Tag: Trust

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Culture

Day 1416 and Lagom

As no cultural heritage must remain uncommercialized, you can find many pop culture best sellers on Swedish “lagom” philosophy.

“Not too little, not too much. Just right”

I’d actually never heard of it until today despite being the daughter of a Swedish American man. I am not one for balance though I actually do live a life of simple routines.

But I did recognize my lcultural upbringing when I stumbled across this piece on why the Nordic countries score so well on happiness scales. Apparently it is less “lagom” balance and more that we have reasonable expectations for life.

Consistent with their Lutheran heritage, the Nordic countries are united in their embrace of curbed aspirations for the best possible life.

This mentality is famously captured in the Law of Jante—a set of commandments believed to capture something essential about the Nordic disposition to personal success:

“You’re not to think you are anything special; you’re not to imagine yourself better than we are; you’re not to think you are good at anything”

I did not think I was anything special as a child. I’d laugh listening to Garrison Keillor describe the Lake Wobegon residents who were all above average. Those jokes landed with Minnesotans because who would be so foolish as to set unrealistic expectations?

I went through most of my life with the presumption that I was totally normal. I liked ketchup didn’t I? I wasn’t out of the ordinary and didn’t think I was especially intelligent or attractive relative to my peers.

As it turns out this was a real lack of self knowledge on my part. But it set me up for happiness. Every win feels fantastic because in my head I’m just a normal girl from a normal family who will achieve normal things.

None of that ended up being true. And I’ve been pleased to find myself actually quite a bit above average. They say expectations are premeditated resentments. And I have precious few of those.

Maybe I have achieved lagom. I’ve got just the right amount of expectations for my life. Set it low and your achievements will always be great.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1414 and Signs

I’ve been a bit Delphic in tone over the last week. I’m relieved but also distracting myself with shopping, reading and health projects.

My natural optimism is looking for the positive. If you go in for numerology 14 is a good number for the moment as 1 represents independence, leadership and change while 4 is stability and balance.

The world is shifting but my path is clear in front of me. We may be on a chaotic course but the adaption brings us new opportunities. I’ll just do my best to get enough sleep when things get exciting

Categories
Media Reading

Day 1410 and Luxury Content

Institutional trust in the media has reached a new low point for Americans. The news exists in a strange place for many of us as we must stay informed but it is no longer has quite the same halo of necessity when it comes to life and culture beyond the headlines.

Many of us read significant amounts of “need to know” publications for our professional lives. I myself read Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal every day along with more specialized media like Axios Pro-Rata and various venture and startup specific media.

Culture is different. Wanting to be in touch with the ideas that shape a nation is a luxury you don’t need to be wealthy to enjoy. To engage in ideas is to have the means to enjoy a life of the mind. You must choose to spend your precious time on it. Time is the only luxury which can’t be bought.

Media is changing as news and cultural content diverge. We used to be awash in a sea of periodicals. As a child I’d bike to the Boulder library and read it all. Thats how I became a fan of the Economist. I loved culture magazines just as much. Some still retain their pride of place through institutional nostalgia like Vanity Fair and Vogue. But can the New York Times hold a grasp on culture like it used to do?

As we face down an election with clear cultural and political bifurcations, what does it mean to be a consumer of not simply news but the culture of the moment?

Dirt editor Daisy Alioto bitingly called it luxury content and sent the LinkedIn striving aspirants scattering.

Someone told me they don’t always open Dirt because it’s not framed as “need to know.” Yeah, that’s why it’s luxury content, because you don’t NEED it. Take your ass back to Axios

To want a cultural publication like Dirt, and enjoy its view of the world, is to appreciate the premium we place on taste.

To be au courant means deciding where our time goes when it’s not an obligation. And I’m sorry to say to Condé Nast that their grip on culture looks more tenuous than ever.

Oliver Hsu tweeted this spread of new print periodicals dedicated to the culture of technology and economy.

Telescope, Arena, and Palladium are all pointing to new appetites. We want the luxury of futurism. To be caught only in the moment is to reveal a perhaps embarrassingly high time preference for algorithmically forced immediacy. “I want it now!”

Doom scrolling the news may be fun. Many billionaires spend time on Twitter because of its close proximity to sentiment. We all need to know the narratives catching attention.

But want do we want? Well who rather enjoy an essay from a writer who shows you the culture beyond your feed? Giving your attention to those who respect it will always be a luxury.

Categories
Community Politics

Day 1405 and America is Speaking

I spent several hours with my ballot last night. My husband and I engaged in scenario planning with every race and ballot initiative though we’ve been following them all closely through the year.

We have done our best to get engaged in the civic life of Montana because that is our obligation as people with time and resources.. There are many excellent non-partisan groups dedicated to a range of everyday issues from housing policy and education to more abstract policy like the right to compute. I recommend the Frontier Institute if you are inclined towards libertarian and growth policies.

We’d been lucky enough to meet many of the candidates who were running for a range of offices from federal, state and judicial. It’s a privilege to be a part of the process and every candidate makes a huge sacrifice to run for office. They make themselves accountable to us.

Nothing feels quite as good as voting for your neighbor. John Lamb the libertarian candidate for our Secretary of State is a good neighbor with a wonderful family. I believe in the value of voting for your neighbors. He and I align on many issues and where we do not I remind myself that it need not divide us. I know he raised wonderful children. Which means more than any individual policy.

Now, of course, many of my preferred candidates won’t be elected. It’s possible the ballot initiatives I support do not have the support of the majority. I did what I could to have my voice heard through the election season and today with my ballot.

A line at of rougly hundred deep to vote on Main Street in Bozeman Montana at 4:30pm Mountain Time. It is below freezing and snowing

Montana allows any voter to request a ballot by mail. You can also vote in person. Montana offers early voting. I’ve voted in three elections since we’ve moved here and I’ve never seen a presidential year turnout. Even with so many options to vote ahead and avoid the lines we still had hundreds of people lined up to vote.

We dropped our ballot and drove home. American is speaking now.

Categories
Internet Culture Media Politics

Day 1402 and Scape Squirrel Iconoclasts

I am a bit tired today. I’ve had a busy month of travel and the last week was particularly intense.

I have been in bed most of the day and the immobility coming with this day of fatigue has allowed me to thoroughly participate in a number of extremely online activities.

A squirrel named Peanut was euthanized

If you’ve not been following along the TLDR is that a squirrel named Peanut living in an animal sanctuary run by New Yorkers Mark and Daniela Longo was seized by the Department of Environmental Conservation and subsequently euthanized.

A raccoon was also taken and killed but Peanut was an Internet celebrity and we live in an age of viral contagion and within a few hours all Twitter could talk about was Peanut.

Why does this matter? Well, giant bureaucracies killing pets has an uncomfortable history in America. If you want to dig on the lesser known lore check out gun subreddits for ATF dog killer memes.

So potent is this history it has emerged as the ideal 11th hour election meme for the restless population that is uncomfortable about the power of the federal government.

I’ll quote my friend Anton’s tweet from a thread I’d recommend on Christian semiotics and Peanut.

actually you know what? the squirrel is an anti-christ. we are in the midst of a huge mimetic crisis and rather than scapegoating the squirrel to eliminate the conflict and avert violence, we instead elevate the squirrel’s death to heighten the conflict even further – @atroyn

Different political alignments experience the fear of governmental overreach, and in particular its monopoly on violence, in different ways. We occasionally make martyrs of those who experience that this violence to understand its horrors.

Squirrel martyrdom invokes an entirely BLM than the BLM who arose after the death of George Floyd. I say let us consider them both iconoclasts (in the religious sense) of the same fear of death through state means. They are symbols of idolatry who become sanctified.

Floyd’s death touched on frustration over systemic racism in the judicial system, Peanut’s death touches on frustration over government overreach – John Ennis

Leviathan wakes and we tremble.

Categories
Community Culture

Day 1384 and Long Lunch

No offense to Stephen Sondheim’s Company, but I think ladies who lunch have been unfairly maligned culturally.

We are so quick to dismiss socializing as some superficial ritual. But social bonds are the way we maintain our civilization.

If you can make time to enjoy a long lunch with pleasant and diverting company, you possess a degree of richness that has little to do with personal wealth. It’s a richness of spirit.

Everything can acquire the social capital required to have a little lunch with friends. Being present and kind to one’s dining companions is a joy to be cherished.

Cherish those that would take time to share their company (and a meal) with you. Whether it’s a swanky restaurant, at someone’s home, or on at the office. Take a long lunch with someone who interests you.

The ladies who lunch understand the value of these social bonds to their community. Elaine Stritch would drink to that. And so should you and I.

Categories
Media Startups

Day 1381 and Radical Responsibility

I thought the discourse around “founder mode” had died down but Kim Scott the author of the best selling book Radical Candor decided to link the meme to what she considers a so-called rise of “neo-authoritarianism” in Silicon Valley culture in an op-ed in the New York Times. Naturally it’s about Trump too.

My read on her thesis is that she has decided to use a technique she disavows in her own work; the frame of the piece is manipulative insincerity. It’s an unclear criticism being used for political gain.

She works to convince the reader that actually the most libertarian and individualistic demographic, who regularly decries state power (especially its use of coercion to drive censorship, limit transactions and restrict compute), are in fact, actually vouching for totalitarianism.

Gift Link to New York Times “How Founder Mode Explains the Rise of Trump in Silicon Valley

Even the graphic hints at the supposed appreciation of neo-monarchy as a nod to nRX intellectual Curtis Yarvin.

I fear she firmly missed the point of founder mode for her insincere political framing. Despite her clear understanding of our values.

In that original recipe, venture capitalists invested in founders rebelling against established hierarchy and building great products. And when those rebels themselves became too hierarchical, venture capitalists turned to new founders aspiring to overtake the old order.

She is right about we prefer to work as an industry and how we see our efforts. “Many of Silicon Valley’s greatest products were originally intended to liberate, not to control people.”

And yet missed she missed that founder mode is about liberating our founding teams from the suffocation of professional management. It’s got nothing at all to do with justifying tyrannical founders.

Rather founder mode is about limiting the tyranny of managers who can stymie progress despite having little personal responsibility for the success of the firm. In another world, she might have written a sequel called Radical Responsibility about fixing this problem.

Larger firms have a pantheon of corporate departments to ensure smooth governance from legal, to HR, to corporate communications in order to comply with state expectations.

As regulations have ballooned so too have the specialties required by the middle managers. We must be in compliance. We must take everything and every view into account. We must do things by the book.

Founder mode isn’t about running ripshod over your people. It’s certainly not about Trumpian declarations of what must be done. She’s absolutely correct that “emotional dysregulation, bullying and bloviating are not leadership attributes”

I find her criticism to be manipulative insincerity. She’s deliberately missed the point of the original Paul Graham essay, inserted her own political insinuations about how Silicon Valley is hiding their true preferences for authoritarians while herself advocating for a pass the buck culture. It’s not fit for Radical Candor and I’d expect better from someone of her stature.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1374 and Acting Anyway

The frustrating part of living with human limitations is that it doesn’t really matter to anyone but you and your family. Life goes on no matter what is going on in your body or personal context.

The constant barrage of anarcho-tyranny across the globe will build up reactive low trust feelings in anyone.

Harden your hearts and open your mind. Find the facts of your situation. The accommodations of your particular circumstances won’t matter if you can find a way to contribute by acting on the world. You need to bring something to the table even if it’s simple as a good attitude.

The current cultural battles of responsibility seem to hinge largely on who has responsibility and at what stage of abstraction and remove (our city, our regional government, our national state apparatus). We are caught in the same system as anyone else to some extent.

What are the ethical ways of being with each other? How do we show up with trust when so little is trustworthy. What do we owe each other knowing not all are good faith?

I think some of this is simple and no amount of effort or obfuscation gets over the fact that you must contribute some good to the whole. You must be high trust to get back high trust.

Humans are on the whole less transactional than we imagine in our fears. I’ve always found reason to be hopeful. You can act in the face of uncertainty. You can act in an awful world.

Categories
Emotional Work Politics

1370 and Ride or Die

Americans aren’t showing the loyalty we used to be known for these days. It’s embarrassing to see the big games we talk from politics to Wall Street. If it’s all big talk then of course the world laughs when we fail to be steadfast.

Maybe that’s why we have such a glorious oeuvre of “ride or die” art. From literature and cinema to Lana Del Ray we want people who commit even when the risks are unquestionably large and success isn’t assured.

That means a lot of hurt. And not caring who knows you’ve committed to a risky or even crazy caper. Lana waited for an alligator wrangler for fuck’s sake.

From her Blue Jeans lyrics it sure looks like she’s seen her share of bullshitters caught up in the game.

I stayed up waitin’, anticipatin’ and pacin’
But he was chasing paper
“Caught up in the game, ” that was the last I heard

And maybe that’s the point of America’s love of the ride or die. The risks are clear. But the reward for loyalty knows a deeper satisfaction than those who get caught up in the game. Don’t chase the paper and expect the game to care. Only people care. And we should all aspire to loyalty beyond reproach.

Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 1368 and Lending Credibility

The dead internet theory (or conspiracy theory if you must) supposes that machine generated content outweighs human contributions.

I don’t think we are there just yet but I am betting that artificial intelligence speeds up the process of replacing human content in areas where it’s unnecessary. Machines can act on their own and it’s good thing potentially too.

Being able to determine what is human intelligence versus machine intelligence may well be mitigated through trust-less cryptographic systems we take for granted. Handshake protocols for humans and machines.

Some content and transactions are just fine coming from artificial intelligence but others have to demonstrate a human identity. This may even require compute on human’s behalf

Looking forward, the ability to access compute at scale will likely parallel the right to transact. Identity will be layered and lending credibility and capital will look different. Who has credit and credibility?

As nations navigate their own risks, network state behaviors on the individual level will become more prevalent, driven by the need for secure, decentralized transactions that ensure autonomy in an increasingly unpredictable world.

The internet isn’t dying. It’s being reborn to serve the next stage of credible actors on our world.