ghost of someone’s foreskin through the scene of the recent genocides. Wow! It’s so cool to immersively experience these bloodmires in VR! More recent attempts to squeeze some kind of profit out of this carcass are, somehow, worse. Here’s how web3 is about to disrupt the meat industry. Every time you buy a pound of tripe, your physical offal will be bundled with a dedicated TripeToken, which maintains its value and rarity even after the tripe has been eaten, thanks to a unique blockchain signature indexed to the intestinal microbiome of the slaughtered cattle! By eating large amounts of undercooked offal while trading TripeTokens on secondary markets, you can incentivise the spread of your favourite cattle diseases—and if one of the pathogens you own jumps the species barrier to start infecting humans, you’ve successfully monetised the next pandemic! Once you get sick, you can rent out portions of your own intestinal tract to an industrial meat DAO in exchange for SlaughterCoins. Because SlaughterCoins are linked via blockchain to the progressive disintegration of your body, they’re guaranteed to increase in value! And when your suffering becomes unbearable, local abattoirs will bid to buy up your SlaughterCoin wallet in exchange for putting you out of your misery with a bolt gun to the head! Yes, the future is always capable of getting worse. But this future is simply never going to happen. Not the next generation of anything, just a short-term grift: the ship’s rats stripping the galley of all its silverware on their way out.
If you really want to see how impotent the internet is, though, you only have to look at politics.
Everyone agrees that the internet has swallowed our entire political discourse whole. When politicians debate, they trade crap one-liners to be turned into gifs. Their strategists seem to think elections are won or lost on memes. Entire movements emerge out of flatulent little echo chambers; elected representatives giddy over the evils of seed oils or babbling about how it’s not their job to educate you. And it’s true that the internet has changed some things: mostly, it’s helped break apart the cohesive working-class communities that produce a strong left, and turned them into vague swarms of monads. But as a political instrument, all it can do is destroy anyone who tries to pick it up—because everything that reproduces itself through the internet is doomed.
Occasionally, online social movements do make something happen. A hand emerges from out of the cloud to squish some minor individual. Let’s get her friends to denounce her! Let’s find out where she lives! You can have your sadistic fun and your righteous justice at the same time: doesn’t it feel good to be good? But these movements build no institutions, create no collective subjects, and produce no meaningful change. Their only power is punishment—and this game only works within the internet, and only when everyone involved agrees to play by the internet’s rules.11 As soon as they run up against anything with a separate set of values—say, a Republican Party that wants to put its guy on the Supreme Court, #MeToo or no #MeToo—they instantly crumble. And if, like much of the contemporary left, you're left with nothing on which to build your political movement except a hodgepodge of online frenzies, you will crumble too.
The post-George Floyd demonstrations might be our era’s greatest tragedy: tens of millions of people mobilised in (possibly) the largest protest movement in human history, all for an urgent and necessary cause—and achieving precisely nothing. At the time, I worried that the mass street movement risked being consumed by the sterile politics of online; this is exactly what happened. Now, even that vague cultural halo is spent. Whatever wokeness was, as of 2022 it’s so utterly burned out as a cultural force that anyone still grousing about it 24/7 is a guaranteed hack. More recently, there’s been worry about the rise of the ‘new right’—a oozingly digitised political current whose effective proposition is that people should welcome a total dictatorship to prevent corporations posting rainbow flags on the internet. You can guess what I think of its prospects.
Things will survive in proportion to how well they’ve managed to insulate themselves from the internet and its demands. The Financial Times will outlive the Guardian. Paintings will outlive NFTs. Print magazines will outlive Substack. You will, if you play your cards right, outlive me. If anything interesting ever happens again, it will not be online. You will not get it delivered to your inbox. It will not have a podcast. This machine has never produced anything of note, and it never will.
A sword is against the internet, against those who live online, and against its officials and wise men. A sword is against its false prophets, and they will become fools. A sword is against its commentators, and they will be filled with exhaustion. A sword is against its trends and fashions and against all the posturers in its midst, and they will become out of touch. A sword is against its cryptocoins, and they will be worthless. A drought is upon its waters, and they will be dried up. For it is a place of graven images, and the people go mad over idols. So the desert creatures and hyenas will live there and ostriches will dwell there. The bots will chatter at its threshold, and dead links will litter the river bed. It will never again be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation.
A conclusion, or, where I’m going with all this
I am aware that I’m writing this on the internet.
Whatever it is I’m doing here, you should not be part of it. Do not click the button below this paragraph, do not type in your email address to receive new posts straight to your inbox, and for the love of God, if you have any self-respect, do not even think about giving me any money. There is still time for you to do something else. You can still unchain yourself from this world that will soon, very soon, mean absolutely nothing.
As far as I can tell, Substack mostly functions as a kind of meta-discourse for Twitter. (At least, this is the part I’ve seen—there are also, apparently, recipes.) Graham Linehan posts fifty times a day on this platform, and all of it is just replying to tweets. This does not strike me as particularly sustainable. I have no idea what kind of demented pervert is actually reading this stuff, when you could be lying in a meadow by a glassy stream, rien faire comme une bête, eyes melting into the sky. According to the very helpful Substack employees I’ve spoken to, there are a set of handy best practices for this particular region of the machine: have regular open threads, chitchat with your subscribers, post humanising updates about your life. Form a community. I’m told that the most successful writing on here is friendly, frequent, and fast. Apparently, readers should know exactly what you’re getting at within the first three sentences. I do not plan on doing any of these things.
This is what I would like to do. I would like to see if, in the belly of the dying internet, it’s possible to create something that is not like the internet. I want to see if I can poke at the outlines of whatever is coming next. In a previous life, I was a sort of mildly infamous online opinion gremlin, best known for being extravagantly mean about other opinion writers whose writing or whose opinions I didn’t like. These days, I find most of that stuff very, very dull. I wonder if it’s possible to talk about things differently. Not rationally or calmly, away from the cheap point-scoring of online discourse—that would also be boring—but with a better, less sterile kind of derangement. I’m interested in the forms of writing that were here long before the internet, and which will be here long after it’s gone. Not thinkpieces or blogs, but the essay, the manifesto, the satyr, and the screed. Ludibria, pseudepigrapha, quodlibets. Or folktales. Prophecy. Dreams.
Those who work with their hands, those who spend their entire lives and careers perfecting a craft, seem to know something about happiness that the rest of us don't. This guy gets it. (Photo by Clement Chai on Unsplash)
“Of course I don’t have to do this,” one middle aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. “But look, this table’s clean.” He agreed that the table was clean.
“Usually,” the man said, “I work on alien religions… I catalogue, evaluate, compare. I come up with theories and argue with colleagues here and elsewhere. But the job’s never finished. Always new examples and even the old ones get reevaluated and new people come along and come up with new ideas about what you thought was settled. But,” he slapped the table, “when you clean a table, you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement.”
“But in the end, it’s still just cleaning a table.”
“And therefore does not really signify on the cosmic scale of events?“
He smiled in response to the man’s grin. “Well, yes.”
“But then, what does signify? My other work? Is that really important either? I could try composing wonderful musical works or daylong entertainment epics. But what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure, and people come to a clean table which gives them pleasure. And anyway, the people die. Stars die. Universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? … Because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure.”
from Use Of Weapons, by Iain M. BanksThere’s a scene that I’ve remembered for many years.
I was visiting one of the small hot spring villages tucked into the mountains in northern Japan, not far from the university where I was studying abroad as an undergraduate. It was late winter or early spring, and I distinctly remember the steam rising from the channels by the side of the road where the excess hot spring water flowed down the hill, giving off its distinctive, sulphuric odor. I visited a small gift shop that specialized in simple wooden dolls known as Kokeshi. I had been introduced to these dolls by my host family, and was instantly enamored of them for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on: their refined simplicity and symmetric elegance perhaps, or the variety of styles and designs, or the fact that they were unique not only to Japan, but to the particular region of Japan where I was studying.
In the back of the shop was a small studio where an old man was stooped over a wood lathe, slowly and meticulously giving shape to a new doll. His hands were wrinkled and his knuckles were knotty, but he worked the wood with precision and grace. There were large piles of wood shavings on the floor all around him.
Two things struck me about this man.
The first was the degree and intensity of his focus. Ever since that day, every time I think about a flow state or about “being in the zone,” I’ve channeled the image of that man. He bent every fiber of his being to his task. I could tell just by looking at him that he had become one with the wood in his hands, and the world around him had ceased to exist. He had clearly spent a lifetime perfecting his craft: the very definition of a master craftsman.
The second was a feeling of pity at the unimportance and meaninglessness of his craft, doubtless stemming from my youth and naivete at the time. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “This poor man has wasted his entire life making wooden dolls. There’s an entire world out there to explore: books to read, places to visit. There are so many ways a person can have an impact and do good in the world. Yet this old fool chooses to spend his whole life sitting on the floor of a tiny woodworking studio in the mountains, oblivious to the outside world, totally uninterested in the modern world taking shape around him. May I never be like him.”
And, indeed, the path I followed over the following years and the following chapters of my life took me in a very different direction. Yet, reflecting now on the experience—and struck by the way this image has stayed with me across the distance and the span of nearly 20 years—I understand now that that man knew something I didn’t know. He possessed a wisdom which I am only now beginning to grasp.
All existence is struggle. We struggle with our work. We struggle with money. We struggle to be healthy. We struggle with things that upset us, but we also struggle with the things and the people we love the most: our friends and family, our passions and joys. Even the most successful among us, even those who seem to have it all—health, wealth, power, and fame—struggle with pride, loneliness, privacy, and the constant stress of managing a personal brand and reputation.
However, there is one thing that causes us more grief than anything else. There is one thing that we struggle with more mightily than we do with any of the above. That thing is time. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through all of the various experiences I’ve had in my life, it’s this: we must learn to live with the grain of time, not against it.
If you’ve ever worked with wood, you know what I mean by “with the grain.” When you cut a piece of wood, you can cut with the grain or against it. When you cut with the grain, the process is easy, smooth, and natural, and the final product comes out clean and beautiful. When you cut against the grain, the wood is much harder to work with: it tends to split and splinter, and the result is usually not very pretty. It can be done, but you feel like you’re forcing things and struggling against nature.
This is a simple but powerful metaphor for life. We can live in either of these two ways.
The way most people approach life, intentionally or unintentionally, is maximization: we have a finite period of time on the planet and a lot of things to accomplish, so we should put that time to good use and accomplish as much as we can while we can. On the face of it, this sounds like a pretty rational approach. Shouldn’t we strive to do the most good that we can in the limited time we’ve got? This is certainly how I lived my life for the first 30-odd years, and it got me reasonably far. Learn all you can, love all you can, be as generous as you can, that sort of thing. It’s better than a life of regret.
The problem with this approach is that it’s a race against one another and, ultimately, against death. It’s a race that we simply cannot win. It’s therefore a recipe for unhappiness and dissatisfaction. No matter what goal you set yourself, no matter what you set out to accomplish in your finite lifespan, no matter how grand or mundane, you will be dissatisfied. Perhaps you won’t accomplish it in the first place, and then you’ll be frustrated and disappointed. You may even come to feel that you’ve wasted your whole life pursuing the wrong thing. Perhaps you do accomplish what you set out to—then what? You aim higher. A higher income. More impact. A bigger family. A nicer home or car. A better job. More books read, more places visited, more, more, more. Whatever the goal, however well-intentioned, it’s a recipe for dissatisfaction and unhappiness. The very act of choosing a goal is the act of setting oneself up for disappointment. Where does it all lead? When does it end?
To live in this way, against the grain of time, is to always be in a hurry, always going somewhere else, never slowing down to appreciate the process or the present. To live this way is to constantly battle with time, to feel that you never have enough of it.
There is another possible approach to life. To live with the grain of time means to work with time rather than against it, to make the most of the time we’ve got without craving more or seeking to maximize every moment. It means to slow down and appreciate the time we have and to be present as much as possible; to enjoy the process, the means, the journey, rather than always focusing on the ends, the destination. I’ve only just begun learning to live with the grain of time rather than against it, but it’s already brought me more sustained peace and joy than anything else I’ve learned or done.
To me, the secret of happiness is timelessness, to transcend the perceived limitations that time imposes on us and to escape from this race. The way to achieve timelessness is to learn to live with the grain of time.
We cannot win the game of life and time, and we cannot win the race against death, no matter how hard we try. Sometimes the only way to win such a game is to refuse to play in the first place. This means looking Death herself in the face, smiling at her, and saying, “I know you. You don’t scare me. I won’t play your game. Let’s be friends instead.”
Our society is obsessed with narratives. Companies, countries, and individuals need to have stories: a creation myth, a present full of challenges and shortcomings, and a glorious, promised future when those challenges are overcome and some ultimate goal is achieved. For a company, this ultimate goal may be the launch of a killer product, a billion dollar valuation, or an IPO. For a country or a people, this may be winning a war, achieving independence and recognition, or attaining some quality of life metric such as per capita income. For an individual, it could be getting into a good school, getting a dream job, getting married, owning a home, or having children.
Each of these narratives has a beginning, a middle, and an end. They each have a plot, and protagonists that set out to accomplish a specific mission, facing and overcoming challenges along the way. It’s certainly an appealing way to think about life, and the world.
The problem with these stories is that they by definition have a climax, a denouement, and an ending. But in the real world there is no such thing as “happily ever after.” The company that successfully IPOs isn’t done with anything. It’s only just begun, and it has an entirely new set of challenges to face. The country that wins a war isn’t done, either: it has to face the daunting prospects of rebuilding and redefining itself, and of continuing to grow, develop, and ensure a quality of life for its citizens. And someone who gets into school, or gets a new job, or gets married isn’t finishing something, they’re beginning, too, aren’t they? Fairy tales that end in “…happily ever after” are important, but their value lies not so much in showing us the way towards a specific future we ourselves may never achieve, but rather in inspiring us to keep moving forward when times get tough, and in reminding us why we keep struggling.
We must escape from this linear, story-driven mode of thinking and discourse. We must escape the allure of “happily ever after.” It’s one of life’s many great paradoxes: the only way to actually find happiness is to accept that happiness doesn’t mean what most people think it means, and it doesn’t lie where we think it does. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In fact, there is no rainbow.
By escaping from linear thinking, by opting out of the various finite games unfolding around us, by instead choosing to live in the moment—this moment—now!—we can choose a vastly different path and pursue a different sort of happiness, one that’s not dependent upon what we accomplish or possess.
As someone who cares deeply about having a positive impact on the world, it’s important to note that the choice to live and work in the moment does not mean to minimize our long-term impact, either. Quite the contrary. It’s counterintuitive, but by taking a step back and not trying to do too much too fast, we can actually increase our net impact. Think of it this way: do fewer things, better.
This may sound great in theory but it’s quite vague and metaphysical. What does it actually mean? What “path” am I referring to and how does one find it?
I suspect there are actually many paths. Each of the major religions offers one and I strongly suspect that they all lead to the same place. There isn’t that much difference between a Buddhist life of renunciation, meditation, mindfulness, insight, and intentionality, and a Christian life of prayer and compassion, following in the footsteps of Jesus. Universal virtues like compassion, empathy, patience, and equanimity are not just buzzwords, they are the waystones that mark the path, wherever you begin.
Here are a few such waystones that I have personally found particularly salient and helpful: examples of what it means to live with the grain of time. Note that these serve double duty as both cause and effect: they are good ways to get started, but equally they’re indicators of progress.
I don’t mean to suggest that this path is easy or straightforward. It’s not. And, not having reached it myself, I can’t promise that it leads to enlightenment. But I can promise that in spite of the struggle, or perhaps because of it, even just starting on this path will bring a great deal of unexpected joy and peace.
Dance to your own tune. Recognize that there is no such thing as a right way to live or a “career path,” so you should not be afraid of stepping off this path. Think less about the destination and take time to enjoy the journey. Try charting your own course entirely. When I first tried this I found it a little frightening but also delightful and intoxicating. I felt a sense of freedom, independence, and excitement at being able to define success for myself. There is a timeless nature to a life lived by one’s own standards and rules, and overcoming the feeling that you must arrive somewhere within some finite span of time is powerfully liberating. By the same token, we should not chart our progress by someone else’s metrics, and we should be especially wary of traditional metrics such as wealth, power, and fame. There is no one right way to live. There is no dishonorable path, or career, as long as it’s honest and true to the virtues described above. A life lived with integrity is by definition a good life. The things that matter the most cannot be measured.
Stop to smell the roses. Enjoy life. Spontaneously take an hour off, or an afternoon, or a week. Take a different route home, one that’s a little slower, a little less direct, and see something new. Stay up an hour or two later to read, watch, converse. Always be open to discovery and new experiences.
Make time for others. Talk to strangers. Make eye contact. Make time for that conversation with your father, your old college roommate, the homeless person on the corner. Other things can wait. There is always time for conversation, compassion, and sharing stories.
Spend time alone. You don’t always need to be in the company of others. Sometimes we all need time alone to get to know ourselves. Don’t be afraid to be alone from time to time. Schedule time and take yourself out on a date once in a while: coffee, dinner, the museum, a walk in the park. Try to find a few quiet moments alone every day to think, reflect, and ground yourself.
Make time for reflection. Stop every so often to ponder and reflect on your experiences, values, priorities, behavior, goals, and progress towards those goals. This might mean prayer, meditation, or simply going for a long walk, whatever flavor of reflection and contemplation you prefer.
Leave space. Don’t fill your calendar. Don’t fully plan the next day, week, month, or year. Instead, leave ample time for delight, surprise, wonder, and serendipity to work their magic. If necessary, intentionally block empty time on your calendar!
Be open-minded. We should strive to open our minds to the near-infinite possibility of the world around us. We should accept that there are realities out there other than the ones we’ve been taught and the ones that we’re familiar and comfortable with. At the same time, we should balance this against staying true to ourselves and our values. Replace expectation with openness, receptiveness, and respect of other perspectives.
Treasure what you have. I can think of 1,000 ways my life could be simpler, easier, more comfortable: ways my family could be less annoying, ways my partner could be more supportive, ways my work could be more effective. Indeed, I always have and always will strive to improve things. But this is not at all incompatible with being perfectly content with things as they are, no matter how good or bad they may seem. This means spending as much quality time as possible with friends and family, and reminding them often that I love them. It means taking the time to enjoy every meal, to really savor the flavors and textures, even when the food is quite simple. It means feeling genuinely grateful every morning when I wake up that I didn’t go to sleep hungry, and that I have a comfortable bed to sleep in and a roof over my head. It means taking the time to appreciate every leaf, every petal, every passerby and every note of birdsong even while walking down my own block. It means treating each new day in your heart as a gift.
Have patience. Patience is hard, especially in today’s fast-paced world. To have patience is to understand that all things have a season, and that not all seasons will be easy. It’s to appreciate that all things, good and bad, will eventually come to an end—so the good must be appreciated while possible, and the bad must be tolerated, abided, respected. It also means letting go of the good when the time comes to do so, without clinging. Patience means doing the best work I can every day and trying to effect positive change in the world, but recognizing that that change may take years, or a lifetime, or even a millennium, and truly being okay with that.
Be ambitious but balanced. Ambition allows us to improve our lives and the lives of others, but we should not be in a hurry to do so. And we should make sure that our ambition is motivated by the right reasons. To me this means thinking carefully about my life’s work and about the impact I intend to have, and about how my day to day life and my daily actions fit into that.
Reread books. We should not hesitate to reread a favorite book three, five, or eleven times, rather than chasing novelty and feeling that we always need to consume new content. How much you consume, whether books, news, video, music, or any other medium, is much less important than what you consume, what frame of mind you cultivate as you consume it, and how you later reflect and build on what you’ve consumed.
Give more than you take. Stop calculating what you personally stand to gain from an act or interaction. Do good for the sake of good, for the sake of the beneficiary, rather than for yourself. In a finite mindset, you might wonder why you should bother investing in relationships with people who seemingly have little or nothing to offer, e.g., the uneducated, poor, or elderly. In an infinite mindset, these relationships can be deep sources of joy and inspiration for both parties.
Don’t wait. Do as much good as you can for as many people as you can today rather than planning to do so at some indefinite point in the future. I know how tempting this way of thinking can be. Trust me, the day will never come when you will have earned your target amount of money or achieved that specific objective and can miraculously transition into giving mode. Making compassion and giving a part of your life today.
Be present. It’s one thing to be present and engaged when doing something engaging like having a conversation or working on something challenging. We must strive to be mindful, present, intentional, and genuinely curious even when engaging in the most mundane tasks: washing hands, cooking, walking, breathing. These moments are some of the best opportunities for slowing down and exploring the idea of timelessness, and when we learn to be present while doing them, they are a remarkable source of joy and wonder.
Do less. Instead of trying to maximize how much we accomplish, we should seek to do work that we are proud of. Prioritize quality over quantity. Take the time to really hone a craft. Stop trying to multitask, overoptimize, and do multiple things at once. When finishing something, don’t immediately rush on to the next thing. Take time to reflect on the task you just accomplished and consider how it could be done better the next time. Do fewer things, better and more mindfully.
Respect nature. Nothing embodies timelessness better than Mother Nature and there is no better place to learn to understand and appreciate timelessness than surrounded by nature. Go on trips, take walks and hikes, explore the countryside, climb mountains, swim in the ocean, and spend as much time outdoors as you can. Cultivate a profound respect for the beauty, power, wisdom, and timelessness of nature.
Relax. Don’t worry too much if you forget something, miss an opportunity, or fail at something. Missing one opportunity almost inevitably results in others appearing sooner or later. Herein lies another of life’s great paradoxes: when we feel under less pressure to accomplish specific things within a specific timeframe, we relax, perform better, and are more likely to accomplish those things!
It’s taken many years, but I’m beginning to see the wisdom of the old artisan I observed in Japan. Perhaps he really had spent his entire life and career perfecting his craft. Perhaps he had done something entirely different before. Perhaps he had traveled the world, and at some point, had decided that he had seen enough. Perhaps he had even gone to war, and when it was over, decided he just wanted a quiet, peaceful life. It makes no difference. He had achieved something most of us never will: a sense of total oneness with his work, and of purpose and satisfaction. I could see it in his eyes, in his hands, and in his work. He was living completely in the moment.
There isn’t really a good word for this state of being in the English language, this unique form of happiness, contentment, and satisfaction. “Enlightenment” is a bit too strong. A better word is eudemonia, a Greek word which means a “state of excellence characterized by objective flourishing across a lifetime, and brought about through the exercise of moral virtue, practical wisdom, and rationality,”[1] described in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as the ultimate form of happiness. Another possible word is simcha, a Hebrew word used to describe the happiness associated with any joyful occasion which has deeper meaning in Jewish philosophy: “the experience of the soul that comes when you are doing what you should be doing.”[2]
It’s a state that most of us would be lucky to reach a handful of times in our entire life. To enter this state regularly, to be able to enter it at will, is rare indeed and is tantamount to enlightenment. We could do worse than aiming to achieve it in our own lives.
I don’t know the whole way there there, but I know that it starts with timelessness.
Recherche de vol, genre google flights.
Base de données gratuite et bien faite des entreprises.
Une personne seule qui bosse là-dessus depuis 2000, et qui continue. C'est pas mal.
It’s my birthday. I’m 68. I feel like pulling up a rocking chair and dispensing advice to the young ‘uns. Here are 68 pithy bits of unsolicited advice which I offer as my birthday present to all of you.
• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.
• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.
• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
• Don’t be the best. Be the only.
• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.
• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.
• Promptness is a sign of respect.
• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.
• Trust me: There is no “them”.
• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.
• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.
• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.
• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.
• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.
•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.
• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.
• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
• Art is in what you leave out.
• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.
• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
J’ai un aveu à faire
J’ai été magicien. Pas un illusionniste, hein : j’ai été sorcier, un vrai.
J’ai passé quelques années de ma vie dans une troupe de théâtre aux pratiques sectaires où nous avons spiralé dans une illusion de groupe : encens, cristaux, tarots, rituels, animaux totems, esprits-compagnons et âmes en peine à « faire monter », bougies protectrices, anges, énergies… Ça parait choupi-new-age comme ça, mais c’était psychologiquement et émotionnellement intense.
C’est pas facile, pour moi, de ressortir ces vieux souvenirs du placard. Si je le fais aujourd’hui, c’est pour dire à quel point je suis capable de comprendre une personne qui veut croire à la solution magique. L’abracadabra : le pouvoir de créer d’après ses paroles. Cette notion très Disneyienne que « si j’y crois trrrrrrrrès fort, avec toute la fôrce de mon cœur, ça arrivera. »
Je connais intimement cette envie impérieuse, en moi, de trouver une solution magique, un deus ex machina, une intervention miraculeuse qui fait que le monde ne sera plus une bataille permanente. Je la connais tellement que je la reconnais dès que je la vois apparaître dans mes communautés et mes écrans.
L’état de guerre dans nos têtes
Pourtant je suis quelqu’un d’intelligent : je le sais, j’ai même des papiers qui le prouvent :p !
Justement, avoir un cerveau qui turbine comme le mien, c’est la garantie d’être encore plus sensible aux manipulations, de foncer encore plus vite dans le mur. La première étape pour retourner mon intelligence contre moi-même est de mettre mon cerveau sur la défensive.
Par exemple, dans ma troupe de théâtre, la croyance que nous étions constamment en état de siège ou de guerre face à une attaque magico-énergétique d’un groupe extérieur (il y avait toujours les « méchants du moment » désignés par ma prof’ de théâtre) faisait que j’ai eu le bide tordu d’angoisse, que j’ai vécu des années avec un cierge allumé en permanence dans mon studio estudiantin, ou que j’ai loupé des cours en fac le matin car je passais une partie de la nuit à faire des rituels magiques.
En fiction, c’est génial : vas-y, bingewatche.
À vivre, je recommande pas. Nul. Caca. Zéro étoiles.
Avec le recul, tout cela n’était « que du vrai dans la tête » : cela m’a prouvé que le vrai-dans-la-tête a des conséquences bien vraies-dans-la-vie. Mon esprit en état de guerre et d’auto-défense, persuadé de l’utilité de rituels et autres croyances magiques, a eu une influence tout à fait matérielle sur mon corps, sur mon comportement, sur mes actions et mes relations.
Pas de guerre = pas d’armes de guerre
Cela m’a surpris de voir ces souvenirs enfouis ressortir du placard de ma mémoire. Voir le président de ma république nous répéter que « nous sommes en guerre » comme une incantation, pour implanter ce vrai dans nos têtes, cela m’a fait penser aux manipulations que j’ai subies à cette époque.
Les flics qui contrôlent nos intimités, les drones de surveillance bien en vue dans les JT, la tentation du tracking sur les smartphones des infecté·es… Cela ne m’évoque rien d’autre que les encens, bougies et prières auxquelles nous nous accrochions comme seule solution à cet état de guerre, qui n’existait que dans nos têtes, mais qui existait bel et bien dans nos têtes.
Si nous n’étions pas en guerre, alors nous aurions dû affronter que la vie est injuste, qu’on y tombe malade, qu’on y vieillit, qu’on y meurt #FuckingConditionHumaine. Qu’on hérite d’une éducation, d’une histoire, d’une culture, de structures qui nous dépassent #FuckingConditionSociale. Et que pour se démerder face à tout cela, il n’y a pas de baguette magique, pas de solution miracle. #Fuck
Chercher un raccourci clavier, un cheat code
Je la connais bien, cette envie en moi d’être celui qui a trouvé la warp zone. D’être le petit malin qui a trouvé le passage secret, l’astuce magique, le truc qui évite tellement d’efforts que c’est triché, que « LeS SCieNTiFiQueS Le DéTeSTeNT ! ! ! ! ». Cette envie, c’est la faille de mon esprit où peuvent s’engouffrer toutes les arnaques.
La solution miracle, la formule magique, le cheat code, c’est mon dernier rempart avant l’inéluctable : la destruction du monde. Enfin, avant la destruction de mon monde, du monde tel que je le vois, tel que je voudrais qu’il soit.
Car le monde m’emmerde… Il est comme il est, un point c’est tout : c’est rageant !Or les accidents de la vie (genre : une pandémie) viennent remettre en question l’image que je me fais du monde. Ils me collent le nez dans le caca de mes illusions, et ne me laissent que deux choix : soit accepter de composer avec le monde tel qu’il est, soit inventer une solution magique pour préserver mes illusions.
La technologie n’est pas la solution
Je ne suis pas le seul. Nous voulons croire aux régimes miracles et crèmes amaigrissantes car autrement il faudrait étudier comment fonctionnent nos corps, et accepter l’effort d’en prendre soin comme ils sont, pas comme on voudrait qu’ils soient. Nous voulons croire au pouvoir de la prière ou de la positivité car autrement il faudrait prendre soin des autres, faire l’effort de les écouter comme iels sont.
Nous voulons croire aux drones-espions-délateurs pilotés par les gendarmes. Car autrement, il faudrait considérer que #LesGens sont des êtres complexes et intelligents qui ne se laissent pas manipuler bien longtemps par la peur et la menace. Il faudrait faire l’effort d’une police de proximité, par exemple, et donc détruire cette vision du monde où la convivialité, où éduquer au civisme, « ce n’est pas le rôle de la police [YouTube] ».
Nous voulons croire aux applications de tracking pistage volontaire. Car autrement, il faudrait faire l’effort de cesser toute activité non essentielle le temps que les dépistages, équipements de protection puis vaccins soient disponibles. Mais pour cela, il faudrait à la fois faire le deuil d’un capitalisme qui a besoin que certains hamsters fassent tourner la roue, ainsi que faire le deuil d’un gouvernement efficace, qui aurait anticipé et qui serait organisé.
Le logiciel libre n’est pas la solution
Faire le deuil de ses illusions, c’est pas facile. Il faut passer l’état de choc et les moments de déni (non mais c’est rien qu’une grippette). Souvent ensuite vient la colère (À QUI C’EST LA PUTAIN DE FAUTE ? ? ?), et comme le dit Mémé Ciredutemps : « La colère est une chose précieuse : il faut la mettre en bouteille, pour la ressortir dans les grandes occasions. »
C’est alors qu’arrive le temps des marchandages, le moment où on crie au monde : non mais si j’ai une solution magique, est-ce que je peux pas garder mes illusions ? Juste encore un peu ?
Si on utilise pas Google Classrooms, mais rien que des logiciels libres, on peut faire cours comme si personne n’était traumatisé la continuité pédagogique ?J’aimerais pouvoir dire que la solution, c’est le logiciel libre. Qu’une application de pistage ne nous fera pas entrer dans la servitude volontaire et la panoptique si elle est sous licence libre. Que des drones libres empêcheraient magiquement les abus de pouvoir et violences policières. Que les communautés du logiciel libre peuvent miraculeusement accueillir les besoins numériques du service public de l’Éducation Nationale.
Mais ce serait du bullshit, de la poudre de perlimpinpin. Ce serait odieusement profiter d’une crise pour imposer mes idées, mes idéaux.
À qui profite la solution
Derrière l’élixir magique qui fait repousser les cheveux de la #TeamChauves, il y a le charlatan. Si la plupart de nos mairies ont dilapidé nos impôts dans des caméras de vidéosurveillance dont l’inefficacité a été montrée, c’est parce qu’il y a des entreprises qui font croire à cette solution magique pour vampiriser de juteux marchés publics.
Je laisse les personnes que ça excite le soin d’aller fouiller les papiers et nous dire quels sont les charlatans qui profitent le plus des solutions miracles de la crise actuelle (du « remède magique » à « l’appli de tracking si cool et citoyenne » en passant par les « drones conviviaux des gentils gendarmes »), je ne vais pas pointer des doigts ici.
Ce que je pointe du doigt, c’est la faille dans nos esprits. Car cette faille risque de se faire exploiter. Ceux qui ont trouvé la solution magique, celles qui ont la certitude d’avoir LA réponse, ces personnes sont dangereuses car (sciemment ou non) elles exploitent une faille dans nos esprits.
Dans le milieu logiciel, après avoir signalé une faille, il faut trouver un patch, un correctif pour la colmater. Je ne suis pas sûr de moi, mais je crois qu’il faut observer nos envies de croire en une solution magique, et ce qu’elles cachent. Regardons en face ce à quoi il faudra renoncer, les efforts qu’il faudra faire, le soin qu’il faudra prendre, les changements qu’il faudra accepter.
Il n’y a pas de solution
Qu’est-ce qu’on fait ? Comment on fait ?
J’ai beau être un sorcier repenti, je suis aussi perdu que quiconque face à cette question (ou alors, si je concluais sur une solution miracle, je ferais la une de Tartuffe Magazine !). Je vais donc me concentrer sur un domaine qui occupe mon plein temps depuis des années : le numérique.
Sérieusement : je me fous que le logiciel soit libre si la société ne l’est pas.Or, d’après mon expérience, créer des outils numériques conviviaux, émancipateurs… bref éthiques, c’est pas « juste coller une licence libre sur du code ». La licence libre est une condition essentielle ET insuffisante.
Il faut aussi faire l’effort de penser aux personnes dans leur diversité (inclusion), leur intimité (protection), leurs caractéristiques (accessibilité), leurs usages (ergonomie), leur poésie (présentation), leurs pratiques (accompagnement)…
C’est là qu’on voit que, comme toute création de l’esprit, le code n’est qu’un prétexte. Ce qui compte, c’est l’humain. Il faut faire l’effort d’apprendre et d’écouter des humain·es, et de s’écouter soi (humain·e) pour pouvoir se remettre en question, et avancer pas à pas.
La loi des poules sans tête
Je me suis extrait, progressivement, du monde des fariboles magiques. Le plus gros deuil que j’ai dû faire en perdant ces illusions, ça a été celui des « Non mais ça, les responsables s’en occupent. », « Non mais les haut-placés font de leur mieux. », « Non mais les gouvernantes veulent notre bien. ». Toutes ces croyances me confortaient, me réconfortaient. RIP ma tranquillité d’esprit, j’ai dû faire face à cette vérité qui pour l’instant ne s’est pas démentie :
Personne ne sait ce qu’il faut faire, tout le monde improvise, nous courons dans la vie comme des poules décapitées.La loi des poules sans têtes ne s’est pour l’instant pas démentie, dans mon vécu. La bonne nouvelle, c’est qu’elle implique des corollaires assez enthousiasmants, qui ont changé ma vie :
Si j’arrête de croire qu’une autre personne s’en chargera, je peux influer sur le petit bout de monde qui se trouve devant moi ;
Si je prends la charge d’un sujet, je sais combien c’est énergivore, et j’ai plus de compassion avec les personnes qui ont pris à leur charge d’autres sujets, même quand elles font pas comme je voudrais ;
Si je trouve les personnes avec qui je suis à l’aise pour faire des trucs, on peut agrandir l’horizon du bout de monde qu’on est capable de changer ;
Si on veut pas de hiérarchie, il faut trouver comment s’écouter les unes les uns les autres, afin de mieux s’entendre ;
S’il n’y a pas de personne au-dessus, tout le monde peut résoudre les problèmes que nous vivons ;
Si on écoute les vécus, expériences, connaissances et pratiques qui sont partagées autour de nous, on peut expérimenter et faire mûrir des solutions qui font du bien.
(Ce dernier point vaut le coup d’être répété autrement) Oui, parfois, y’a des gens comme toi et moi qui font des trucs, sans le pouvoir en place, malgré le pouvoir en place : et ça marche.Plot twist : la magie était dans nos mains depuis le début
Le plus gros secret que j’ai appris en cessant d’être sorcier, c’est que la magie existe. Annoncer ce que l’on souhaite faire, comment on veut le faire, et l’aide dont on a besoin pour y arriver nous a plutôt bien aidé à concrétiser nos actions, chez Framasoft. Le fait de transformer les paroles en actions concrètes est possible : j’appelle ça de la communication.
En vrai, il s’agit d’abord d’écouter soi, son groupe, son entourage, son monde… puis d’exprimer le chemin qu’on aimerait y tracer, ce que l’on souhaite y faire. Écouter puis exprimer. Dans l’incertitude et la remise en question. La partie magique, c’est que les gens sont gentils. Si tu leur donnes des raisons de te connaître, de te faire confiance, iels vont t’apporter l’aide dont tu as besoin pour tes actions, et parfois plus.
Les gens sont gentils, et les connards en abusent. L’avantage de m’être déjà fait manipuler par des gurus, c’est que je repère les pseudo mages noirs de pacotille à des kilomètres. Celles qui s’expriment et n’écoutent rien ni personne, même pas la énième consultation publique mise en place. Ceux qui sont obligés de rajouter des paillettes à leurs effets, qui font clignoter de la digital french tech for good tracking, parce qu’il leur manque un ingrédient essentiel à la magie : notre confiance.
Il n’y a pas de solution, il n’y a que nous
Si j’applique mon expérience à un « où on va » plus général, mon intuition me dit que la direction à prendre est, en gros, celle où on se fait chier.
Celle où on se bouge le derche pour combattre, éduquer ou faire malgré ces poules sans tête qui se prennent pour des coqs.
Celle où on se casse le cul à écouter le monde autour de nous et celui à l’intérieur de nous pour trouver ce que nous pouvons prendre à notre charge, ici et maintenant.
Celle où on s’emmerde à essayer de faire attention à tous les détails, à toutes les personnes, tout en sachant très bien qu’on n’y arrivera pas, pas parfaitement.
Celle où il n’y a pas de raccourci, pas de solution magique, juste nos petits culs, fiers et plein d’entrain.
À mes yeux la route à choisir est celle qui parait la plus longue et complexe, parce que c’est la voie la plus humaine. C’est pas une solution, hein : c’est une route. On va trébucher, on va se paumer et on va fatiguer. Mais avec un peu de jugeote, on peut cheminer en bonne compagnie, réaliser bien plus et aller un peu plus loin que les ignares qui se prennent pour des puissants.
On se retrouve sur le sentier ?
Promis : la voie est Libre !
A few months ago, I was contacted by a senior executive who was about to leave a marketing firm. He got in touch because I’ve worked on the non-profit side of tech for a long time, with lots of volunteering on digital and human rights. He wanted to ‘give back’. Could I put him in touch with digital rights activists? Sure. We met for coffee and I made some introductions. It was a perfectly lovely interaction with a perfectly lovely man. Perhaps he will do some good, sharing his expertise with the people working to save democracy and our private lives from the surveillance capitalism machine of his former employers. The way I rationalized helping him was: firstly, it’s nice to be nice; and secondly, movements are made of people who start off far apart but converge on a destination. And isn’t it an unqualified good when an insider decides to do the right thing, however late?
The Prodigal Son is a New Testament parable about two sons. One stays home to work the farm. The other cashes in his inheritance and gambles it away. When the gambler comes home, his father slaughters the fattened calf to celebrate, leaving the virtuous, hard-working brother to complain that all these years he wasn’t even given a small goat to share with his friends. His father replies that the prodigal son ‘was dead, now he’s alive; lost, now he’s found’. Cue party streamers. It’s a touching story of redemption, with a massive payload of moral hazard. It’s about coming home, saying sorry, being joyfully forgiven and starting again. Most of us would love to star in it, but few of us will be given the chance.
The Prodigal Tech Bro is a similar story, about tech executives who experience a sort of religious awakening. They suddenly see their former employers as toxic, and reinvent themselves as experts on taming the tech giants. They were lost and are now found. They are warmly welcomed home to the center of our discourse with invitations to write opeds for major newspapers, for think tank funding, book deals and TED talks. These guys – and yes, they are all guys – are generally thoughtful and well-meaning, and I wish them well. But I question why they seize so much attention and are awarded scarce resources, and why they’re given not just a second chance, but also the mantle of moral and expert authority.
I’m glad that Roger McNamee, the early Facebook investor, has testified to the U.S. Congress about Facebook’s wildly self-interested near-silence about its amplification of Russian disinformation during the 2016 presidential election. I’m thrilled that Google’s ex-‘design ethicist’, Tristan Harris, “the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience,“(startlingly faint praise) now runs a Center for Humane Technology, exposing the mind-hacking tricks of his former employer. I even spoke —critically but, I hope, warmly—at the book launch of James Williams, another ex-Googler turned attention evangelist, who “co-founded the movement”of awareness of designed-in addiction. I wish all these guys well. I also wish that the many, exhausted activists who didn’t take money from Google or Facebook could have even a quarter of the attention, status and authority the Prodigal Techbro assumes is his birth-right.
Today, when the tide of public opinion on Big Tech is finally turning, the brothers (and sisters) who worked hard in the field all those years aren’t even invited to the party. No fattened calf for you, my all but unemployable tech activist. The moral hazard is clear; why would anyone do the right thing from the beginning when they can take the money, have their fun, and then, when the wind changes, convert their status and relative wealth into special pleading and a whole new career?
Just half an hour flipping through my contacts produced half a dozen friends and acquaintances who didn’t require a ‘road to Damascus’ conversion to see what was wrong with big tech or the ways governments abuse it. Nighat Dad runs the Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan, defending online freedom of expression and privacy for women, minorities and dissidents. That’s real courage. Gus Hosein has worked in tech and human rights for over 20 years, runs Privacy International, the UK-based non-profit, and is the most visionary thinker I know on how to shake up our assumptions about why things are as they are. Bianca Wylie founded the volunteer-run Open Data Institute Toronto, and works on open data, citizen privacy and civic engagement. The “Jane Jacobs of the Smart Cities Age,” she’s been a key figure in opening up and slowing down Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs juggernaut in Toronto. Aral Balkan runs Small Technology Foundation and works on both the tools and the policies to resist surveillance capitalism. Unafraid of being unpopular, even with other activists, Balkan freely hammers rights organizations or conferences for taking big tech’s sponsorship money while criticizing the companies’ practices. In the western Balkans, hvale vale works tirelessly and cheerfully on women’s rights, sexual rights and the political and practical path to a feminist internet. Robin Gross, a Californian intellectual property lawyer, could have put her persistence and sheer pizazz to work defending big entertainment companies, but instead she’s worked for decades against the copyright maximalism that strangles artists’ creativity and does nothing to increase their incomes. I would love to hear their voices amplified, not (just) the voices of those who took a decade and more to work out the rottenness at the core of big tech.
Ex-Google lobbyist Ross Lajeunesse left the company in 2019 over its censored search engine for China and also because of homophobic, sexist and racist work practices. He’s now running for a Democratic senate nomination, and recently wrote a classic of the ‘scales have fallen from my eyes’ genre, called “I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left.” Its lede is “The company’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” Things have changed.”
Really? Has Google really changed? Lajeunesse joined in 2008, years into Google’s multi-billion dollar tax avoidance, sexist labor practices and privacy hostility and continued to work there through the years of antitrust fines, misuse of personal health data, wage fixing, and financially pressuring think tanks. Google didn’t change. It just started treating some of its insiders like it already treated outsiders. That only looks like radical change if you’ve never thought too hard about what you are doing and to whom.
One hundred thousand people work for Google/Alphabet; some of them have much more power than others. The point isn’t whether Lajeunesse is or isn’t culpable for the many acts of the enormous company he represented—as its chief lobbyist in Asia for several years—it’s that of all the people who spent the decade of 2010-20 working thanklessly to expose and reduce the firm’s monopolistic abuse and assault on global privacy, it’s the ex-lobbyist who gets our attention now.
We all need second chances. Even if we don’t need those fresh starts ourselves, we want to live in a world where people have a reason to do better. But the prodigal tech bro’s redemption arc is so quick and smooth it’s barely a road bump. That’s because we keep skipping the most important part of the prodigal son story—where he hits rock bottom. In the original parable, the prodigal son wakes up in a pig sty, starving, and realizes his father’s servants now live better than he does. He resolves to go home to the people and place he did not value or respect before. He will beg to be one of his father’s servants. He accepts his complete loss of status. But instead of chastising and punishing his prodigal son, the rejoicing father greets him joyfully and heads off the apology with a huge party. It’s a great metaphor for how to run a religion, but a lousy way to run everything else.
Prodigal tech bro stories skip straight from the past, when they were part of something that—surprise!—turned out to be bad, to the present, where they are now a moral authority on how to do good, but without the transitional moments of revelation and remorse. But the bit where you say you got things wrong and people were hurt? That’s the most important part. It’s why these corporatized reinventions feel so slick and tinny, and why so many of the comments on Lajeunesse’s train wreck post on Medium were critical. The journey feels fake. These ‘I was lost but now I’m found, please come to my TED talk’ accounts typically miss most of the actual journey, yet claim the moral authority of one who’s ‘been there’ but came back. It’s a teleportation machine, but for ethics.
(While we’re thinking about the neatly elided parts of the prodigal tech bro story, let’s dwell for one moment on the deletion of the entire stories of so many women and people of color barely given a first chance in Silicon Valley, let alone multiple reinventions.)
The only thing more fungible than cold, hard cash is privilege. The prodigal tech bro doesn’t so much take an off-ramp from the relatively high status and well-paid job he left when the scales fell from his eyes, as zoom up an on-ramp into a new sector that accepts the reputational currency he has accumulated. He’s not joining the resistance. He’s launching a new kind of start-up using his industry contacts for seed-funding in return for some reputation-laundering.
So what? Sure, it’s a little galling, but where’s the harm?
Allowing people who share responsibility for our tech dystopia to keep control of the narrative means we never get to the bottom of how and why we got here, and we artificially narrow the possibilities for where we go next. And centering people who were insiders before and claim to be leading the outsiders now doesn’t help the overall case for tech accountability. It just reinforces the industry’s toxic dynamic that some people are worth more than others, that power is its own justification.
The prodigal tech bro doesn’t want structural change. He is reassurance, not revolution. He’s invested in the status quo, if we can only restore the founders’ purity of intent. Sure, we got some things wrong, he says, but that’s because we were over-optimistic / moved too fast / have a growth mindset. Just put the engineers back in charge / refocus on the original mission / get marketing out of the c-suite. Government “needs to step up”, but just enough to level the playing field / tweak the incentives. Because the prodigal techbro is a moderate, centrist, regular guy. Dammit, he’s a Democrat. Those others who said years ago what he’s telling you right now? They’re troublemakers, disgruntled outsiders obsessed with scandal and grievance. He gets why you ignored them. Hey, he did, too. He knows you want to fix this stuff. But it’s complicated. It needs nuance. He knows you’ll listen to him. Dude, he’s just like you…
I’m re-assessing how often I help out well-established men suddenly interested in my insights and contact book. It’s ridiculous how many ‘and I truly mean them well’s I cut out of this piece, but I really do, while also realizing I help them because they ask, or because other people ask for them. And that coffee, those introductions, that talk I gave and so much more of my attention and care—it needs to go instead to activists I know and care about but who would never presume to ask. Sometimes the prodigal daughter has her regrets, too.
So, if you’re a prodigal tech bro, do us all a favour and, as Rebecca Solnit says, help “turn down the volume a little on the people who always got heard”:
Do the reading and do the work. Familiarize yourself with the research and what we’ve already tried, on your own time. Go join the digital rights and inequality-focused organizations that have been working to limit the harms of your previous employers and – this is key – sit quietly at the back and listen.
Use your privilege and status and the 80 percent of your network that’s still talking to you to big up activists who have been in the trenches for years already—especially women and people of colour. Say ‘thanks but no thanks’ to that invitation and pass it along to someone who’s done the work and paid the price.
Understand that if you are doing this for the next phase of your career, you are doing it wrong. If you are doing this to explain away the increasingly toxic names on your resumé, you are doing it wrong. If you are doing it because you want to ‘give back,’ you are doing it wrong.Do this only because you recognize and can say out loud that you are not ‘giving back’, you are making amends for having already taken far, far too much.