In the age of infinite browsing

A counter-culture of commitment, curiosity, and contentment

Dear Friends,

Someone gave me the nicest compliment last weekend. They said that I’m growth-minded but satisfied with what I’ve got. That is, in fact, my Great Aspiration and the vibe that I try to instill in this newsletter. It’s also what I seek from friends: a desire to grow and explore together while still staying satisfied with what we have. I feel extraordinarily lucky to be married to a woman who desires little and gets daily pleasure from the blossom of a flower, a hike in the woods, and the slow progress of a creative project.

Nine months into this newsletter experiment, the biggest reward has been the meaningful conversations with friends and frenemies that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. So in the spirit of sharing some things on my mind that I’d love to discuss with anyone interested:

A counter-culture of commitment

I read Pete Davis’ book Dedicated after Iris shared a podcast episode about the temptations of living your life in “Infinite Browsing Mode.” First, the opportunities: We can travel anywhere, meet anyone, date anyone, watch every movie, listen to every album, learn any craft on YouTube, eat any food during every season, and work on just about anything from just about anywhere.

What liberation. We don’t have to become the expectations of our parents and teachers. We can machete our way through the self-discovery of our 20s to discover and shape our authentic selves. But also:

Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish philosopher, coined a great term for this: liquid modernity. As he saw it, in not wanting to commit to an identity, place, or community, we remain in a liquid state. And our world remains liquid as well. We can’t rely on having one job for life anymore; we can’t rely on groups, institutions, ideas, or causes. We can’t rely on them, and they can’t rely on us. Everything is liquid.

You find yourself wondering whether all your “options” are really so great. Whether, maybe, it’s better to commit where you can – for instance, to meet your friends every Thursday, no matter what or who comes along?

I won’t summarize the book. It’s both thought-provoking and practical, and its core ideas have stayed with me. I thought about it when listening to Joshua Coleman talk about the increasing rates of family estrangement, and how (for better and worse) we now call “abuse” what we used to call “conflict.” I thought about it while discussing with Luis the idea of “stuckness” from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: The extreme patience that is necessary for repair — whether it’s repairing a motorcycle or a relationship. I thought about how I have rarely lived anywhere long enough to learn the names of its native plants or the meaning of its monuments. I thought about our relentless pursuit of innovation at the expense of repair, and how quickly AI advances while our public infrastructure crumbles. And I certainly thought about the book while listening to Land of the Giants’ latest season about dating apps, a reminder that Tinder’s business model depends on keeping you in the “zone of possibility.”

No one wants to live a Groundhog Day existence of the same meal with the same people in the same town for the rest of their lives. Variety is the spice of life, and personal growth often comes from personal reinvention in a new place. As with most editions of this newsletter, I am sending this out as a reminder to myself to resist the endless lure of Infinite Browsing Mode. We don’t find the right (movie, friend, city, spouse, restaurant, book, career). We choose it. And by committing to that choice, we make it ours.

🧟‍♂️ In praise of not showing up as your full self at work

I have a rather cynical idea about why senior leadership is so intent to get workers back into the office: To reach their senior position, they had to dedicate themselves so fully to their work that most don’t have much of a social life. The office becomes a social substitute. It is where they are high-status and command a captive audience — and without it (working from home), they feel unmoored.

I loved the first season of Severance, which captures the dynamic perfectly. The office workers of the fictional company, “Lumon Industries,” undergo a procedure that divides their memories from work and home. In the evening with their friends, families, and hobbies, they have no recollection of their day at the office. Meanwhile, the senior leadership of Lumon Industries has not had the procedure, and we discover that they have little to fill their lives beyond their work.

Perhaps your work’s senior leadership would like you to spend more time in the office as well. We kicked off the year with a two-day training to learn how to have “Fierce Conversations.” We were told we would expand and enrich our relationships by learning how to have these fierce conversations. We would achieve professional success. We would connect with colleagues at a deep level.

In fact, the training did work because my group of colleagues had so much fun making fun of the training. Again, Severance shows this beautifully. There are some epic scenes where the fun and sarcastic office workers bond with eye-rolls while the grinning, socially awkward senior managers fumble their way through infantilizing ice-breakers and office perks.

Our trainer told us that we have two different versions. We have our “real selves” and we have our “fake selves.” And we can show up at work as our “real selves” if we learn how to have “fierce conversations” (trademarked).

No wonder Pamela Paul’s plea in the New York Times to “Not Bring Your ‘Whole Self’ to Work” went so viral last year.

I’m a professional; I don’t show up to work to win a popularity contest. I’m there to collaborate with colleagues so that we collectively contribute something meaningful to the world. And then to get home to my friends, family, and hobbies.

I’m not opposed to having genuine fun with my colleagues, and I’m grateful for the handful of meaningful friendships with coworkers over the years. My beef is with the infantilizing, forced fun, which of course is no kind of fun at all. And so I applaud Monsieur T. for refusing to take part in obligatory forced fun and setting a legal precedent so that no French firm can require it.

👏 Kudos

Kudos to my colleague Diakhoumba Gassama, who was featured in Alliance Magazine about the rise of African feminists in philanthropy. Diakhoumba was featured speaking on the Ufahamu Africa podcast with another friend, Maseke Rioba, about female genital mutilation. And from last week’s work retreat at the Presidio, here’s the team:

🧰 A useful tool: MacGPT & watchGPT

If you still haven’t played around with ChatGPT, it has become even easier thanks to a couple of indie programmers based out of the Netherlands. MacGPT is a free (or donation-based) menubar item that lets you conveniently pull up the ChatGPT interface with a hotkey. If you want to feel like you’re really living in the future, watchGPT brings all the power of the GPT-3 to your Apple Watch.

I just pulled up ChatGPT to ask for newsletter writing tips, and it told me that I’ve gone on for too long!

Have a great week!

David