Tag: Hippies

Categories
Finance

Day 1529 and The Detoxing Economy

Do you recall the first time you heard the term detox? If you were a hippie kid I’d bet you grew up with it. If you were a striver maybe it arrived in your email inbox with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop.

Or if you are a banker, maybe Scott Bessent introduced you to the term just this week. Which tbh I wouldn’t entirely believe as the entire dating pool for the professional upper middle class is obsessed with wellness.

“The market and the economy have just become hooked. We’ve become addicted to this government spending, and there’s going to be a detox period,”

Scott Bessent at the New York Economic Club March 6th 2025

Hippies and anxious white women usually use detox as a kind of catch all for methods of various efficacy for flushing out unwelcome…toxins. Being specific can make you sound like a loony tune.

Turns the same logic can be applied to economic and fiscal policy. If you get too far into monetary policy and the Federal Reserve you too will sound like a loony tune.

But it’s hard not to be persuaded by those who rightly point out that America has been printing money and that has downstream effects.

Many an empire has fallen for debasing its currency. Something I am sure a man like Bessent understands. It’s not so much a pleasant white girl cleanse but managing through opioid addiction. Which isn’t an encouraging metaphor.

Categories
Aesthetics Culture

Day 1453 and Shopping Malls at Christmas

I partook in the time honored tradition of going to a mall before Christmas. My family was inconsistent in its treatment of the holiday when I was growing up and consumerism was not a value we celebrated.

And yet now I think it’s a wonder America has exported the triumph of the American consumer at its most intense and made Christmas shopping a mentality globally. Consumer debt is a marvelous when it’s priced in American dollars.

Our holidays are now times for displaying status and taste in so much of the world. I think it’s reasonable to say we’ve been post scarcity since the mass commercial fertilizer and it’s all been status signaling since then. We all live materially better lives. Arguments for the impoverishment of our souls are still quite valid.

Yet here I am buying stuff before Christmas. Nothing makes me feel more like a piece of the capital markets like buying consumer electronics at Christmas.

The prices are better only because we’ve been trained into a consistent purchasing pattern. We can predict consumer sentiment and meet those demands partially as a function of training the consumer when to shop. The propaganda of the markets.

So I get to enjoy the overstimulating existential horror that is the wall of televisions ready to be Christmas gifts. The high fidelity color and intense noise is an assault on the senses. No wonder reality is a disappointment. I’ve never seen so crisp a picture. It’s all just a bit too much.

Categories
Aesthetics Media

Day 1436 and The Voyage Home

Like many fans of Star Trek, I am not at all ashamed of my affection for one of science fictions greatest franchises. I’m proud to love it.

When I visit San Francisco I like to rewatch the classic original series movie from 1986 “Star Trek: The Voyage Home” which is affectionately known as the whale movie.

Future San Francisco is a beautiful paradise where exceptional young people go to Star Fleet Academy. It’s fully automated luxury communism thanks to the not really military (but definitely feels like it) the United Federation of Planets.

The movie involves getting Spock back from previous escapades that had left him for dead. As they retrieve Spock a crisis is unfolding on earth.

A spacecraft is signaling to Earth alas no one can answer it. It disables everything near it. The Enterprise figure out that it’s whalesong and decide the only way to answer is going back in time to find Humpback whales.

The Reagan era was a strange one for environmentalist. The crew goes back in time to rescue Humpback whales and ends up in San Francisco in the 70s at least vibe wise. It was definitely a pop culture “save the whales” moment.

San Francisco was a mess in the past and everyone finds this to be relatable as a plot point though we all know it can be made a paradise.

We see nuclear vessels in Alameda as the brave future. We have to save our whales to save our future though. This was not a universe where environmentalists make the best villains. Environmentalists are the good guys which is almost sweet.

The Voyage Home is a ridiculous movie with a premise stuck in a bubble of social attitudes that is almost comforting.

Leaving San Francisco myself to voyage home myself makes me laugh at one of comedic bits of the movie. “I don’t know how these people made it out of the 20th century!”

To the skeptics I say a double dumb ass on you! Humans and their colorful metaphors might just might get us to the future after all. And San Francisco will be part of making it.

Categories
Politics Startups

Day 1430 and Realignment

American politics has become center of gravity for culture. I’m not thrilled about this as I have utopian high mindedness in my bones and that never pairs well with the real politic of a nation.

I felt being open to change was a part of my cultural upbringing as an American. Reagan Revolution babies enjoyed Clinton neoliberal growth. Optimism meant being interested in technology.

I have never been satisfied with reality because “we can do better” was both the regional culture of frontier Western civilization but America in particular.

We can imagine better which means we can do better. Somewhere between the neoconservatives forever wars, liberalism’s tolerance of intolerance and the growth of an expensive permanent state bureaucracy we lost some shine.

Losing our can-do spirit to fear and zero sum thinking led to strange institutional outcomes. Watching fear spread over years of pandemic and institutional failures did not help.

I’m not a novel voice in this discourse but most of the startup world and technologists in general had sincere affiliations with American institutional liberalism and even in particular the flavor of Democratic neoliberalism you might have associated with Bloomberg. The Obama administration certainly acted as if we were part of the coalition. The sincerity of that alliance is a question of course.

I don’t know where the realignment lands as we go forward but I hope as many people as possible sincerely embrace wanting more optimism.

Categories
Media

Day 1350 and Dumb and Angry

“They want you dumb and angry”

Riling up the people (the proletariat if you are nasty) is a time honored method of keeping us under control. Socrates did it. The Roman emperors did it. The New York Times and the Walk Street Journal do it.

Not getting all caught up in being stupid and reactive is a huge responsibility. And not everyone wants to hand “the people” the type of responsibility that staying free entails.

Freedom at scale requires some surrendering of responsibility to others. We outsource what we can’t possibly know to people we trust. It’s clear some of us have forgotten how to trust. And who can blame us. Institutions rise and fall. Priests, Lords and Kings fell to the people.

We then promptly built up new ways to assign authority. For a while we trusted academics, reporters and politicians. Perhaps a few celebrities and billionaire entrepreneurs retain some authority now. I honestly don’t know. The lone man with his own opinion can scarcely compete.

I’m not sure if there was ever a time when an individual could have a “good bead” on reality. The mythos of the American post World War 2 GI Bill educated mass media literate Baby Boomers sure thought they had a grasp on reality. Being directionally correct about Vietnam and Nixon helped I’m sure.

That’s the fantasy I miss most from my childhood. I read “Manufacturing Consent,” Howard Zinn and AdBusters. I thought it was possible to see around the machine. Maybe and I are both Noam Chomsky kind of simple minded. At least now I’m only certain that I’m part of the machine. Perhaps there was never any separation from it.

Categories
Travel

Day 1340 and Elbow Room

Americans have one of life’s finest luxuries in our protected and ample open spaces. Our cities are bustling economic hubs of opportunity, but unlike in many other countries American has an incredible heritage of publicly owned wilderness.

We may take this access to ample elbow room for granted. Having spent the weekend with a diverse groups of people with interests in how we manage and care for our American ecosystems, it was an incredible reminder of our vast shared inherited wealth.

One friend pointed out that other nations may have become accustomed to the density of a megapolis but Americans come by their space loving “don’t crowd me” individualism honestly. Another friend pointed out that many of us would find ourselves over-socialized in other culture.

Peacefully watching the water go by in the sunlight of late summer

I felt this especially as I’d been socializing with people I enjoy and respect. And even though I had an amazing time I am exhausted from even the love and joy of fellowship.

We’d picked a spacious spot where we had plenty of privacy. It was an intimate group working through topics close to all of our hearts. And yet after a long weekend, I’d like to be quiet and quite alone for just a little. Fortunately I can do just that.

Categories
Aesthetics Culture

Day 1288 and Real Fake Girlbosses

All I wanted the first time I raised venture capital was to be able to make my business case. Once I’d done that I was sifted into into the wider cultural moment of girlbossism with everyone else in my cohort.

It quickly became the way to raise money because heaven forbid gender not be important. I was no Diane Green so I better get comfortable mugging for the cameras. I’d not so secretly hoped I’d be able to offload some of that lifestyle element to someone else. Someone more suitable.

At first I figured fine whatever it takes to get the money who cares embarrassing shit like becoming avatars for the zeitgeist doesn’t matter.

But now I think maybe it did. Every time a piece of social media goes viral with women messing around at the office I think what did we do? I’d envisioned that the difference between me in 2014 and the new younger, better, more ambitious versions of me 2024 to be, well, actually better?

Maybe they are. Media isn’t reality. But I had visions of women quietly running companies and venture funds competently and without concern for their gender. Surely in ten years more would have changed?

Instead we’ve got we’ve got the simulacra version of women like me filtered through Cosmopolitan features and glossy magazine spreads into TikTok dances for a company that makes pimple and acne treatments.

And it’s all grist for the mill. People want to blame feminism and gender studies. Pffft. Cute. It’s not gender studies or critical theory that got us here. For all the Baudrillard, Foucault and Judith Butler we all absorbed, the thing is just a representation of a reality that never existed.

Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation explores the concepts of simulacra, simulation, and hyperreality. Simulacra are copies or representations that become detached from their original reality, leading to a state where distinctions between reality and representation blur. Baudrillard identifies four stages of simulacra: the faithful copy, the perversion of reality, the absence of profound reality, and pure simulacrum, where the representation becomes reality itself

Perplexity’s Synopsis

If you want a crack in the timeline go decide what the Summer of 68 produced as a culture. Maybe they were just reactionaries. Maybe I’m just a reaction to them. These girls are a reaction to me.

If you want to be a cynic there is no shortage of commentary on how media showed us culture that didn’t serve us. Those Summer of 68 men turned into Yuppie midlife crisis dads who weren’t there for their children and wives. Feminism giving depressed stifled women a chance to not regret their choices. But the choices already exist.

Your cultural war mileage may vary. Now we have cowardly millenial man children and forever princess boss bitches and endless rounds of upset every time we see women in an office doing something silly.

You can rage at critical theory all you like but this just one elaborate morality play being accountable. And no one wants that. Real fake Girlbossism selling blemish cream.

Everyone deserves better than this. I deserved better than this. The horror of contortions required to simply pursue work means you must do what media and finance require of you to succeed. Go watch Margin Call and see if you think you’d fare better in making those choices.

Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 1272 and GWOT

As an elder millennial fascinated by the mass media I have a lot of mixed feelings on the American government and how it waged the “war on terror.”

It is heavy on my mind with the current news of Julien Assange’s agreement with the American government.

I think a lot about media, and in particular the technology that powers media. An informed population can still act in its own best interests but what we get told affects what we perceive as our best interests. And as we become more informed naturally some skepticism of the intentions of power arise.

Media affects how nation states wage wars. As we’ve evolved from print to television to radio to the internet how we sell the costs of war changed. But there are always populations who pay enough attention to be skeptical.

The open internet was born of that skepticism of government even so much of the technology emerged thanks to America’s heavy investment in defense industries.

Scientists used to have a wide range of politics and it’s not a surprise that defending American interests is a popular idea amongst people who work for the government. But maybe you see things and fight for more accountability along the way.

The GWOT unevenly affected millennials. If you were middle class your kid probably didn’t join up unless being in the service was how you got to being middle class. There was no draft.

Being in Colorado I had exposure to folks who worked for defense contractors as a lot of the private sector had settled around the cluster of talent from Boulder’s science labs down to the Air Force Academy in Fort Collins.

But there has been skepticism in all the branches of government as it became harder to control the narratives. And Americans don’t particularly like the idea of having propaganda even though I’d argue we produce and consumer enormous quantities of it as a nation.

I wish I could be more cogent about any of this. I am regularly shocked by how little people seem to remember how we prosecuted these long wars. We quickly forget.

Don’t be too sure human nature had changed. Don’t be too keen to give the government power because you are afraid. We’ve already seen what they do with it.

Categories
Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 1271 and Documenting Practices

The winding roads of spiritual practice often cross paths with the more practical minded subcultures interested in practicalities.

Doing a thing can be more enjoyable than documenting a thing but documenting turns out to be quite helpful in helping others learn to do things.

As we knit together our individual experiences our capacity to measure and systematize improves which in turn scales access if you are inclined to experiment. Getting a look at more than our personal n of 1 enables us to practice kitchen table science in areas prone being illegible or inscrutable.

I believe we are accelerating a number of types of revivalism thanks to the network effects of the internet colliding with religious and spiritual traditions.

One area where I am tracking this has been Silicon Valley’s exploration of meditative practices and mindfulness. I read a wonderful piece by Jake Eaton today about his experiences with jhana practices. If you are interested in learning the practicalities of this type of practice Nadia Asparouva has documented it extensively as well.

There has been a rising interest in codification of various mindful and meditative practices in a number of my syncretic cultures. Engineering dharma bum connective mental map mindfulness seems to be an archetype doing the work of documenting.

Handing people what was once hidden knowledge naturally makes some people skeptical. We’ve gone from sharing breathing practices to documenting achieving spiritual ecstasy.

Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 1177 and Binge Monomyths

I spent the day on binging a monomyth in service of focusing some attention on where we might be going if this is in fact a Cambrian explosion era. If you need a synopsis I’ll extract it from Twitter if I can find the toolsets. If you know the toolset please share them.

The fellowship of the ring will not doom the hobbits to torment and death

My assumption that property rights underlined some of this still stands. If you’ve been holed up in Middle Earth (me too nice place unclear though unclear if I’m a Hobbit or an elf or a dwarf or a wizard or an orc Or Tom Bombadil) everyone thinks Mordor somehow their pet theory or sin. It is industrialism or fascism or some combination of horrors because history becomes legend and legend becomes myth. I don’t know. Ask an autist.

Hug a hippie. Be kind to a hipster. But fight to the death for the hackers. Or pick a princess who likes trade disputes in the galactic empire. I can’t translate all the monomyths in one day.