What I’ve seen in the past two years, though, is completely different.

No longer do I see these antisemitic comments/content even attempting to carry the guise of jest anymore, but are now made with more unfiltered, direct hatred for the Jewish people than I’ve ever seen. Clearly it seems that the events and subsequent response following the October 7th 2023 attack enabled a psychological permission structure for antisemitism that goes along the lines of “well if you can do something like that, we can do this.”

And I’m not at all trying to say that criticism of the way the Israeli government has conducted the war is unfounded. Or that expanding settlements isn’t immoral or illegal. Or even that there isn’t truth to the fact that some American Jews, who may not even have family in Israel, do have this blinding, unwavering, unquestioning loyalty to every action taken by the state of Israel that I believe can actually harmful to the very intentions they purport to stand for.

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But what I am largely seeing both online and in discussions with friends, as an ethnic, largely non-practicing Jew myself, is that it appears that these valid, difficult and complicated criticisms, along with blatant Jew hatred, have all been lumped, weaponized and condensed into a single, overloaded word: Zionist.

Historically meaning one who “supports the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and statehood in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel,” this word seems to have now morphed into meaning one of two things depending on the context: essentially a stand-in for “Jewish-pig” by those who understand the cultural zeitgeist does not yet allow this, or one who supports the murder of innocent Palestinians. No longer does there seem to be any ground for those Zionists among us who may criticize the policies of the state of Israel, like we may do of any government, and mourn the loss of life but still support the existence of the state itself and think it essential to the continuation of the Jewish people. Now, it seems, labeling yourself a Zionist is akin to admitting that you’re an enabler, a murderer, a baby killer, a member of the secret Cabal of Jews who manipulates and blackmails people into doing their bidding…and if you believe that, then what does that likely mean you believe should happen to those people? Or to the country that is perpetuating these acts?

That being said, I can understand how we got to this point.

From the start, the Zionist movement conjured very different thoughts and emotions depending on who you’d talk to. Talk to a Jew and you’d likely associate positively with the word. The return of your people to their ancestral homeland, the attempted preservation of a people following the worst state sponsored mass genocide in human history, the fulfillment of a prophecy long promised. But talk to a Palestinian, and I’m sure the same word brings feelings of deep pain and suffering. The expulsion of your people during the creation of the state of Israel, feelings of repression and occupation, a sense of eternal struggle against a more powerful force. With this framing, it’s much easier to understand how we so easily talk past each other with this word, like a Native American hearing about American patriotism.

With the current war and subsequent destruction/loss of life, it’s not hard to grasp why it’s easier to sympathize with the latter perspective and conflate “believing the state should exist” with “believing the state has a right to do whatever they want.”

But what concerns me the most is that with the semantic change that has occurred, we no longer have the ability to make Zionism into something that can work for everyone. To explain that a home for the Jewish people does not inherently mean pain and suffering for others. To understand how the word has been wrongly co-oped by the far right to justify continued expansionist claims to others land and has done irreparable damage to the moral legitimacy of the word. Or even just to have a nuanced discussion to foster understanding of the other sides position.

Now, sadly, all that seems to remain of this important topic are that there are those who wish to eliminate the entire state of Israel and those who justify everything that has occurred. This oversimplification and false dichotomy only leaves room for more hate from each side, with one side rightfully claiming that this version of anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic (those who stand for this belief never seem to call for the dissolution of other morally questionable regimes including North Korea, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the US, UK, Rwanda, Congo, Russia, etc.) and the other side who believes that a majority of Jews believe what the far right, nationalist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich does: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language.”

Personally, when I hear friends say “Zionist” today, I know that they don’t mean it as an insult to me. They mean it as some collective “other people” who blindly justify or support the events going on in Gaza and the West Bank. Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel a dagger in my heart, in a way I’m sure other groups feel when they hear a slur, because I know that that word today carries with it such vitriolic hate and negative connotation that I have trouble disconnecting it from anything else. That paired with the fact that, under what I believe is the accurate definition, I would personally call myself a supporter of the Zionist movement, which speaks to the disconnect that I believe exists.

I know that by this point there will be a portion of people thinking something along the lines of “why should I care about your feelings when people are dying, using this word illuminates the issue.” And that’s fair, my feelings matter in minuscule to those who have suffered. But don’t we know by now that suffering and pain increases when we descend into more polarization and hate? That fear creates more radicalization. That simplification creates scapegoats. Have we failed to learn the lessons of history?

Moral outrage is one of the strongest forces for change that we have and, as a Jew and a Zionist, means I hold Israel to the highest standard because I expect the best from my people. So when we fail to live up to our duty to be a “light unto other nations”, it’s humiliating and embarrassing. Given that, my hope would be that from that failure we learn to be act better, govern better, and live better together. Zionism is about guaranteeing the Jewish peoples self determination and a secure land of their own. Thus, it doesn’t seem far fetched to take the next step, that the only way to fully actualize that goal is through the continued striving towards peaceful coexistence with her neighbors. That may seem like a distant goal right now, but that’s what Zionism means to me.

To me, perhaps the most defining character trait of an American is the combination of innate optimism for a better future, coupled with some seriously severe cognitive dissonance during the present. This unique elixir was codified directly into our most foundational document with the words that we all know:

Even though these words would have immediately elicited righteous cognitive dissonance in the men who wrote them (for they themselves did not live up to them), they nonetheless decided to include them for no other reason than the optimistic belief that this country would be inhabited by a people, and a system, who would make those words come to fruition. Call it optimism or naive wishful thinking or stubbornness, nevertheless there have always been Americans that carried that same optimistic belief that the founders did even when those words seemed further from reality than during their writing, from the facilitation of the Atlantic slave trade, to the horrors of slavery itself, to the expulsion and relocation of Native Americans, to the collapse of Reconstruction and the rise of segregation, to the exclusion of Chinese from naturalization, to Japanese internment camps, to the denial of women’s suffrage, to the repatriation of Mexican American citizens during the Great Depression. Even through all the times when we failed to live up to our ideals, for none other than a belief in the American way, there were still Americans that believed it was possible. And over time, they were proven right, again and again. Slavery was abolished, civil rights were granted, universal suffrage was enacted, domestic terrorism was diminished, marriage was expanded, national origin quotas were eliminated and apologies were given. A true American is able to sit with the fact that his country may actively be acting against the principles that were promised, but simultaneously believe that we live in a system that can change, has changed, and will change for the better.

To be an American also means to be curious and to take chances. From the early settlers who picked up their families and moved across the country, to the facilitators of the Underground Railroad, to the Moon Landing, to the Montgomery Bus Boycotters and the Little Rock 9, to the Manhattan Project, to the immigrants who left their homes to come to a new land, to the mass exodus of black Americans to the north, to the invention of the lightbulb and the plane; to be an American means a willingness take risks in pursuit of betterment of self and/or country, understanding that those risks don’t always pay off, and still do it anyways.

To be an American is also to believe that allegiance to a system of government and rule of law is superior than to any single person, ancient ethnicity, language or religion. While this may seem somewhat banal nowadays, the idea that people could be organized around an abstract set of political ideas was radical and is important to our national identity, because it sets up a permission structure for everyday citizens to be involved in how our country would be shaped, rather than accept the dogmatic, top down organizational structures of the past that allowed for little dissent. It turns out that people are just as if not more willing to support a system that gives individuals agency in how their society is shaped, than one that uses the weapons of religion, history or shared bloodline to keep subjects in line.

And finally, to be an American is to project an outward confidence, while simultaneously being in a state of constant crisis. Being proud of our military dominance while being anxious about exerting power on the global stage, lauding our virtuous founding documents while being anxious about hypocrisy, claiming we’re the greatest country on earth while dreading the direction the country is moving, being proud of our technological innovativeness while being concerned about community and economic collapse, touting the American Dream while simultaneously understanding it’s becoming harder to actualize, extolling our countries riches while living paycheck to paycheck. Like our obsession with looks, to be an American means to be that kid at school who looks like he’s got everything put together, but in actuality is just as scared shitless as everyone else.

And if that’s what it means to be an American, then I think anyone can.

Happy 250th

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Last month I interviewed for the Utah chapter of the Big Brothers program, hoping to become a mentor for a struggling 8-12 year old child. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while, give back in a way I’ve never done before, but I only recently mustered the nerve to follow through with it. Understandably, you have to undergo a lengthy interview and background check to make sure you’re a good fit. I prepared for such predictable questions like “why do you want to be a part of this program” and “why would you be a good mentor for a little” and “what activities would you do with your little,” but, surprisingly, it was another, much simpler question that threw me off: “how would you describe yourself.”

This open ended yet potentially very revealing and introspective question scared me. How open should I be to this person? Do I even know the answer? Is my occupationally derived label as an engineer adequate to describe myself? Or am I better described by the character traits I think I embody; curious, adventurous, thoughtful, etc.? Do I mention the activities that I partake in; running, biking, skiing, writing, making Youtube videos, etc.? Do I mention my relationship status?

Yet in the midst of this introspective spiral, a different idea began to blossom. Not one that would necessarily help me as I stumbled through my half coherent response, but one that was worth exploring more nonetheless.

I began to think about the means with which we describe ourselves. To provide familiar labels and categories to your life in such a way that another can relate to, allowing them to fill in the remaining blanks of your life with their own understanding of said labels. In a way, these labels are sort of like boxes, containing such perfectly sectioned, prepackaged boundaries that encapsulate an idea and image unto itself. And I began to think about how we use these boxes to understand the world around us, giving predictability and order to the otherwise chaotic and scary. If an unknown man walks into a school with a construction vest on, for example, we can easily place him in the familiar and safe “worker” category and move on with our lives. But when that same man walks in without that vest, such that we cannot easily apply a preconceived box to him, we shudder at what his intentions may be.

We don’t only use these boxes to make sense of the world external, but they also help us construct the mental scaffolding that supports our own self-identity. With a foundation consisting of our morals, the beams and concrete carefully constructed on top are composed of an amalgamation of said boxes, ultimately creating a solid structure we call our identity, each box representing a different aspect of the building. Some represent the drapes, furniture, paintings and interior design, giving vibrance and uniqueness to the structure, while others are load bearing, representing the most important aspects of how we view ourselves upon which everything else relies. Over a lifetime we labor to construct our own self identity buildings, slowly adding beautifying features and thoughtfully swapping old, rotten support beams for new, improved ones, the speed of renovations slowing with age but never truly ceasing.

And yet, at the same time we work to construct our building, agents of chaos conspire against the structural integrity, seeking to destroy the order we created. Time, using the weapon of neglect against us, slowly corrodes the underlying structure that we may have failed to adequately inspect. An engineer, for example, who has transitioned to a manager may not realize that as his hard science skills have atrophied, and thus his identity as an engineer has also unknowingly faded. Circumstance, unlike the slow burn of time, tests the structural resilience to unanticipated, abrupt shock events. A football player who tears his achilles suddenly has to grapple with both his recovery and with who he is without sport that defined him.

While both time and circumstance are ultimately essential to the continued progression and growth of our self identity structures, it doesn’t detract from the trauma and grief that comes from grappling with the loss of self that can occur.

As I sat at my Big Brothers interview that evening, struggling to answer her question, I had the realization that I had been undergoing my own shock event in slow motion for the past seven months. An event that I’ve been forcefully resisting and unable to accept even as I’ve watched one of the oldest parts of my self identity structure crumble before my very eyes: my identity as an ultra runner, an endurance athlete, an adventurer, an explorer, a fit person, and in an even more fundamental way, a unique person.

As that realization set in, I began to better conceptualize my actions over the past seven months of injury as a frantic and ultimately futile struggle to prevent my own building from faltering. Every visit to a new doctor I hoped would magically fix me, every ChatGPT message confirming recovery was right around the corner, every PRP injection, every deep fascia massage, every shockwave therapy, every physical therapy session, every backcountry ski where I ignored the pain was, in some ways, just as much an attempt to preserve my self identity as it was an attempt to recover from my injury.

Yet perhaps the most difficult realization was coming to grips with the fact that this shock event was not an isolated incident, but had propagated to other, seemingly more structurally sound parts of my self identity structure as well. It had spread to many of my friendships, those whose foundation rested largely upon doing activities together and were suffering as a result. It had spread to other hobbies like writing and Youtube video creation, whose innate motivation at least partially rests upon the self confidence that running provides. It had spread to my will to go on adventure trips, whose motivation to coordinate waned as the ability to explore in the way I love vanished. And to work, where the burden of sitting at a desk inside all day had suddenly become much heavier when not countered with activity outside. To food, where insecurities related to the guilt of not “earning it” due to lack of activity returned. To body image, where a source of pride had been eroded as the reality of atrophy due to inactivity set in. I suddenly began to fully understand with how much of the life I had built and the way I viewed myself was dependent on my ability to move.

And perhaps most ironically, many of the acts of resistance to the crumbling of my structure prolonged and exasperated the very result I wished to prevent. In an effort to preserve my mental health and friendships, for example, I chose to continue skiing and biking, which in hindsight only further delayed recovery and ultimately worked against the parts of structure I thought I was maintaining. In the end, my own stubbornness and inability to accept reality proving to be the demise of the very thing I yearned to protect.

But even though I largely blame myself for the position I’m in now, having not run in 6 months and still not in a state where it seems likely to happen soon, I also understand and sympathize for how I ended up here. From wanting to continue running through the pain in September and October because it’s my favorite part of the year, to thinking I could recover and maintain my fitness by biking through November and December, to being tempted into skiing powder with my friends in January, to opting for a PRP injection in late January when things still weren’t getting better and correspondingly turning to swimming for fitness, to returning to physical therapy in mid March when the PRP didn't seem to be working, to now completely shutting it down and focusing on slowly rebuilding strength without pain for however long it takes.

The process has been mentally exhausting.

I’m tired of my first waking thought being to check how my knee is feeling today and constantly being disappointed that it’s worse than the day before. And I’m tired of going on a walk around my block and having my knee give out because I’ve adjusted my form to compensate for the pain. And I’m tired of people asking me how recovery has been going, telling them I’m worse off now than I was at the start, watching the confusion spread over their face, and then having to accept their pity. And I’m tired of burdening my girlfriend with my frustrations and having this be a constant topic of conversation, especially when she has her own injury to deal with. And I’m tired of dealing with the episodes of dizziness that have begun as a result of the stress associated with this injury. And I’m tired of feeling the need to delete Strava to remove myself from the envy associated with watching people do the activities I want to do. And I’m tired of having to figure out new ways of hanging with my friends now that activity is off the table.

And I’m tired of missing my old life.

I miss those runs in Davis County after work, those long, steep climbs by myself on a lightly used trail, without a soul in sight for miles, and looking back down at the city far below, feeling that sense of accomplishment and pride for what I could do. I miss those deep, personal conversations with my friends as we moved effortlessly through mountains together for hours every weekend. I miss those days when the music, scenery and movement came together just right, and I get the urge to cry at the perfectness of the moment. I miss being able to go on adventures with my girlfriend, showing her my favorite places and the joy of being in the mountains together. I miss the feeling of being completely exhausted after a long run, stuffing my face with food, and passing out into a blissful nap. I miss the excitement of scanning maps, designing routes and planning trips to new places...

Sometimes when it’s hard I think about a walk I went on with a friend a few years ago. Being a bit fed up with complaining about my lack of success in the dating realm, I decided then and there that it was time for a change of mentality, partially for self preservation sake and partially because I really believed it. Instead of deferring back to my usual qualms and complaints, I remember telling my friend all of the things I was looking forward to in the future instead of focusing on the things I didn’t have right now. How I was so excited that future me gets to fall in love with someone, how future me gets to propose to her, have a wedding with her, raise a family with her. And how lucky I was that I would ultimately become future me if I stayed on this path.

In a similar way, I’m also looking forward to future me in this context. A future me that will be going on adventures here in Utah and elsewhere around the world, a future me that will be climbing mountains with my friends and pushing the limits of my body, a future me that gets to experience the places I’ve been a thousand times with her for the first time, a future me who has rebuilt my self identity building to be more resilient and diversified than ever before.

Maybe this is coping, or maybe this is me coming to terms with reality. But either way, the idea of future me makes present me a whole lot happier.

The day following the 2024 election, I wrote a piece capturing my frustrations with the party I had voted for and the worries and hopes I had for a second Trump presidency. I tried to find silver linings, largely based on the fact that many of his worst impulses were constrained in his first term, and I even highlighted a few policies I was cautiously optimistic about. While it wasn’t the result I wanted, I didn’t want to give into the same apathy or dread that I saw many others falling into.

While this article isn’t a complete recap of my thoughts on everything that’s happened in the year since, I think it’s safe to say that I did not envision how radically different this time around the sun would be. From alienating our allies and alliances, to engaging in an unfathomable scale of corruption, to subverting a sclerotic Congress while abusing a sluggish Supreme Court, to deporting American citizens without regards to due process, to undercutting the source of American ingenuity; I could go on…

Instead, I want to give my thoughts on a topic I had actually been cautiously hopeful about in my article just a year ago: issues facing young men in this country. While it’s become a trope that almost feels banal given the amount of media coverage it’s received in the past year (i.e. see the newfound attention that activists such as Richard Reeves, Scott Galloway, and Jonathan Haidt have received), it’s nevertheless true that young men shifted drastically towards Trump from 2020 to 2024, reflecting both the aspirations for renewed visibility and frustrations at the status quo that I also expressed at the time. From prioritizing appearances on podcasts dominated by male listenership, to highlighting the decline of traditionally male dominated industries, to promising to work with RFK Jr. — someone who was very vocal about the “crisis of masculinity” — I really thought there was a chance that something positive would occur. Or at least, I figured, force Democrats to take notice (i.e. they have).

But before I give my thoughts on this administrations performance on this topic, I think it’s worth describing why I think this issue is so important, especially when I could have chosen to write about any number of pressing issues currently facing the country. Other than watching friends of mine personally struggle with these issues, my main motivation is, honestly, fear. Fear for the growing sickness that is disaffected, angry, resentful, desperate young men and what it could mean for the wellbeing of the country as a whole if left untreated. And I’m afraid of the potential that “my peers” could unleash with increasing social isolation and diminishing economic prospects. Already one of the most violent group in the country, responsible for 89% of all school shootings, 50% of all convicted murders, and 50% of all rape offenders, I’m afraid of what more young men believing they have “nothing to lose” or “the system’s rigged against me” could mean for the normalization of violence. But perhaps above all, I’m afraid that young men, seeking understanding in a society they deem indifferent or even opposed to their interests, will increasingly be drawn to those voices that castigate their woes onto others. Those who blame the helpless and use grievance as guidance. I’m afraid that if nothing changes we’ll wake up one day and wonder how we’re still in the same situation we find ourselves in right now.

And what concerns me the most is that things are trending in the wrong direction.

Declining numbers of close friends, declining dating and marriage prospects, declining graduation rates, increasing unemployment for recent graduates, increased time spent online, etc. While it’s true that many of these issues affect both men and women, differences in natural male coping methods along with stigma against asking for help leads to very different, worrisome outcomes that tends to expand the impact radius. Sometimes, you can’t just keep ignoring the baby that’s destroying the room, even if you’re concerned it’ll reinforce that attention seeking behavior.

Yet as we let these open wounds fester, there are those who wish not for these wounds to heal, but for the infection to keep spreading. Those who seek to turn frustration into profit and grievance into power. Those who salivate at the opportunity to pounce on a disaffected population of impressionable young men by specifically targeting them with services engineered in addiction and algorithmically boosted voices based in vengeance.

Here are some examples.

Sports betting, which has exploded in popularity following the lifting of a federal ban in 2018, allows one to gamble on essentially any sporting situation. While sports gambling is nothing new, the combination of ease of use (it’s an app now), omnipresent, celebrity endorsed advertisements and the intentional optimization of addictiveness have drastically changed the calculus. But what really makes these tactics so malicious is that these companies know precisely who they’re targeting and why. They know that young men are overly represented in sports viewership, and are disproportionally at risk for gambling and risk-taking ventures. So when they deploy such data informed, retention boosting tactics like analyzing a users betting history to push deals they’re more likely to engage with, or generating personalized “risk-free” bets to get users engaged without feeling like they can lose, or create a culture of gambling normalcy and legitimization by flooding the zone with ads on official platforms, I can’t help but view this behavior as predatory.

Or take the increasing amount of time young men are spending playing video games, doubling over the past decade. While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with playing video games themselves — in fact, they often include such benefits as skill development, online community, and a healthy avenue for stress relief — the reason for this vast increase isn’t solely because games have gotten better, but also because of developers transitioning towards intentionally addictive practices to keep users in-game, and in-pocket, for longer. Modern video games intentionally implement a variety of well studied retention based techniques to keep users engaged for longer, coming back sooner and spending more. Such tactics like engagement optimized matchmaking, which maximizes player investment by creating matchups which encourage dopamine loops, to time-gated progression, intentional stopping points to encourage users to come back later or pay to bypass, to unpredictable loot box drops, tapping into gambling-like principles such as variable reward scheduling, to harnessing social comparison to push micro-transactions in freemium games, all convince me that addictive practices are intentionally being weaponized against a susceptible population.

And much the same can be said about the porn industry — again, generally not a problem if used in moderation — which has begun to shift away from advertisement based models and increasingly towards subscription based, personalized content tailored to a users individual tastes (determined by tracking users search history, pauses, re-watches, body types, etc.). Young men, increasingly desperate for connection and intimacy in a world where they’re finding less of it, are gravitating towards personalized interactions with creators more than traditional porn, and are paying more for it. Again, I feel like something nefarious is going on when we combine an increasingly desperate population with an algorithmically optimized, addictive, profit seeking product.

While it may be true that these industries (and more) are simply exploiting a market opportunity generated by our society’s apathy towards the social and economic issues facing young men, they are also clearly exacerbating these issues — and we are letting them because, for whatever reason, we are not asking ourselves these basic questions. When does our interest to protect citizens against addictive products trump our belief in freedom to make bad choices? Should products we know are easily abused be so easily accessible? Do we consider it “innovation” or “manipulation” when companies use our own psychology against us? It’s really no different than this — would we believe it to be a fair and ethical business practice if Coca-Cola started putting cocaine in their soda again?

But what’s so frustrating is the obvious double standard that exists. Why do we assign so much personal failure and so little empathy for young men who engage in these highly addictive and highly targeted products? Is it because we expect stereotypically “strong, independent men” to figure it out themselves? Or perhaps it’s because we blame young men for not getting the help they need, even when such strong taboos exist against it. Until we change the lack of societal empathy, acknowledgement and action, young men are going to continually move towards those fringe voices who will give them the time of day. Those same voices who are eager to harness the social and economic plight of a highly impressionable, prone to resentment group for their own gain. Whether it be by pushing misogyny or antisemitism or nativism or authoritarianism or racism, young men are much more likely to graft their frustrations onto others, significantly shaping their adversarial view of the world. These ideological bents do not simply stop at the individual, but leak into the politics of grievance, victim blaming and vengeance, giving significant political potency to those who choose to harness the power of fear and anger. And with algorithms incentivized to push adversarial, easy to access content, I’m afraid for how it will shape the ideology of my generation going forward.

This long winded rant and expose is simply my way of saying that that cautious hope I had but a year ago has evaporated. That the winds of change I thought I felt were nothing more than a passing gust. Whether that be leaning into deregulation of sports betting and predictive markets, or failing to condemn those contemporary voices who spew hateful rhetoric, or removing safeguards for AI use in industry, or failing to address the root causes of housing, healthcare and food unaffordability — this administration seems bent on further exacerbating the problem instead of solving it. Perhaps this is strategic; after all, if you actually address a groups issues, how do you campaign on it in the future? Or maybe this is just another rug pull, nothing more than empty campaign promises and dog whistling.

Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that until we acknowledge the serious issues of social isolation and economic stagnation among young men, accept that their unique vulnerabilities and addictive qualities are being exploited, stop assigning unilateral blame, work to reverse deeply engrained stigmas, and establish a modern vision of masculinity that isn’t reliant on the ancient dogmas, we shouldn’t be surprised when we keep getting more of the same.

And this pretty much means that my work life revolves around the concept of optimization. Can I write an algorithm that performs the same functionality with fewer computational resources? Can I improve the fidelity of the rocket models without significantly increasing runtime? Can I brainstorm an analysis that reveals a design limitation such that, if not fixed, would have caused a mission failure?

The question I spend most of my days pondering is: how can I quantify the expected performance of the rocket and design it to be better? Often this involves tinkering with software models, or discussing analysis with others, or investigating how this problem was previously solved, constantly searching for hints to help figure out the problem. The process of solving engineering problems is sort of like being lost in a forest and looking for clues to help get you on the right path out; if you don’t know how to read the terrain, you’re unlikely to escape.

But the underlying assumption of essentially all of engineering is that there does in fact exist a repeatable solution to your problem, you just need to have the right tools to find it. If there existed no predictability, and thus no math, then engineering would be futile. There would be no “repeatable solution” to discover…and I would be out of a job. Thankfully for me, however, the universe is full of wonderful patterns that we can exploit to increase our well-being. And with predictability, comes the logical next step in problem solving evolution: solution optimization. How can I generate the best, repeatable solution to a problem given a constrained, finite amount of resources? In other words, “how can I get the most bang for my buck?”

This “optimization mindset” is very useful in the world of engineering and I have successfully mined its societal value to pay my bills for the past 5+ years.

But while this mindset may be great for my employment prospects, I think it’s a little less great as a life philosophy. The motto “how can I optimize my life” seems to be the sort of vague guidance many of us live by today. Some may even distill this philosophy down further: “life is nothing more than the perpetual search for the optimal way to live it.” Always subject to the constant drumbeat of personal progress, we’re subconsciously taught that every day we should work on being a little happier, or healthier, or more knowledgeable, or peaceful, or loving, or richer, etc. And we can’t help but measure ours and everyone else’s progress along these metrics, assigning valuable social credit to those we deem further along. Are we not slightly envious of someone who is richer or more compassionate or healthier and slightly disdainful of someone we deem further behind? Like my rockets, a day not improved is a day wasted.

What does this actually mean in practice? Often it manifests in the constant search for “life hacks” or listening to “self help gurus” or buying “products that will allow you to do or be X Y Z better,” etc. This idea of perpetual life optimization seems to have penetrated deep into our modern psyches, at least partly motivated by the fear of falling behind the expectations of where we “should” be.

And the market eagerly exploits this.

I remember listening to some Joe Rogan episode in college where he talked about taking Lions Mane supplements, a mushroom he claimed enhanced cognitive abilities. Convinced that if I took it I would unlock as much of my brain as Bradly Cooper in the movie Limitless, I eagerly spent $29.99 on a bottle, took a pill everyday for a few months, and, lo and behold, ended up with straight A’s that semester!

Kidding. I’m fairly sure the only thing those pills helped me do was lighten my wallet.

But I was tricked into the mindset that I should be looking for some pill, or by extension, some exercise, or routine, or podcast, etc. that would help make my life a little happier, a little more content, a little healthier, or have a little more purpose. In a way, we’ve become the same as the rockets at my work. All of us acting as our own engineers, tirelessly searching for ways to optimize our own system; every second spent as an inferior product is a second lost. This mindset has become so ubiquitous, that we joke about it…

And it’s the reason we’re obsessed with billionaires and celebrities who we deem to be further along the direction of the optimal life path. After all, they must be so successful because they know something we don’t, right? And so we scurry like mice, trying to hurriedly collect any crumb of advice that may emanate from their benevolent lips, even on such topics that have nothing to do with their conventional success: see Bill Ackman on dating advice or Elon on COVID advice or Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness advice or Tom Brady on Crypto futures, etc.

This mindset of forever improvement and infinite optimization is a trap; life is not an engineering problem in need of solving.

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To understand why I think this true, we first need to understand what criteria must exist for something to actually be an optimization problem.

1. There exists a stable objective

   1. What consistent goal am I trying to minimize or maximize? Common engineering examples include decreased cost, decreased weight, increased computational throughput, etc.

2. There exists a predictable, measurable system

   1. Are there quantifiable inputs and outputs I can use to determine how close I am to achieving my objective? Can I model how these inputs and outputs relate to each other? For example, I can measure the weight of my rocket (input) and model how it affects the rockets range (output).

3. The system environment is stable and controllable

   1. Are there environmental parameters outside of my control that will impact my conclusions? Wind, for example, is an environmental factor that is difficult to model, out of my control and makes rocket performance optimization notoriously difficult.

Life, however, does not clearly meet any of these criteria. Let’s look at each one.

1. Does human life really have a fixed objective to optimize? Perhaps it’s happiness, or longevity, or wealth, or love, or peace, or meaning. Most of us, however, want some sort of combination of these objectives, each of us prioritizing differently, and even those priorities changing as we age. And if that weren’t enough variability, these objectives are occasionally even in conflict with each other (ex: wealth versus love often conflict).

2. Are humans a predictable system with measurable inputs and outputs? Outside of finely controlled medical experiments, I’d argue not for the vast majority of us. Most often, there are simply too many variables to isolate the effects of an input on a human output (how could I have determined if my Lions Mane was working without also finely controlling my food/water intake, sleep amount, mood, etc.). And to make the problem even harder, many human “outputs” are incredibly difficult to quantify (i.e. how do I adequately measure happiness, peace, or meaning)? Humans are generally too malleable, adaptive and complex to accurately attribute cause and effect (at least with current technology).

3. Are our environments generally stable enough to ensure isolation from uncontrollable events? This is certainly not true for humans, as our physical and mental selves are easily influenced by factors outside our control (think external economic, political, biological, or relational events that can impact us). These uncontrollable factors can have significant influence on our objective goals, making optimization even harder.

To be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be trying to improve our lives. In fact, there seem to be a few universally agreed upon things that each of us can do to live better, healthier lives. Daily exercise, social interaction, eating whole foods, etc. But my main issue stems from when self improvement itself becomes the main justification for our actions. When we delude ourselves into thinking we can optimize an inherently un-optimizable system at the expense of actually enjoying our lives. When we strip the “fun” from such activities whose very natural byproducts are self improvement in an attempt to extract the maximal “life utility”. Let me give some examples.

To many, exercise is a chore that we tolerate because we know it’s good for our health. We go to the gym because we know that “cardio benefits our heart,” forcing runs on the treadmill, or the elliptical, or stationary bike, etc., watching a TV show to help rid ourselves of the boredom, counting down the minutes until we can return to our lives. We delight in reading studies that prove that we only need “30 minutes of exercise a day to get 90% of the benefits!” And we’ve made it efficient. No stopping at stoplights, or endangering ourselves on roads, or unnecessary distractions that would drag this on longer than it needs to be. But this optimization mindset, which bases focus on the byproduct of exercise (cardio health), is precisely the opposite we should have. Instead, if we view exercise through a lens of exploration, or time spent outside, or an avenue to see friends, we still get the benefits of cardio health while actually enjoying the activity itself. In this way, we live much richer, enjoyable lives than simply trying to extract the maximum “health value” from exercise in the minimal amount of time.

There are countless similar examples…

Think of how many of us learned in school, focusing on brute information delivery and memorization to optimize assessment ability, rather than learning through explorative tinkering and experimental play. Or the way some of us view food (I am very guilty), through the lens of optimizing nutritional benefit and minimizing cooking time, instead of culinary exploration. Or the way many of us learned how to play an instrument, through the optimization of technical skills like drilling scales and exercises, instead of social playing in jam sessions. Or even mental health practices like meditation, of which many of us have distilled down to prescribed routines in order to maximize stress reduction or boost productivity, instead of simply allowing these moments to organically find us during time spent in nature or doing creative activities.

And then, when we naturally revolt against the dullness of these activities, we’re met with either internal or external backlash. Something along the lines of “it’s not the activity that’s boring, you simply need to become more stoic to perform these tasks without complaint,” or “everyone else is able to do it, why can’t I,” until eventually we submit and accept the reality that this is simply how the world works.

But why are we doing this? Why have we been tricked into focusing on pseudo-optimization at the expense of enjoyment, when humans are inherently not optimizable beings? Why not allow our natural inklings towards curiosity, fun and personal exploration instead guide us? Yes, it might not be quite as “efficient” towards an arbitrary optimization metric, but at least it gives us a chance to foster real interests and perhaps even love for the very pursuits that give life its luster.

Many of my friends have quit running completely after incredibly (conventionally) successful high school and college running careers. And I have a hunch that part of the reason was because they lost their love of the sport under the weight of years of brutal track workouts intended to optimize their cardio strength. Sometimes I think back to when I was a kid and wish I had learned how to play violin differently. Told that to play well I had to spend hours, days and years forcefully repeating scales and exercises, I often got so bored or frustrated that I wanted to smash my violin on the floor. Perhaps if more attention had been paid to cultivating a more natural relationship with these activities built on such novel human concepts like enjoyment, fun and exploration instead of optimization, maybe those friends would still be running, and maybe I’d still be a violinist.

I run on roads congested with traffic, on sleepy roads with a lone streetlight, on dirt roads littered with potholes, on smooth singletrack trails, on trails where rocks obscure the dirt underneath, and on paths only identifiable by lines on the map. I run through snow storms that obscure my vision, icy winds that freeze the tips of my ears, surprise downpours that render my phone useless, and blistering summers that sap the moisture from my skin. But for these sacrifices, I am rewarded with pink sunrises and red sunsets, tunnels of falling yellow leaves, quiet white snowy landscapes, endless ridges and peaks to conquer. I am an entrepreneur, managing a business that trades temporary pain for access to beauty — and business has been good. Yet while pain may be the main commodity, it is not the only one. Nature also asks for emulation, for its inhabitants to become as fleeting as the impermanence of their surroundings. To straddle the line between man, who abhors change, and nature, who embraces it. Running is many things, but in this way it is simply the currency of exchange.

Running is also time travel.

Not unsimilar to eating or drinking, partaking in the ancient ritual of movement reminds me of our shared past; ancestors who chased their prey, or quickly scouted the path ahead, or fled disaster. Movement breaks through these seemingly impermeable temporal divides, connecting vast swaths of time through a simple repeated action. In some ways, this feels eerily similar to any other “normal” ritual we practice: Christmas, Passover, Ramadan. The rituals of Passover, for example, remind us of those who were freed from slavery. The rituals of running reminds me of those who ran to survive. Yesterday we chased buffalo, today we chase circles.

But why do we entertain such rituals? Why are they so cherished? Because rituals resist an inherent feature of time: its nature to smooth. Time smooths the past. Time smooths difficult memories. Time smooths sharp rocks. Without our resistance, time works to ultimately erase all.

To me, one of the most striking features of time is its ability to smooth complexity into simplicity. What was once difficult, or maybe even impossible, becomes simple as time passes. Making a fire, which once required collecting dry wood, precise knowledge of which rocks created sparks, and how to nurture the flame without it running wild, today only requires a simple flicking of a lighter.

Running is much the same; complexity masked by simplicity. Children, after all, can do it by the time they turn two. I can do it, more of less, with my eyes closed. But at some distant time in the past, running was as difficult as figuring out how to start a fire. Sometimes I imagine what it was like for that early ancestor of ours who, having just discovered how to stand on his own two legs, figured “I would sure love to go over there!” But when he commanded his brain to perform what would later become the ritual sequence of events leading to the thing we call ‘walking’…he fell flat on his face.

Today, however, when I demand my brain to entertain that very same goal, it happily obliges. Complexity has been smoothed by time. In fact, so easy and natural do my movements appear that one could be forgiven for assuming that there was indeed no complexity at all! That any talk of coordinated muscle contractions, eye to brain image processing, spatial awareness, and physical intuition was all just some futile attempt to over analyze something obviously simple. Why introduce unnecessary complexity into something so basic?

Yet, when we forget these nuances, we lose much of the meaning behind these rituals. Movement becomes mundane, even boring. Passover becomes nothing more than something our parents did. When we fail to resist the smoothing of time, we lose the appreciation, respect and admiration that comes with recognizing the underlying complexity. How did we let ourselves become ungrateful of the beautiful sympathy of coordination happening before our eyes?

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The answer to this question reminds me of a scene from the movie Man of Steel.

As a kid, Clark Kent doesn’t know how to control his powers and is overwhelmed by the sensory overload he experiences. Able to hear every conversation, see every wavelength, feel every particle hitting his skin; he panics, locking himself in the closet to get away from the onslaught. “The world’s too big,” Clark tells his mom. “Then make it smaller,” she replies.

In a similar yet less dramatic way, we have done the same as Clark. We too shut off our awareness to the intricacies of the world. In an effort to save ourselves from the same fate as young Superman, our brains learned to shift the vast majority of everyday complexity into our subconscious, allowing us to focus on higher order thought processes while the autopilot ran in the background. The only acknowledgement of its efforts being a requirement of 2,000 calories a day.

But with this necessary adaptation came the inevitable smoothing of time, eroding any remaining memories of an era when movement was anything but simple. Not unlike sand covering the ruins of an ancient civilization, without adequate tools with which to fully excavate the buried complexity, we had no choice but to forget anything more ever existed.

Today, however, we have such tools to dig up the forgotten complexity from beneath the sands of time, revealing its naked beauty and reveling in the mathematical preciseness carved into the stone of universal law. Having learned how to use some of these tools, I’ve been trying to dig up this complexity for myself as I imagine how all of these vastly complex, disparate systems work together to enable me to run.

I first imagine leaning forward from the ankles, displacing my sleepy center of gravity from its comfortable home inside my pelvis. I imagine gravity, seizing the chance to act on my newly evicted center of gravity, applying a rotational force which makes me want to fall forward even faster, making my fate seem eerily similar to my ancestor…

And yet, I remember that my savior exists in the infinite amount of light particles that left the great fusion reactor in the sky some 8 minutes and 20 seconds before. A hero in those particles that traveled through the empty recesses of space, a small percentage of which happened to be pointed directly at Earth, an even smaller percentage of which managed to make it through the atmosphere. That tiny fraction of particles that happened to hit the ground right in front of me, luckily not containing the right energy to be absorbed by the chlorophyll in the plants, bouncing off and happening to make their way into the centers of my eyes.

And then I imagine my cornea readjusting to focus these particles onto my retina, where light sensitive cells wait to convert them into electrical signals to be sent to my brain. And the other sources of input that rush to join in on the party; proprioceptors in my muscles and joints informing where each limb is in space, the vestibular system in my inner ears informing on my acceleration and balance, the auditory system processing my acoustic environment to place me in relation to other noises, etc.

And I imagine how all of this information is processed in my brain a thousand times a second, generating a complete mental picture of current state in space. I think about how my brain uses its intuition of physics to predict my near future, how it determines what movement would avoid an unwanted outcome and what muscles need to lengthen or contract to execute this motion, how it sends these specific commands down my spinal cord and how these commands cause muscle fibers to contract or expand, and how my muscles correspondingly shorten or extend in such a way that my leg moves accordingly.

I imagine how this process occurs over and over again, inputs to prediction to command to motion, at the same time as my heart speeding up to deliver the necessary blood to my muscles, my lungs new providing oxygen to that blood, and my organs turning the food in my stomach into available muscle energy.

But perhaps more incredible still is I can do all of this while simultaneously engaging in a full fledged conversation or absorbing an audiobook or using my hands to scramble complex terrain or think about a problem at work without noticing 99% of the things going on inside and around me. To me, taking note of these layers of complexity adds to the beauty. Adds to my appreciation of the world around me. Deepens my sense of wonder at how all of this is even possible — and how we so easily take it for granted.

As I write this from my couch, nursing an injured knee, unable to run without pain, I look forward to the time when I can once again partake in the ritual of running. To resume the fight against time. To revive the once thriving business. And to continue excavating complexity from beneath the veil of simplicity.

The dim glow of the setting sun illuminated the hills of northern Utah as Sonya and I drove back from our Labor Day weekend trip to Idaho. Having spent the last 60 hours immersed in each others presence, I glanced over to see her heavy eyes begin to close as she curled up in the passenger seat, ready to sleep away the last of our trip. She looked so peaceful and content in the crawlspace that is the passenger seat of a fully packed Honda Accord. It had been a full weekend of adventuring in the mountains, stimulating conversation, cold lake plunges, boiling hot spring dips, and partaking in my semi-edible camp food (she somehow escaped without trying one of my signature bagel burgers™), yet I still had one question for her burning in my chest. And so, perhaps selfishly, I leaning over and whispered “sooo, do you believe in God?”

Caffeinated by the idea, her ears perked up as the gears in her head began to churn. The willingness to discuss these sorts of topics is one of my favorite qualities about her, and I knew this was going to be a good one by that look in her eye. I sat back easy in my seat, feeling vindicated in my choice of interrupting her sleep.

She proceeded with a lengthy, winding description of her belief in a mysterious energy which permeates the universe, connecting beings throughout space and time. She explained that this energy has the ability to communicate to us through conduits, and that she had seen this play out with a family friend a long time ago. Not un-similar to Native American tribal beliefs, she described how our ancestors are capable of influencing and directing our lives through this spirit plane, and how she’s comforted by this fact. So while she doesn’t believe in the Western notion of an omnipresent, omnipotent being guiding our actions, there’s still more going on than what meets the eye.

And yet I knew, like a boomerang, the question I had asked would inevitably come back towards myself.

My journey with this question, like so many of us, has traveled a path of quiet contemplation, balancing between emotion and reason. Do I want there to be a God? Well, of course I do. Of course it would be nice and convenient if there was a benevolent, all knowing being watching over us, protecting us from evil, directing our lives towards purpose and meaning, providing comfort in hard times, teaching us how to do good. And for some people, it seems, simply wanting to believe He exists is enough to have faith that He does exist. Maybe it’s born of desperate life circumstance, or maybe it’s simply all they’ve known, but a part of me envies the people that have such certain faith. Faith like a warm blanket to protect you from the occasionally cold realities of life. Living in Utah amongst the Mormons is a constant reminder of those kinds of people. And how that’s not me.

I once learned that to be a Jew is to constantly struggle with faith, and that the struggle that I feel is nothing new to my people. Even the great Biblical Patriarch and my namesake, Jacob, experienced this same struggle. The story goes that Jacob wrestled all night with a man he would soon come to realize was God Himself. In the morning, God blessed Jacob with the new name ‘Israel’, which translates to “he who struggles with God.”

My first memories of this struggle with God originated from my fascination with science and the scientific methods success at differentiating truth from fiction. Invented in the 1600’s by the great astronomer Galileo, the scientific method mandates generating a testable hypotheses, recording observations, analyzing the data and coming to a conclusion which brings you closer to the truth. This might seem mundane by today’s standards, but the idea of a process that removed personal biases was nothing short of revolutionary for that time and has lasted over 400 years.

To me, using the scientific method was the only way to reliably discern fact from fiction. Anything else was simply an exercise in either futility or delusion. Religion, an inherently faith based method at discerning truth, seemed almost laughable in comparison with these mighty scientific pillars.

The idea of the supremacy of science was, unsurprisingly, not a product of my own mind but instead influenced by my obsession with the great scientific minds of the 20th century. While other 15 year olds were reading Percy Jackson, I was devouring books like Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne, The Black Hole War by Leonard Susskind, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman, The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene and the likes. Their combination of wit and reason was alluring to my young, curious mind and I devoured their thoughts. I figured the smartest people would be the ones with the best answers to the hardest questions, right?

And thus my confirmation bias was continually reinforced until it became hard and certain. Science was the ultimate authority and can give us the answers to any question that we seek. How old is the universe? Science has an answer for that. How did we get here? Science can answer that. What remaining space was there for religion and God when science could seemingly fill those gaps? God was dead to me, He had no use. And in all honestly, I looked down with pity upon those who still needed those prehistoric ideas of faith to explain the cosmos to them. My only justification for their continued reliance on these ancient doctrines being stupidity, indoctrination or naivety (or all three). I was obviously privy to information and intellectual ability that their simple minds could not comprehend; if only they had the ability they would understand the truth.

These beliefs traveled with me throughout my college tenure, influencing my decision to get my degree in Physics so I could continue my pursuit of understanding the world we live in (if I believed religion had those answers, I would have studied theology). It’s a funny thing our need to understand, our innate curiosity of the world around us, our uneasiness with the unknown. Even in a time when danger and scarcity are essentially eliminated, we still seek knowledge, for knowledge generates understanding, understanding generates predictability, predictably generates preparedness, preparedness generates safety. I’ll come back to my uneasiness with the unknown a little later.

And so I studied quantum mechanics, statistical thermodynamics, electromagnetism, cosmology, Newtonian mechanics, and so on. Every class, every lecture closing some doors and opening more until I began to realize the vastness of the task with which I had undertaken and the corresponding realities of studying physics in the 21st century. More likely than not, if I continued on this path, I would end up studying and researching one small, likely insignificant topic, publishing some papers that no one would ever read, and get no closer to what originally excited me: a complete, current understanding of the universe. Also…it would require a lot of work.

And so my dream of becoming one of those great men whom I had read so much about ended after graduation and I accepted the realities of working at an engineering company. Even with this capitulation, I was certain nothing would change my belief in a Godless world.

Yet something interesting has occurred over these past few years. A thawing of that certainty began to take shape. The creeping thoughts of doubt seeped into the once impenetrable fortress that were the beliefs I had cultivated and nursed. I slowly realized I had fallen into an “appeal to authority” trap, believing that just because science was really good at answering some questions, it must be really good at answering all questions. I think that’s an understandable mistake. After all, if someone could prove that they could indefinitely predict the exact location of a planet orbiting a star thousands of light years away or manipulate the flow of invisible particles in such a way to illuminate a screen at will…you might be inclined to believe that they could also answer the comparatively simple question: “how do I live a purposeful life?” And yet science is surprisingly quiet when it comes to this question since it is value laden, not objective.

And so, slowly, I began to make some room for religion and philosophy in my mind. Perhaps science was simply the wrong tool for answering questions like “what makes a good life?”, “how do I be a good person?”, “why are we here?” Perhaps the best way to discern truth from fiction in these cases isn’t science, but instead is to appeal to precedent: if these answers hadn’t been satisfactory, then it wouldn’t have been passed down for 5,000 years, right?

The cracks didn’t stop there.

I began to think about the laws of physics themselves and if, perhaps counterintuitively, they themselves leave some room for the unknown. After all, doesn’t it seem astounding, even divine, that there happens to be these mysterious mathematical laws that happen to govern the entire universe and that our brains happen to have the ability to understand them? Or that the universe was created with universal constants (i.e. gravity, alpha, etc.) that were ‘tuned’ to the very such values that made it possible for life to exist? And of course there’s the question of the origin of the universe itself. Don’t these unknowns at least leave open the possibility of God?

All of these kinds of questions have corresponding objections (i.e. math describes patterns → patterns are a precursor to life → math must exist in a universe that can support life → it’s not special that math exists), but they nonetheless point to science’s current inability to answer questions that are inherently untestable, which means that there can never be certainty in these types of questions.

I know this might be disappointing to some who were perhaps expecting me to make some grand declaration of my belief or disbelief in the existence of God, or of a grand design or of an ultimate purpose of human life. But instead I think I’ve discovered something even more valuable during my struggle with this question: I’m actually OK with not knowing the answer. Like Richard Feynman once said, “I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.” I completely agree with this sentiment. Being OK not knowing the answer doesn’t mean apathy to the question, but instead means an openness to evidence and arguments…which I’d agree is a much more interesting way to live than to be certain and closed off to further examination like I used to be. And if this means I have to live with the idea that there may be no purpose to our existence at all, which seems more likely to me at this point, then so be it. I still have direction and meaning in my life regardless.

There seems to be very few certainties in life, leaving the vast majority to the unknown. For many of us, living with not knowing is often too scary and thus we accept half truths or flat out lies to make us feel better. Our real struggle isn’t to accept an unsatisfactory answer, but to be OK with uncertainty. To be OK with not knowing. And maybe find some enjoyment in the process of discovery along the way.

When phrased this way, it becomes sort of a Sophie’s Choice; either ignore the news and protect your mental health or hold your representatives accountable by staying informed at the expense of your wellbeing. In a time with an overbearing amount of potential news to stay ‘informed’ on, I think finding a balance between these two extremes has never been harder. These are the question(s) I want to cover in this article.

Do we have a moral responsible to stay informed? If so, how can we balance this with the reasonable objective of staying sane in an overstimulated news environment?

First we have to start with the following: why should we even care about being informed? What does it mean to be informed?

This seemed like the kind of question that those old geezers we call the Founding Fathers would have loved, and lo and behold, I was right! It seems that the Founding Fathers believed there to be two different types of informational responsibility among the citizenry: civic knowledge and public affair awareness. Because it’s not very controversial that every citizen should know civics (i.e. how our government is structured, how it functions, the role of the different branches of government, etc.), I’d like to focus on the latter. Why do the people have a responsibility to be informed on public affairs? What would be the consequences of an uninformed and/or uninterested public? Let’s see what the Founders thought…

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter” — Thomas Jefferson

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives” — James Madison

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.” - John Adams

These excerpts stand to outline the Founders general belief that knowledge of the affairs of the state was essential to a functioning republic. For without said knowledge, they believed, the country was “but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.” Or in Gen-Z lingo, our society would be cooked.

On principle, I tend to agree with this sentiment. After all, it is a privilege to live in a country that guarantees rule of law, popular representation, opportunity of upward mobility, freedom of expression, etc. and is thus our responsibility to ensure that future generations have the opportunity to take advantage of these gifts. I believe that civic ignorance breeds complacency, a belief that our system of government is natural simply because it is all we know, when in fact it is precarious, perilously perched on a ledge between the two abysses of autocracy and mob rule. And I also believe that complete ignorance of public affairs breeds stupidity and a populace easily manipulable by the fear associated with such stupidity, for one’s natural inclination is to fear what they don’t know. There’s a reason why the quote goes “stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.”

Yet I don’t believe the relationship between available information and responsible citizenry is always perfectly linear. There’s certainly a sweet spot on the informational consumption scale that balances ignorance, from too little consumption, with mental health concerns, from overconsumption. Our news media of today would like us to think that there is in fact no limit to how much news we should consume: more is always better. More news = more informed = more responsible citizen = more money for them. When in reality, too much consumption leads to being burnt out, inevitable news apathy, and then back to the same ignorance that comes with not consuming any news at all.

So how do we manage to stay in the “Goldilocks Zone” of informed, enough so that we can adequately judge our leaders yet so much that we become overwhelmed?

Before answering this question, I need to address one small sidenote. The Founders stressed that the citizenry must first be ‘moral and [virtuous]’, by nature of training in religious or other similar teachings, and thus the news is to be judged using these foundational principles. Without a moral base, the Founders argued, even an informed citizenry would be inflamed by rumor or partisan exaggeration rather than reason, ultimately destabilizing the republic. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to take this as a given.

Here are a few rules I’ve been abiding by when evaluating whether I should spend mental capital on learning more about an event:

1. Does this news impact myself or the people close to me?

This principle may not be utilitarian, but in practice we tend to prioritize those physically and/or emotionally close to us. If I think this news could directly impact them, I feel an obligation to be informed on it in an effort to look out for their best interests. If not, I tend to be less invested.

Example: I tended to read information related to the activities of DOGE since it directly impacted several friends and family members lives.

2. Does this topic bump up against one of my foundational moral principles or strongly held convictions?

This type of information is important to know, since congruence or violation of those deeply held beliefs is likely to sway our opinion on a given matter. While I believe we have an obligation to be informed on these matters, it’s often a struggle to maintain emotional distance. One way I’ve found to preserve this distance is to invest a diminishing amount mental capital on news related to topics that rank further and further down our innate list of strongly held convictions. For example, I have stronger convictions about foreign policy than I do about environmentalism, and am thus more likely to engage with the former over the latter, due to my belief that the number one existential threat facing humanity is nuclear annihilation. In this way, we prioritize the issues we care the most about.

3. Does this news have to do with a violation of our constitutional principles?

This one deals with what it means to be a good citizen; protecting our system of government to ensure future generations will have the same privileges we do. Such violations should be considered serious since they threaten that objective and thus we have an obligation to be informed on them. I don’t necessarily mean violations of norms, since these are often not associated with the very existence of the republic. I only mean attempts to circumvent our established system of government, blatantly illegal power grabs or corruption.

Example: I tended to pay close attention to the January 6th riots since it felt like our democratic processes were threatened.

4. Have I been consuming a lot of this topic recently/do I have the mental space to accept it?

News can be emotionally draining, yet sometimes it’s still important to learn about such events for the reasons listed above. However, if I’m not in a state of mind to process such information, for reasons ranging from stress in my everyday life to overconsumption of a specific topic, then I will skip it until I am ready to invest such emotional capital. Note, this rule is more of a safeguard against news that meets rules 1, 2, or 3 but that I should still not consume.

Example: I deeply care about the Israel vs. Gaza conflict but have found myself emotionally fatigued such that I have taken intentional breaks.

Since these four rules are somewhat abstract, I thought it might be good to take a look at the current front page of the Washington Post as an example of how I go about evaluating which headlines I click and which I don’t.

• Trump arrives in Alaska for US-Russia talks: (1) Does not impact anyone close to me. (2) While I generally have strong opinions of foreign policy, this headline doesn’t seem to challenge a strong belief. (3) No violation of constitutional principles evident. (4) I have the mental space for this topic. Would not open article

• DC attorney general sues Trump administration: (1) Does not impact anyone close to me. (2) No strongly held convictions on this topic. (3) Likely a norm violation and could become an illegal power grab, but currently doesn’t seem to threaten the existence of our system of government. Would keep an eye on in the future. (4) I have the mental space for this topic. Would not open article

• This number is bad news for the economy: (1) Has potential to impact people close to me, several of whom are trying to get jobs. (2) I tend to be highly opinionated on issues dealing with the wellbeing of the economy since its impacts are widespread. (3) Does not threaten our government. (4) I have the mental space for this topic. Would likely read article

• Trumps biggest foreign policy mistake: (1) Likely doesn’t impact anyone close to me. (2) Foreign policy theory tends to be one of my most opinionated topics and I know Fareed Zakaria’s articles are geared towards ideas over simply explaining events. (3) Does not threaten our government. (4) Depending on the foreign policy topic, this could be yes or no (feeling burnt out on Israel content but most other topics I can accept). Would likely read article pending rule 4.

I tend to apply these same rules to any other form of news consumption where you can selectively choose which content to engage with, such as podcasts, newspaper, YouTube clips, etc. while I tend to avoid getting news from sources where I don’t first choose what kind of content I consume (TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, etc). This way I’m always able to apply these four rules prior to consuming, hopefully keeping me in the Goldilocks Zone.

I’d love to know how you handle this modern dilemma and what you think about my rules/tendencies so that we can, perhaps, move towards a country more in line with the Founders vision of an informed citizenry.

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As we get more and more “informed” (read: bombarded with information), I find myself struggling to construct sufficient mental scaffolding to determine what I should (and shouldn’t) feel outrage towards and often end up deferring to my immediate reaction for moral judgement (which is easily prone to external manipulation). We have generated media machines which prey on this low energy deferral of moral outrage and would, if they got their way, optimally have us outraged at everything. But while it certainly feels wrong to blindly defer to emotion when determining our outrage, our conscious and internal sense of morality should also prevent us from complete moral indifference. So what’s the balance here? How do we selectively determine which events, in a world filled with more potential for outrage than we can possibly process, deserve our energy, attention and even action? More succinctly, as Mark Manson puts it, how do we learn to “only give a fuck about what’s truly fuckworthy?”

I think the most obvious, and correct, way to apply our moral outrage is to simply follow our biological instincts. No, that doesn’t mean our immediate emotions; I’m talking about our internal tribal hierarchy. We evolved to care first and foremost about the ones closest to us, with our instinctual outrage response diminishing along with our relation to the person or group experiencing the questionable event. If my brother were to get pneumonia, for example, I would instinctually care a lot more about that than if someone across the world had the same affliction.

And thus we conclude the first rule of moral outrage: events that impact members of our “tribe” will (rightfully should) lead to more outrage.

I think it’s important to point out the obvious bias and cognitive dissonance with this rule; if we believe every human holds the same intrinsic value, then why should we feel more moral outrage when “members of our tribe” are impacted? Philosophers such as Peter Singer have pointed out this moral dilemma, explaining how we should feel equal outrage when strangers are afflicted as we do when family is. Singer argues that bias towards members of our tribe leads to a world filled with more suffering, as we often ignore the suffering of strangers or even protect those close to us at the expense of strangers. Arguing from upon a utilitarian framework (i.e. minimizing the total amount of suffering in the world) seems on its face to come from a place of logic and maximal compassion for others. And I agree in theory with Singer. Yet I also strongly feel that adherence to this guidance leads directly into the arms of the algorithms which would exploit this ideology all while actually minimizing the amount of net suffering we mitigate. After all, if we believe everyone deserves the same amount of consideration as members of our tribe, how are we supposed to act at all when the number of events requiring our moral outrage is essentially limitless? Imagine scrolling through Instagram or TikTok and visualizing all those horrible things happening to your family; does that sound like a practical or healthy method to apply outrage? Instead, we must choose to prioritize those close to us both for our own mental sanity and to pay respect to our limited time and energy.

Thus, we fall back onto the useful, practical heuristic that moral outrage is correlated with tribal relation. Or in other words, the same event should lead to less and less outrage as we move from family to friends to neighborhood to association to state to country to world. Let’s put this into equation form where O equals the magnitude of moral outrage for a given event, i, R is a function which relates our relational distance, d, from those experiencing the event to the amount of corresponding moral outrage we should feel for the given event, i. As relational distance, d, increases, the function R decreases.

Yet this is certainly not the only term that belongs in the formula. Normalizing for relationship, as the severity of the event increases, so should our moral outrage. If unknown person 1 drowned, we should feel more moral outrage than if unknown person 2 died peacefully in their sleep. Let’s add another function to the equation, S, which relates the severity of the event, i, to how much moral outrage we should feel. It takes n, the number of people the event impacted, and k, how intensely the event impacted them as inputs.

There are many such additional terms which contribute to the moral outrage calculation. Intentionality of the event (accidents usually mean less moral outrage), amount of ignorance we have towards the event (knowing less about the circumstances generally means less moral outrage), the amount of perceived cosmic karma involved in the event (if the party involved ‘deserved’ the event, we may feel less outrage), and our own barometer of compassion towards others (generally those who feel compassion more strongly will more easily feel outrage), etc.

But while an equation may be good for explicitly breaking down which things contribute our individual moral outrage meters (MOM)™, what really matters is the implication that each of us will have a varying level of moral outrage for the same event — and thus a different response. Take veganism, for example. Two people could be presented with the same exact information (normalizing for ignorance), understand the severity of the brutality that some animals experience (normalize for severity), understand the indifference of factory farm owners towards the suffering of animals (normalize for intentionality), yet in the end still arrive at differing levels of moral outrage due to differences in compassion towards the plight of animals. One person may only ‘trip’ the condemnation response, “that’s certainly terrible,” while another person may trip the personal action response, “that’s terrible and I’m becoming a vegan because I can’t morally contribute to this.” See below for a visual representation of this situation.

Thankfully, as a society in the aggregate, we’re able to generally agree upon the levels of moral outrage we should feel for a given event (otherwise, we would never be able to agree on what laws should govern us). We generally agree, for example, that murder is worth punishing more than accidental homicide (manslaughter) since we all agree that moral outrage increases with intentionality.

This does not mean, however, that society’s moral outrage meter is static. The arguments for veganism, for example, would have been completely outlandish in the 1800s, yet today there is a concerted, sizable animal rights movement that has made substantial gains in the past few decades. This is all part of healthy societal behavior; the fringe introduces a new call for moral outrage, the masses evaluate their claims using the moral outrage equation, and then scale it against our collective limits to determine what, if any, action to take.

So how can we use all of this to help determine what level of moral outrage we should feel towards the multitude of events calling for our outrage? These five questions simplify the moral outrage equation into something more digestible:

1. Does this event impact or have the potential to impact those who are close to me?

2. Does this event impact a lot of people and/or is the impact to those people significant?

3. Was intent involved in the event?

4. Am I ignorant of the specifics of the event?

5. Was ‘cosmic karma’ involved (i.e. was this event in response to a perceived wrongdoing)?

Let’s see an application of these five simple questions from the perspective of a white family in 1963 Alabama watching black children march during the Children’s Crusade.

1. This event did not impact members of my inner tribe, but did occur close to my home. Thus, relational outrage is low to medium.

2. This event impacted hundreds of people and resulted in serious civilian injuries due to the use of police force, including dogs, beatings, and fire-hosing. Severity outrage is thus high.

3. The commissioner, Bull Connor, specifically told the police to attack them. Thus, intent outrage is high.

4. Significant coverage of this event occurred on TV and newspapers. Thus, ignorance is low.

5. Karma doesn’t apply to children, since they are too young to be judged by their actions. Thus, cosmic karma outrage is low.

While the evolution of moral standards may be influencing this conclusion, it’s not hard to see why, after answering the five questions, moral outrage across the country was rightfully high in 1963. High enough that it triggered the collective action response, generally credited with leading to the Civil Rights Movement of 1964.

We’re presented, almost daily, with situations and events that ask us to quantify our moral outrage and determine what limit (if any) it has crossed. Should I be outraged with the energy consumption of ChatGPT enough that I stop using it? Or outraged by child labor enough that I won’t buy a shirt from China? Or outraged by plastic pollution enough to use re-usable bags? Or outraged with civilian suffering enough to stop supporting Israel?

I’m not saying there is a definitive correct answer to these tough questions, since the response will change from person to person based on their subjective responses to the five questions I posed earlier.

But what I am advocating for is that we instead reserve judgement until we can adequately answer the five questions. Too often do we take shortcuts based on an immediate emotional response, or to fit an ideological worldview, or to bend to societal pressure instead of basing our outrage on rationality and sound reasoning. And I know this may imply that, with limited energy and time, if you follow this advice you will correspondingly have an opinion on fewer issues. But that’s OK! We didn’t evolve to handle this much information and thus our brains, in an effort to save our limited energy, developed such shortcuts to keep us sane. Instead, we shouldn’t be afraid to offer this simple, yet boring response to a request for a reading of our moral outrage meter: “I’m reserving my opinion on this situation until I learn more.”

So as I consider the Kanye song again, I’m comforted by the fact that my moral outrage is no longer a product of my immediate emotional response but instead based on rational judgement mostly consisting of the fact that it could give others a green light to hurt ‘members of my tribe’. Although, admittingly, it only crossed my condemnation limit and not the personal action limit (I will still be listening to Bound 2 at the moment).

For one reason or another, my most recent obsession has been with presidential history. In the past 6 months, I’ve read biographies on Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, and am currently being sucked into the world of Andrew Jackson. Presidents, almost by definition, live fascinating, unique lives. What makes a person want that kind of power? Is it the ultimate act of service or the ultimate act of egotism? What path did they take to the top? Was it calculated, like Nixon, or serendipitous, like Truman? What links these people, so different in their origin and life circumstance, together across generations in pursuit of the common goal of American prosperity?

These are the types of questions I tend to be interested in, and I think more people should be interested in too, as it both helps explain how we arrived at our present circumstance and gives us the ability to accurately place ourselves within the broader historical context. Without a knowledge of this history, one can too easily become beholden to sensationalized media with an incentive to both downplay and overemphasize current events. Unfortunately (or fortunately for history buffs), American presidential history is too vast, complex and/or seemingly unrelatable for most people to care to understand and thus leads to an understanding of our present situation akin to the way a young child sees the world: as always having been like it is in the very recent past.

My goal is not to provide a tedious complete history of how we got here, but instead summarize an insight I’ve had based on what I’ve observed across these and other presidential biographies that I’ve read. An insight that seems to link presidents across very disparate times and issues, and I believe provides a useful contextual prism to view current and future presidential actions through.

I’m talking about commitment bias and belief perseverance, two cognitive biases (note that I’ll try my best to avoid falling into these very traps myself!). Thankfully for me, psychologists seem to have a knack for naming and describing the various states of the human condition…but even without prior knowledge, it was quite clear that these phenomena are widely present at the heights of American power. Here’s some definitions so we’re on the same page.

Commitment bias is about sticking with a course of action, often due to the desire to appear consistent or to avoid the perception of wasting prior effort. It can lead to individuals escalating their investment in a failing project, simply because they have already invested so much. Think about how this might be related to the sunk cost fallacy, or the tendency to continue to invest in a failing venture because of the prior commitment of resources (time, money, etc.).

Belief perseverance focuses on maintaining a belief despite contradictory evidence. This can involve actively seeking out information that confirms the belief, confirmation bias, or ignoring information that contradicts it.

In short: commitment bias keeps presidents locked into their past decisions, while belief perseverance blinds them to mounting contradictions.

One can imagine how the office of the president is especially vulnerable to these biases due to the unique origin of their power. Often characterized as the voice of the people, the president is checked by the totality of public opinion more than any other individual or institution and thus has an incentive towards maintaining public support. While this often has positive side effects, ensuring that presidential actions bend to the will of the people, it can also be easily manipulated by the availably (or lack thereof) of information upon which to judge the president upon. Too little informational dissemination, and the public feedback loop breaks, leaving the public vulnerable to tribalistic tendencies, conspiracies, or just plain governmental propaganda. Too much information dissemination, and the country takes serious national security risks with little public upside. Thus, the struggle between the media, pushing to increase informational availability to solidify the public’s ability to adequate judge the executive, and the president, pushing decrease informational availability to protect the country and himself, is born. This reality leads to an incentive structure that encourages presidents to avoid admitting fault, ignore facts contradictory to the preferred narrative, and/or engage in conduct that borders on self delusion in an effort to showcase a favorable side to the public. Or, in other words, fall victim to commitment bias and belief preservation.

All presidents know that once the trust and confidence of the American people has eroded, see Lyndon Johnsons withdrawal from re-election when faced with overwhelming public disapproval or backlash from Jimmy Carters Crisis of Confidence speech, a president essentially forfeits the very power which he so diligently fought for. And in the case of these men so often obsessed with the accumulation of power and legacy, political death is very much akin to actual death.

But don’t just take my philosophical musings on it. The number of case studies describing this exact dynamic is vast.

Perhaps the most famous is Lyndon Johnson’s continued escalation in Vietnam despite increasing evidence that his goals would not succeed.

Background: LBJ believed military involvement in Vietnam was necessary for the following reasons: it would limit the spread of communism, his belief that it would signal weakness to the expansionist Soviets and Chinese regimes and ultimately lead towards WWIII, and the fact that he deferred to his pro-war Cabinet for foreign policy advice due to a personal lack of skills/experience in this arena.

Cognitive Biases: Once engaged, LBJ continued to send more troops and increase bombings in order to appear consistent with his original public justification for entering the war, even in the face of continued escalatory failure and grim future predictions trickled in. These facts are widely available thanks to the release of the Pentagon Papers which help paint the image of a man trapped between reality and losing public support.

Thus, Johnson chose to stick to his original course of action due to his inability to admit error in prior judgement, commitment bias, and inability to accept the conclusions of overwhelming negative evidence, belief preservation. Why? Because Johnson believed that pulling out of Vietnam would irreversibly damage national honor/credibility (what message does it send if the worlds most powerful country loses to an inferior one?), his personal credibility (how could people trust his vast suite of domestic policy if he admitted he was wrong about the war?), and personal legacy (how would history judge a loser?). Demonstrating textbook presidential factual contortion, Johnson tried to present a false rosy picture to the public, “we are on the verge of success...the enemy’s hopes are bankrupt” said Johnsons top General. And yet, as the media began to win the informational war, Johnsons public image crumbled in the face of reality, ironically leading to the very result which he wished to avoid by choosing this course of action: the death of both his Great Society and political power.

Another easy example comes historically close to LBJ: Nixon and the Watergate scandal.

Background: An incredibly paranoid individual, Nixon created the, very poorly named, Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP), with the public goal of fundraising for his reelection campaign and the private goal of committing acts of political espionage. Even though Nixon never directly authorized it, CREEP agents nonetheless broke into the DNC headquarters in search of damning evidence on his (ironically already unpopular) Democratic opponent George McGovern. While hindsight seems to indicate the fallout would have been much less severe had Nixon stayed away, his paranoia caused him to succumb to the use of these cognitive biases as he became involved in a deeper and deeper coverup.

Cognitive Biases: In the wake of anti-Vietnam protests, MLKs death and deteriorating race relations, Nixon’s ‘Law and Order’ campaign pledge was widely popular among what he called “the silent majority” of people who were irked by the chaos, yet did not publicly disavow it. After winning the election, the public thus largely viewed Nixon through an anti-crime, justice oriented lens, and Nixon knew that any erosion of this key tenant would lead to a broader erosion of public trust. Nixon calculated that, in order to preserve this image, his best course of action after Watergate broke was to use the powers of the presidency to cover up and obstruct the justice process. He ordered the pressuring of FBI agents to back off the investigation, hush money payments to the Watergate burglars, he fired the special prosecutor assigned to investigate the case, he claimed “executive privilege” when mandated to turn over private tapes he recorded in the White House, and, after agreeing to turn over the tapes, he ordered editing of the transcripts to scrub them of any damning information. Nixon continually doubled down on this course of action in an effort to save face, evidence of commitment bias, and ignored mounting evidence (see declining approval rating) that his actions were leading to the very outcome he so wished to avoid (loss of credibility), evidence of belief perseverance.

There are countless other examples of presidents exhibiting these cognitive biases. George Bush doubling down on escalating the Iraq War despite contradictory evidence against his “Weapons of Mass Destruction” narrative in an effort to uphold his “tough on terrorism” image. Or Woodrow Wilson’s unwillingness to budge on his version of the League of Nations, even as support for the program faltered in Congress, because of his egotistical belief that his version was “the only hope for mankind.” Or Herbert Hoover’s continued commitment to laissez faire economics and belief in limited government intervention, even in the face of worsening unemployment, soaring homelessness and bank collapses during the Great Depression. Or Bill Clinton’s persistent denials during the Lewinsky scandal—despite overwhelming evidence like the infamous blue dress—which seem aimed at preserving his carefully cultivated image as a moral and religious man.

You probably get the point by now: presidents often succumb to these cognitive biases when faced with mounting evidence against their belief system in an effort to preserve their perceived image and thus their precious power/ego. And now you might be seeing how this relates to current events today…

I see this as a useful framework to view, not justify, many of the actions of the current president through. Trump, over decades, attempted to cultivate a public image as a successful businessman/dealmaker and caricature of stereotypical modern masculinity, and to his credit largely succeeded. However, similar to how podcasters can fall victim to audience capture, Trump, in a similar way to other presidents before, has become beholden to upholding the public image of himself that he cultivated. It’s an interesting paradox that sees the power of manipulation transfer from projecting an image of yourself onto others to that image being projected back onto oneself. It’s something I briefly touch on in my Nepal Trek video, to a much smaller degree, and illustrates the delicate nature of the constructs of our selves that we build.

Regardless of the origin, however, it seems clear that Trump has fallen into this familiar trap: an understanding that anything that threatens his perceived image also undermines his credibility and thus threatens his legacy/grip on power. We can see Trump exhibiting these same cognitive biases in policies like his tariff regime, doubling down to preserve his image as a “genius businessman” even as reports of economic calamity abound, or his disregard for due process to preserve his image as a “strong man,” even when the administration admitted wrongdoing, or his insistence on dealmaking in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, even when Putin has repeatedly made it obvious he doesn’t want peace, to preserve his “brilliant dealmaker” image.

It may be that I fundamentally don’t understand the crystallization of identity that comes with age, and the fragile pedestal upon which it stands, but to me a strong leader is one who can admit fault and correspondingly correct for his past actions. Why do we expect leaders to be perfect decision makers when we ourselves are not? Presidents are, after all, a reflection of the will of the people; until we change our perception of what a president should be, from infallible leader semi-akin to divinity to intelligent commoner prone to mistakes, we ourselves reinforce a system that promotes the use of these cognitive biases…which ultimately leads to a worse world for everyone.

As we contemplate the erosion of moral integrity at the highest position of power in our popularly elected government, we’re forced to think about how it reflects back on ourselves. Where did our respect for such virtues as honesty and humility go? Why do we tolerate differing amounts of morality based on societal status? Can we still return to an age where these values mattered?

We seem to have forgotten that integrity isn’t measured by consistency alone. Sometimes, the greatest strength a leader can portray is admitting they were wrong, telling the truth. I don’t think I’m nostalgic for a time that didn’t exist, we as a nation once possessed such qualities — they’re woven into the fabric of America. We simply seem to have misplaced the tapestry.

Sitting on my bed that cold November night, I was experiencing a common symptom of a chronic condition I have. Some might call it restless heart syndrome, or the adventure bug, or maybe it’s just allergies to money…but the only way I knew how to temporarily cure it was to book a trip. And book it fast before the condition worsened.

It’s a condition with origins in both my genetic fabric as well as learned experience. Be it my paternal grandparents repeated stories of traveling with their five kids to Germany, Austria, France, England, (insert remaining smorgasbord of European countries…they’ve been to them all). Or their son, my uncle, Brad, who may be perhaps the single most well traveled person in all of human history. Just last month when he visited we were playing a game where I would name a random country and he had to tell me a story about something he did in that country. “Mongolia,” I’d announce. He tells me of the time he was stuffed in a cattle car with hundreds of Chinese people on the way to Ulaanbaatar, and how the Chinese couldn’t get enough of his juggling gear that he used to carry around. French Giana. He tells me of the time he and his girlfriend got chased by five guys with nunchucks after he refused to pay for a popsicle. Malaysia. Apparently he got kidnapped by a terrorist organization and was held for ransom until the state department negotiated his release.

Almost too crazy to make up…

Or even my dad, who, while not quite on Brad’s level, loves nothing more than to spend half (maybe more?) of his working hours planning his and my mom’s next trip. Iceland, Alaska, European River Cruise, Poland, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Aruba, Israel. There’s something restless in the DNA on this side of the family, something that makes you never want to sit still.

And that restlessness certainly made its way to me too. Not just the part that causes my skin begins to crawl when I've been in the same location for too long, but a general resistance against complacency in most walks of life. Quick to bore with the status quo and thus never quite content. Almost like constantly searching for something thing while simultaneously knowing you won’t find it where you’re looking.

So as I sat there in my bed that night, experiencing a severe case of what I’ll now call “Grant Syndrome,” I knew what was going to come next. Now I just needed to figure out where…

Nepal

At any one point, I have a running list of places I want to visit (and haven’t yet been). And being the adventure athlete I am, they’re almost all centered around which mountains I think would be the coolest to experience. Some of my friends give me sh*t for this mentality (of which I swear I’m trying to, somewhat, change), especially after I said, on a trip to the cultural capital that is Europe in 2022, “why would I go to Europe when I could just go to the Wind River Range in Wyoming?” Ok, I agree…that was rather extreme.

My list for this Winter/Spring trip was very much the same as it had been in pervious years. Either centered around Central/South America and be on foot because it’s warm and dry down there. Or centered around Norway/Canada/Alaska and be on skis. Unfortunately, most of my friends are either too into running to do a ski trip or too into Wasatch skiing to travel that far…so the choice was down to convincing my friends to do a running trip down south, or figure something completely different out. I did an awesome trip with my friend Spencer last year down in Chile, so there was already a part of me that wanted to do something a bit different. But what that would be, I didn't yet know.

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That is until I happened to come across a few elite ultrarunners that were friends of friends on Instagram. Erin Ton and Chris Fisher had been doing some running/climbing in Nepal that October and I had been following along, fascinated by the pictures of far off mountains and by the speed which they were moving. I didn’t know that people could run there (logistically) and honestly didn’t know there was much running to do (I thought it was mainly climbing). Everything that I had read about the Himalaya was that the way to do it was with huge, heavy, long expeditions. And for that reason, it had never seriously been on my list because one, I like going light and fast, and two, I couldn’t take off work that long. But now that I knew there was another way…I started to dip into my dreams.

It’s somewhat beyond cliche for people like me (a white, foreign, mountain adventurer) to fetishize about Nepal, but that’s my story so I have to tell it that way.

Nepal has always had a mystical aura about it. The birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, Nepal is often connected to eastern wisdom, the likes of which have attracted westerners for centuries in an attempt to learn a hidden truth beyond the pale of western religion. That, coupled with the spirituality associated with being home to the tallest peaks in the world has, at least to me, given Nepal an almost otherworldly appeal that has peaked my curiosity ever since I first read Into Thin Air as an 8th grader. But what is it specifically about Himalaya that pulls men towards it like a gravitational field? There are lots of beautiful mountain ranges; why is this one different than the rest?

I think something special that happens to some words when they pass from being simply descriptive to emotional. When the baggage they possess illicits feelings such as enormity, intensity, brutality, serenity, peacefulness. The word ‘Himalaya’ does that for me. But it also symbolizes the mountain range that occupies the height of the world, and with it some of the greatest physical accomplishments known to man: from Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first climbing Everest to Maurice Herzog’s harrowing ascent of Annapurna to Reinhold Messner climbing all 14 8,000m peaks solo without oxygen. Why is it so intriguing to me and so many else you may ask? Yes, they’re the tallest mountains in the world, but why does that matter? It’s a difficult question to answer, but one that feels similar to asking “why do you pursue women?” And why stop the analogy there but continue…“why do you pursue attractive women?” I think the appeal of the tallest mountains makes a lot more sense from this perspective.

It’s corny and cliche, but there’s a reason why the phrase “to conquer a mountain” is used. And while I believe all men are born with the capacity to conquer, only some choose to exercise it. Some aim that energy at creating the most successful business. Others towards making the best music. Others in pursuit of women. But a few, for whatever reason, choose to aim that kind of energy at the mountains. And for those who do, it simply makes sense to pursue the tallest mountains, like the prettiest woman or the most successful business, because that kind of achievement is seen as the ultimate social validation, barometer of personal accomplishment and natural peak of the pursuit. While I wasn’t planning on climbing the tallest peaks, simply being among their presence was enough to feel that energy.

So as the trip began turning from idea to reality, my excitement began to increase. Is spring a good time to go the Himalaya? Turns out March through May is the second best time, and had less traffic. Check. What would flights cost? $1,300 round trip? Within my allocated budget. Check. What would I actually do there?

I’ll spare you the details of how I got to this, but after a lot of map studying and researching I arrived at the following agenda.

March 19th Day 1: Leave SLC, Travel Day 1

March 20th Day 2: Full Travel Day 2 + Time Change

March 21th Day 3: Arrive in Kathmandu by 10:30am and check it out for the rest of the day. Stay in Kathmandu

March 22th Day 4: Drive to Manthali (5 hours), since they closed the Kathmandu airport to Himalayan flights

March 23th Day 5: Fly to Lukla (20 minutes) and then trek from Lukla to Thame (19 miles) 

March 24th Day 6: Thame to Dragnag, going over Renjo La Pass and tag Gokyo Ri (22.5 miles) 

March 25th Day 7: Dragnag to Cho La Pass to East Lobuche High Camp to Everest Base Camp to Lobuche (21 miles) 

March 26th Day 8: Lobuche to Kongma La Pass to Pangboche (13.5 miles)

March 27th Day 9: Pangboche to Ama Dablam C1 to Khumjung (22 miles) 

March 28th Day 10: Khumjung back to Lukla and then out to Kothe (23.2 miles)

March 29th Day 11: Kothe to Khare, meet Sherpa guide in afternoon and trek to Mera high camp (21 miles)

March 30th Day 12: Summit Mera Peak and back to Khare (5.3 miles)

March 31st Day 13: Khare to Lukla (19.7 miles)

April 1st Day 14: Fly back to Manthali and drive back to Kathmandu

April 2nd Day 15: Leave Kathmandu at 6pm

April 3rd Day 16: Arrive in SLC at 1pm 

In general, my plan was to do the Three Pass Loop, which, as the name suggests, goes over three ~18,000ft passes as well as tag Everest Base Camp. Then, after that ~100 miles, I planned to do a ~55 mile out and back to Mera Peak, where I would meet at guide who would take me from base camp to summit and back.

All in all, with some optional bonus excursions, I was planning on doing ~165 miles, with who knows how much vertical gain, in 9 days. Oh, and almost all of it was above at least 12,000ft with much of it above 15,000ft.

It was incredibly ambitious, especially given my relatively low training altitude in Salt Lake of ~4200ft, but my mentality was to try to grab as much as possible and then, hopefully, whatever I actually accomplished would be pretty damn good.

What this meant, however, was that I would need to be moving fast and consistent in order to have any chance at completing this agenda…and everything would need to go perfectly right.

As the trip approached and the realization that I was actually doing this set in, I started to get more and more anxious. My mind is quite adept at finding every little thing that could go wrong, and let me tell you, the list was expansive. What if I missed the flight to Lukla and the schedule would be messed up? What if the weather was terrible and it was miserable? What if I accidentally ate a chickpea and the only people with the ability to reverse my allergic reaction can’t read the English on my epipen? What if an earthquake hit Nepal and I was stranded there? What if I got high altitude pulmonary edema and was all alone? What if I ruin this budding new relationship I’m in by leaving for two weeks and letting the spark die? What if I run out of cash? All these things, and more, were continually running through my head causing me extra stress. And the fact is, other than preparing my best, I couldn’t do a damn thing to mitigate these until I was actually there. As my plane left Salt Lake City bound for Doha, I was filled with a mix of excitement, that I was headed to the place of my dreams, and dread, that at any turn something catastrophically bad would happen.

I’m not going to go into detail of the day to day events other than what is relevant to make my points (I’ll leave that for my YouTube video series). What I want to describe next are the takeaways and lessons that I learned about myself during this trip and upon further reflection after returning.

Traveling Alone

While I have traveled alone before, this took the experience to a whole new level. I’m of the philosophy that you shouldn’t wait for someone else in order to live your life, so when the opportunity to travel to Nepal presented itself and it seemed unlikely anyone else would be able to join…I still thought it was worth going. After all, I had spent time alone abroad before. I was alone for 4 days in Switzerland/France in 2022 before meeting friends in Chamonix and I had spent 3 days alone in Chile before meeting Spencer in 2024. But where those experiences alone were short and in industrialized countries, this would be 15 straight days alone, in a third world country, far from civilization and its luxuries. And while I don’t generally mind being alone, in fact sometimes I rather enjoy it as a way to decompress from high social interaction days, this would be a whole new kind of test.

Things started off well for the first 7 days (4 travel + 3 trekking). My anxiety had settled down as the trip began to unfold and I realized that my own agency and decision making abilities were sufficient to mitigate problems as they appeared. I was moving right on pace, feeling strong, taking in incredible views, stoked about the footage I was filming, confident in what I packed, finding food I could eat, able to update my parents, friends and girl I was seeing with my progress, getting encouragement from my Nepalese coordinator, and not feeling particularly lacking in social interaction even though I hadn’t had a real, in person conversation in quite some time.

Here’s some of my favorite pictures from those days.

I felt like the momentum was on my side and, even though it was hard work over some long days, my motivation to complete the agenda I had set out was in tact.

And then Everest Base Camp happened.

On the third day of trekking, I got to Lobuche, the last big town before Everest Base Camp, at 2pm. I had already been out for over 7 hours, had climbed two huge passes above 17,500ft (Cho La Pass and East Lobuche High Camp) and now was faced with a choice: do I attempt Everest Base Camp (EBC) today like my schedule says I should (an 11 mile out and back all above ~17,000ft) or rest the remainder of the day and modify the schedule as needed to accommodate my already fatigued body. On the one hand, I had been right on schedule up to this point, there was still plenty of time left in the day, and I’d be able to remove most of the weight from my back since I’d be staying in Lobuche that night. On the other hand, I had already had a big day and I could easily modify the schedule by removing the optional trek to Ama Dablam base camp. Contemplating over a bowl of chicken soup, I decided I was going to go for it.

At first it started off great. The light pack lifted my spirits and energized my legs. And I’d be lying if I said the flabbergasted expression on peoples faces as they saw me run by them at 17,000ft didn’t make me smile.

However, the wheels started coming off 1.5 hours in as I approached EBC and realized I could not stomach even looking at the Lenny and Larry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie I had brought as fuel. In fact, thinking about it right now makes me gag. Dry as hell itself and formulated by someone who must have only had a chocolate chip cookie taste explained to them, I tried to choke down half of it by mixing it with water and holding my nose. But as I started my return journey to Lobuche over 2 hours in, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough calories for an already depleted body.

The next 1.5 hours were tough and slow as I waited for herds of yaks to pass and navigated the seemingly endless network of glacial moraine trails. All around me I could hear the glacier cracking and far off seracs falling. The sun began to set and lit the cloud covered giant mountains ablaze with orange and pink. It was quiet and peaceful outside, but inside was a different story. As I talk about in the (future) video, wrath can be a powerful motivator to get through tough times in the mountains, yet it has to be used sparingly lest risk mental burnout and motivational fatigue. But with the lack of food, I felt like I had no choice but to eat the hard rock music waiting for me on my phone. So I turned on Bring Me the Horizon and took a big bite of a wrath sandwich.

Like I predicted, I successfully got back to Lobuche after 3.5 hours (most people take 2 days for this part of the trek) but in a physically and mentally depleted state. I tried to force down a chicken fried rice dish, but the nausea had begun to overpower the hunger so I instead ordered honey porridge and slowly scooped it into my mouth. Dead tired, I settled into my sleeping bag at 8pm in my room at 16,200ft, too fatigued to even bother charging my electronics, and prepared to fall into a deep, restful slumber. Instead, what I fell into was an endless night of dehydration, restlessness, and coughing as my body struggled between needing rest/recovery and needing to ensure I avoided a hypoxic induced coma. When my alarm went off at 6:30am, I wasn’t quite sure if I slept at all and felt like a member of the walking dead. I stumbled downstairs to sip on a coffee and another porridge, contemplating how I was supposed to get over Kongma La Pass today, the highest and hardest pass of the three passes. As I lethargically gathered my things and walked outside, I realized I was about to make my first big decision. I could continue with the plan, going over what would certainly be a gorgeous pass and would essentially mark the completion of the Three Pass Trek. Or I could recognize that I was incredibly fatigued, nauseous, lacking in calories and likely getting altitude sickness…and skip it. A similar feeling of anxiety bubbled up inside me as I envisioned every worst case scenario if I went for the pass. How bad I’d likely feel, how slow it would be, and if anything went wrong, I’d likely be too tired to move quickly or act rationally which scared me.

Thankfully, the hotel manager ran outside, clearly having seen me standing outside with my head stuck in the sand, and began to tell me about the easy way to go around the pass and down to Dingboche. “This way very easy and downhill! That way hard” as he pointed towards the pass I was contemplating climbing. Maybe it was the fact that I realized someone else looked at me and thought “that guy doesn’t look so good, I need to tell him to take it easy” that convinced me, but I took the Sherpas advice and decided to skip the pass hoping that an easy day would make me feel better so I could continue with the rest of the trek instead of digging myself in a deeper hole.

That 4th trekking day was by far the hardest yet, even though it was almost all downhill. Physically, I was in bad shape. Every uphill left me gasping for air and needing to take a break, and I couldn’t eat anything other than nibble on the Mars bar I had bought at Lobuche. But mentally I was probably in an even worse shape, questioning my abilities and previous choices that led me to this state. And with no one to talk to, I was suddenly feeling very alone. I tried calling the girl I was seeing, but got no response since it was late. My parents were also already asleep. And so I walked very slowly towards Dingboche, trying to listen to my usual suite of music, political podcasts and history audiobooks but having trouble focusing or caring about what they were saying. When I eventually got to Dingboche I tried eating, knowing that I was severely lacking in calories and still above 15,000ft, but I couldn’t stomach the chow mien so I put it in a ziplock back for later. At this point, I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, so I found a nice little cove with a comfortable looking rock pillow, set my pack down and passed out for an hour.

Eventually I made it to Tengboche, 12 miles of almost all downhill for the day, significantly shorter than my previous 3 in both miles and time trekking. As I laid in my bed at 3pm, I realized that my motivation had taken a serious hit. How was I going to go all the way to Mera peak if I’m moving like this? Do I even want to go? I put off answering these questions until the morning, figuring a good nights rest and some food might help my decision making process.

While sleeping revived my mental fatigue, it didn’t seem to do much for my motivation and nausea. Long story short, I decided that if I was to do Mera peak in the window I still had, I would likely feel so bad as to not be able to enjoy the experience at all. So I figured it might be nice to have a leisurely walk back to Lukla, try talking to more people, drink a lot of coffee, eat some cinnamon rolls, and perhaps move my flight up a few days.

Oddly enough, it felt really nice to actually stop and talk to fellow trekkers, especially with how diverse this area was. I met an older German man who was planning on being in the EBC area for 3 months, had traveled all over India, and told me how nice it was to take things slow, acclimatize, and take in the “spirit of Nepal”. I met some Indian people who were obsessed with the size of my calves and wanted me to come to India to join their marathon running group. And I met a tall Australian man, who I ended up offering a ride back to Kathmandu, who taught me about “Maccers” (McDonalds) and how Namche Bazaar is a great place to drink. It made me think about an alternate experience I could have had. One where I focused on meeting people and experiencing more of the culture as opposed to moving fast and seeing more sights in less time. Something to consider.

Lessons Learned

I have a few takeaways from this trip and things I learned about myself. One, I’m certainly too extroverted to be on Alone. I need more than just other people around me, but someone who is willing to listen to the crazy things that too often come out of my mouth, tell me how stupid that idea was and perhaps ask their own silly questions, because otherwise they just pile up in my head. I get my energy by being with other people that I enjoy being around, and too little of that drained my battery, especially when things got tough. While I can enjoy a few days of being alone, I think this was too much.

Two, I don’t think I’m built to be a dirtbag. Don’t get me wrong, I love the mountains and they’re a huge part of my life…but I don’t love them so much that I’m willing to sacrifice the other things in my life that give me joy so that I can do nothing but run/climb/ski etc. When I hear stories like from professional rock climber Jimmy Chin, who lived in his car for something like a decade so he could climb and ski all day, a part of me used to romanticize that sort of lifestyle. Independent, driven, primal, raw. But that kind of life, and by extension backpacking, is tough in its own way. I felt like I was slowly being worn down each day I was out there, like my body was grindstone upon which I was slowly being chiseled into fine powder. After a while, I suppose, you get used to the routine. Wake up, organize your stuff, eat, walk all day, sleep, repeat…but I’ve never gotten to the point where I didn’t feel like I was constantly fighting hunger and fatigue (likely because I tend to skimp on food and sleep in the name of "being “lightweight” and “big days”). I think at this point I have enough data to conclude that I prefer my bigger days in the mountains to consist of either big single day objectives or perhaps something that might take 2-3 larger days rather than the long backpacking trip style.

Three, being in a proper third world country really made me appreciate the life that I was lucky enough to have been born into. Watching the kinds of loads that the porters carry around all day was both inspiring, from a strength perspective, and tragic, from a back pain perspective. I even tried to carry one of them on the way to EBC and couldn’t get it off the ground. I can’t imagine hauling those loads around all day, for decades, for pennies. When I got back to my comfy desk job in Utah, I couldn't help but think that the everyday “problems” I experience there are minor and insignificant when compared to what these porters go through.

Kathmandu itself also made me appreciate how good things are here in the US. Having drinkable water, stoplights to control traffic, air that isn’t the most polluted in the world (well, maybe not for some days here in Utah), being able to flush toilet paper, have hot water on demand, not exist in an area where an earthquake could devastate the country at any moment, etc. All of these are luxuries that we simply take for granted until we’re deprived of their existence and forced to confront the reality of how so many people live. And while we all know that there are people who live in these conditions, I think seeing/experiencing it in person was eye opening.

My trip coordinator, Amrit, told me a heartbreaking story of what happened to him during covid in 2020. In an economy largely driven by tourism, the lack of clients during the shutdown meant that he, along with many others, lost his job; and this was right as he was having his second child. He told me how hard it was to find work to support his family and how, when he did find work as a night-guard, he often worked more than 12 arduous hours a day just to make under $1,000 a month. Like Robin Williams explains in Dead Poets Society, “I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.” For me, going to Nepal was me standing on a desk to see things a different way.

Wrapping Up

I know I focused more on the pain than the glory in this post, but that’s just because it’s easier to focus on the things that went wrong rather than the things that went right. It’s in our nature to self criticize, look for ways to improve and to do that often means focusing on the struggles. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention how well this trip went in so many different ways. I never had any issues with nuts or chickpeas (my biggest pre-trip fear), almost all of the many, many hours of travel went remarkably smoothly, I never had an issue finding lodging, the weather was perfect, I made it over two high passes, Lobuche East high camp and to EBC, I got to explore Hindu/Buddhist culture/history in Kathmandu, I made some new friends, my body held up relatively well all things considered, and I learned some good lessons about how to handle tough situations with the stoic challenge mindset. And just the fact that I was able to do this all by myself, coordinating, planning, and paying for everything along the way, gives me a confidence in my own abilities that I think only comes with throwing yourself in the deep end and seeing if you swim.

While the water was choppy and I may have gone under a few times, I can confidently say that I swam.

Day One

The first thing I remembered when I woke up was how incredible the flowers smelled from across the room. They were almost sweet, the blue like cotton candy, the white like marshmallows. A memory came rushing into my mind, intense and vivid unlike anything I had ever experienced. The first time I had eaten a snow cone, marshmallow cotton-candy flavored just like the flowers. Wow, this was impressive.

My parents were sitting quietly by my side, watching me take it all in as though they were reliving their first times so long ago. Their eyes filled with wonder and anticipation as they watched their first-born son awake from a successful linking. Ever since the accident a few years back, the government mandated that no one under the age of 16 be eligible for surgical linking. But since that day, and with several medical advancements, Lunix had performed over 10 million successful linkings in a row — a stat they ensure you don’t quickly forget.

Well, lucky for me, my 16th birthday was one week ago and, if it had been my choice, would have been the same day as my linking. See, I was the youngest in my class, meaning almost all of my friends had already gotten linked, and I’d be lying if I wasn’t envious of all the fun they were having without me. All those silent conversations they had, all those fun games they got to play, all those experiences in the Hive, and, best of all, I could finally leave this stupid in person school so I could take Lunix Learning Classes instead. And the cherry on top — they’d stop calling me a ‘natural.’

Many people considered you linking day to be the day you became an adult, finally removed from the childish, simple, slow world of the non-linked. Everyone I knew had been linked. My parents, my older sister, my friends and all their parents. Finally, I could step into the real world, their world, the world where all the exciting things were happening. No longer would they need to take breaks to talk to me with speech. No longer would they need to dumb things down for my slow brain to process. No longer would I have to be bored or do childish things like riding my bike.

Suddenly, I heard my dad’s voice. Or at least it sounded like my dad…but I was looking straight at him and his mouth hadn’t moved.

“How are you feeling, Adam?”

Ok this was seriously weird.

As I instinctually opened my mouth to respond, a yellow exclamation point appeared above my dad’s head, slowly moving up and down. As I peered at it, I wondered what that thing was and where it had come from. Suddenly, I heard a new voice. I looked around to see who had said it, but there was no one else in the room. The voice was that of a woman, and though I didn’t recognize it, for some reason the voice felt comforting. She began to explain the answer to my question — although, I hadn't actually asked a question, had I?

“The exclamation point means that your dad has just issued you a new message! Because your dad is family, the default setting is to automatically accept all communication from him. For people you do not know, you will need to first accept communication from them before being presented with their message. If you wish to proceed, simply think about what you want to communicate, and we will take care of sending that information when you’re ready!”

I remembered now. The voice I was hearing was my personal Lunix assistant Evy. During pre-linking Lunix training, my instructors had taught that she would be able to help me with any questions on navigating the Lunix brain-device interface. They told me about the exclamation point and what it would mean, but I think the initial shock still hadn’t worn off.

I looked back over at my dad, who had been waiting patiently since he knew that, even with all the training I had received, it would still take some time to adapt. I thought the words I would have once spoken, “yeah, I feel OK. But this is still very weird.” As soon as I finished thinking that sentence, a green checkmark appeared above my dad’s head indicating that he had received the message I had sent him. He and mom both instantly smiled, indicating that he had already shared that information with her.

The Lunix instructors told us that at first it’s easier to communicate by thinking about the sentence you want to say in your head. Eventually, however, as the Lunix implant learns your speech patterns and thought processes, you’ll be able to communicate solely through the use of “photo-thoughts,” a protocol where the system determines what you most likely wanted to communicate based on thoughts that, if directly spoken, would seem nonsensical. The instructors taught us that spoken communication has a bit rate of approximately 40 bits per second, or 6 words per second. But when an experienced user uses photo-thoughts through Lunix, a bit rate of up to 1 million bits per second can be achieved! This advancement didn’t simply mean that more words would be communicated, but a whole new, complete form of thought exchange could occur.

They taught that before Lunix humans could only communicate through a combination of spoken word and social cues, such as facial expressions and tone. This was simply an approximation of thought, constrained by limited vocabulary, subjective expressions and different interpretations, leading to high amounts was they called ‘thought transfer loss’. But with Lunix, seamless, perfect, low loss communication was possible. Communication was now directly transferred, without the use of clunky mediums such as spoken word, through a combination of direct thoughts, images, emotions and sensory experience, ensuring that the exact, precise idea was transferred. However, Lunix engineers understood that the bandwidth of the brain was limited, meaning that it would not be able to interpret the flood of information. Thus, the Lunix implant is used to quickly compress and filter the transferred information into a form that is easily accepted into the neural cortex.

My parents could tell that I was anxious to get out of the Lunix facility, so they quickly got approval from the doctor that I was cleared to leave. As we drove home from the facility, my mind buzzed with excitement, and I began to make a mental list of all the things I wanted to do. Suddenly, Evy’s voice returned.

“You have activated your virtual memory pad. While all of your communication and experiences are always stored in our cloud servers for Lunix training, you can designate specific memories or reminders to your virtual memory pad for future recall! Simply think about the things you wish to remember, and they will be digitally stored in your Lunix.”

I began to think about what I wanted to do later. I had to add Aaron and Mike, two of my best friends, to my Lunix friends list. I had to download and install GTA 9 Lunix Edition, which I was most excited about. I wanted to check out the Hive. And I also knew I had to register for Lunix classes for Monday, finally completing my withdrawal from natural school.

I was glad to finally begin Lunix Learning Classes, since most of my friends had transitioned already, leaving natural classes empty and boring. It’s a weird feeling when you know how much your life is about to change, but you still have to wait for it to happen. I didn’t like living for the future, it made me feel absent from everyday life. But finally this longing feeling would come to an end as the radical change that would be Lunix Learning Classes would begin. Being linked, I could now directly download concepts into my brain instead of having to listen to a teacher. History, math, physics, literature. Full curriculums in minutes. And if your brain failed to fully grasp a concept, your Lunix implant would detect it and implement alternate methods of learning. Don’t fully grasp Renaissance art? Instantly you’re transported back in time to experience life in 1400s Italy. Can’t wrap your head around quantum mechanics, instantly ask Werner Heisenberg any question you want. Lunix classes focused on making sure each student fully grasped the enormity of human knowledge, because, as they preached, only then can you use your brain’s unique asset most effectively to help change the world: creativity.

Richard

Since I grew up in a wealthy area, almost everyone had transitioned to Lunix Learning Classes when they were eligible. But because I was young for my class, I had to continue taking natural classes with the other young kids and the children of those who adhered to the Natural Movement. Thankfully, however, one of my best friends happened to be the son of two proud naturals and was thus still in my class. Richard had come from a long lineage of Natural Movement followers, who claimed that getting linked “removed too much of our humanity” and that we were moving towards “the elimination of the human race altogether.” It was popular nationwide, even if only a small minority from our hometown were members. My parents had told me that they were a bunch of luddites who would eventually get left behind in the wake of technological progress like others before them. But they also told me that naturals were essential to our society, and that I should stay away from those who espoused such radical ideas such as “link or leave.” Who else, after all, would be left to do the physical labor necessary to support our way of life?

While my parents usually told me to stay away from other naturals, they didn’t mind me hanging out with Richard. We had been best friends for over a decade now, played on the same soccer team and often played natural versions of video games together. We also loved to explore the forest behind Richard’s house, home to such classic games as “float down the stream without hitting your back on the bottom” and “climb the big Oak Tree as fast as possible.” By this time, we had built many things in that forest, our crown jewel being a two-story treehouse high up on the big Oak Tree, with a patio, staircase, and bridge to a neighboring tree. Although I can’t say we built it truly alone, for a homeless, natural man who seemed to live near the Oak Tree was always giving us pointers and advice, as though he were as invested in making it come to fruition as we were. We didn’t know his name, but never minded his company, especially because he would bring us cherry’s from the Finkles Farm across the river. With the help of the homeless man, we slowly crafted our masterpiece, and were immensely proud of it. It had taken years to finish, the pace of construction having quickened as my linking day approached.

We hadn’t talked about it directly, but we both knew the reality of the situation — once I got linked, I likely wouldn’t see Richard much more. It felt like we had no choice, that was just what people did. Links and naturals were highly segregated in almost every aspect of modern society. Because Richard would not be getting linked, he’d be on a path towards getting a job supporting the Lunix energy infrastructure, agriculture or service. Advanced, good paying jobs, ones requiring creativity, complex thought and technical background, were, at this point, essentially reserved for linked people (not by law, but in practice). I could feel the weight of this reality when we’d discussed our dreams of being architects, building skyscrapers that could be seen from every direction for miles, even though we both knew it was a fantasy for Richard.

But the segregation didn’t just stop there. We also lived separately. Once diverse neighborhoods had largely been abandoned in favor of fully natural or fully linked communities. Richards family, for example, lived on the outskirts of the district, just within the line that separated the fully natural school from the school for those who would be linked, a savvy move by his parents since they knew our school was better. But it also meant that Richard would essentially lose all of his friends by age 16 — I never understood why they did that to him. Fortunately, Richard never really cared for all that. He never seemed to get caught up in the inherent tension between naturals and links. He never seemed to care that his future opportunities would be severely limited. Even though Richard would never get linked, he seemed freer than anyone else I knew.

When my parents told me they had successfully scheduled my linking, the joy I felt was instantly mixed with a hint of regret. I was eager to join the rest of the links and finally realize my inevitable future, yet regretful that I’d be leaving Richard behind. In a way, I pitied him. For if he had had better luck and not been born into a backwards family, he’d also be getting linked, and we would still be friends. But I knew that wasn’t the way Richard thought. He wasn’t one to opine on what he couldn’t have, and I knew he wasn’t in any way jealous of me. He would always say “skyscrapers aren’t built with dreams.” That was Richard.

GTA 9 Lunix Edition

As we pulled into our driveway, my excitement had boiled over. I ran into the house, up the stairs and to my room where I booted up GTA 9 Lunix Edition. My favorite natural game, it would not be an exaggeration to say I was most excited about being linked for this moment. My friends Aaron and Mike had told me all the details, how Lunix sped up the in-game time so you could feel like weeks had passed in the game when only hours would pass in reality, how you could feel every sensation of your character as if it were really happening to you, how you could pick a superpower and explore the world like you were really there — my excitement was contagious.

Lunix video games had actually become somewhat of a problem recently, and my parents had mandated my implant come with a five hour time restriction. Some people played so much that they ended up essentially living in the video game, only taking small breaks to eat and use the bathroom. For serious gamers, the Lunix implant came with a built in option to regulate body functions for your brain, essentially eliminating the need for sleep altogether since the brain no longer got tired. In one infamous case, a man played for so long that he actually died of starvation (he had deactivated the Lunix warning system).

Even with my five hour time restriction, the in-game time controls meant that I could feel like I had played for almost a week — more than enough to satisfy my curiosity. As I laid down on my bed, the game booted up…

When I woke up, I was on the rooftop of a huge building in what looked like a different country. I could smell the ocean air and a warm breeze at my back. The sun shone low on the horizon, casting long shadows off the surrounding buildings. The hum of traffic echoed from below. I could see how people could easily forget which world was real…

I looked in front of me and saw a green arrow pointing to the edge of the building. As I approached, a familiar voice began speaking. “In front of you is your first mission,” said Evy. “The test is simple and is meant to help you get used to the Lunix game interface. All you need to do is jump off the building.”

My stomach dropped. I had forgotten when Aaron had mentioned this level and how I had naively told him it would be no big deal. But what I didn’t anticipate was the feeling in my stomach as I looked down from 100 stories high. Even with assuring myself that it was just a game and if I “died,” I would simply respawn, I was still terrified. I took a deep breath in, looked straight ahead, and jumped.

Free falling through the air was both the most exhilarating experience of my life and the most horrifying. The ground was rushing up at me, the street wishing for nothing more than to meet my face as the wind streamed by my ears. I closed my eyes and screamed, waiting for my certain demise, until all of a sudden the roar of the wind stopped. Slowly I opened my eyes, half expecting to be the first conscious version of a human puddle, but instead saw that I was floating above the ground, completely unscathed.

“Congratulations! You have passed your first mission! Welcome to GTA 9 Lunix Edition!”

As my jumbled thoughts returned, I realized my heart was beating out of my chest, almost to the point it hurt. I peered down at my trembling hands and realized I couldn't make them stop from what had, by all accounts, felt like a near death experience. Was this supposed to be part of the fun I had heard so much about? Maybe I actually wasn't ready? My brain began to spiral. What if you forget which is the real world and which is GTA? What if you accidentally jump off a building in the real world thinking you’re in the game? As a panic attack began to onset, I caught a glimpse of my new surroundings. The street was filled with anything and everything you could imagine. To my left was a man riding a T-Rex chasing a half monkey-half man with one arm a chainsaw, and the other arm a bazooka. To my right was what I can only describe as an elastic woman, who had decided she needed to climb straight up the adjacent building. And above me, a portal opened up to allow entry to a hoard of oddly cow shaped aliens atop a hovercraft pad of some sort.

I was overwhelmed, anxious, and honestly a little scared. Here I was, a 16 year old boy on day one of linking, all alone in a city of chaos. I told Evy that I wanted to leave and suddenly everything went black.

The Hive

As I came to in my bedroom, I realized that I was suddenly very calm again. My heart rate was normal, I was no longer sweating, and my thoughts were absent of panic. I remembered Mike telling me that, long ago, people had complained about coming back to drenched sheets and near heart attacks after leaving the game, so the GTA developers began allowing Lunix to regulate some bodily functions when you were in the game, keeping your body nice and calm even in the midst of mental calamity.

The clock read 3:35pm, meaning that I had only used 5 minutes of the three hours I had set the timer to. Fortunately, I hadn’t only been curious about experiencing video games. I wanted to check out The Hive.

The Hive was often considered the most important aspect of linking. When a user entered the Hive, he had the ability to instantly connect with thousands of groups of people, instantly absorbing their life experiences, emotions and thoughts while sharing your own at the same time. Using the collective consciousness of large groups of people, great things had been accomplished in record time.

Reading my thoughts, Evy spoke, “transporting you to the Hive loading bay now.”

When I next blinked, I was at the helm of a spaceship, holding an analog stick controller to direct the ship. In front of me, where the vast emptiness of space should have been, were huge orange bubbles that populated the space in-between the nothingness. Some larger than others, they were pulsing with energy and life.

“Each bubble represents a different group in the Hive, called a sub-Hive,” spoke Evy. “The size of the bubble relates to how many members the sub-Hive contains and the brightness indicates how active it is at this moment. Use your Hive-ship to approach any bubble you wish and, if it is public, instantly join and, if private, issue a request.”

I flew near the largest, brightest bubble I could see. “That sub-Hive represents one of the largest and is named Government. This is where the collective will of the people is determined. Great debates about the goals of greater society and how they should be achieved occur here. Anyone is welcome.”

Not the least bit interested, I continued on.

After some time, another large bubble appeared on my left. Yet instead of vibrant and pulsing, it was dark and static. “This sub-Hive represents the Naturals Advocacy group. Once large and vibrant, this sub-Hive has long since become a relic of the Hive infrastructure and is scheduled for complete removal.”

“What happened to it,” I asked Evy.

“The Naturals Advocacy group was once a bulwark against radical Link ideology, pushing for continued Natural rights even as societal stratification intensified. However, some viewed the group as harboring anti-Link sentiments and claims were brought to the Court sub-Hive detailing a plot to overthrow the established Link dominated order. The Court ruled in their favor, and the Naturals Advocacy sub-Hive group was shut down.”

I had no idea that all of this was going on, I thought. I had been living in ignorance until now, a puppet world controlled by another world. I wondered if Naturals like Richards parents had any idea of what I was witnessing.

I continued my journey, eventually arriving at the one sub-Hive I wanted to join — OldHaven. Eager to see what kind of activities my local town was up to, I sent a request to join. Immediately I was granted access, with a message reading “Welcome! We’ve been expecting you, Adam.”

I directed the Hive-ship into the bubble, until the Hive-ship disappeared and everything went black. I felt like I was floating, yet when I looked down I realized I had no body. My head was buzzing, and as I focused on it I realized something alarming. I had new memories. Memories of lives different than my own, yet as vivid as if I had lived them myself. My neighbor Sharon’s marriage. My old tutor Albert planning a lesson. The time, long before I was born, when lightning struck the old church and burned it down. Suddenly, I knew the entire history of OldHaven in a way I had never known before.

And I also had new ideas. We needed a new Link Studies facility, to turn OldHaven into a research hub. Or we needed to make a deal with the state to supply more funding for pre-Link schools for our children. Or we needed to open up more of the surrounding forest to real estate development.

No, no, no, no!

That was our forest! Mine and Richards! Our Tree House! Rage and fear colored my thoughts and, apparently, had been felt throughout the sub-Hive because I was instantly greeted by new thoughts that couldn’t have been of my own making. Soothing and dismissive, these thoughts told me that it would benefit the local Link community as a whole if we could bring in more likeminded people. And it would ensure that our community stayed exclusive, since this development would only be available to other wealthy Links. The forest served no purpose, besides a place for Naturals to congregate and likely conspire against us.

As I listened to more and more of the Hive thoughts, I found myself close to believing what they were saying. Maybe it would be for the best if the old forest were destroyed and I was just being sentimental and naive. Slipping further and further, I felt myself merging into the Hive collective when suddenly, as if a ray shining from above, I recalled a memory that was surely of my own. It was of the kind, old, homeless man who lived in that forest and the fresh cherries he would bring us while we worked on the Tree House. But this memory was of the time he told us that he had been thwarted by the neighbors dog when he had tried to pick the cherries from their tree. I could so vividly see the dejected look on his face when he told us there would be no more cherries and how I so easily dismissed him, saying “don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal.” But the man never seemed to forgive himself. And as I remembered him, I realized that they would be destroying his home, and he would have no idea they were coming.

I told Evy that I needed to leave immediately.

The Oak Tree

When I came to in my bed, I was driven. I immediately ran out of the house, ignoring my parents surprised expressions, and sprinted towards the old forest. The sun was low on the horizon and the trees swayed gently as I followed the path that led to the old Oak Tree. Finally I arrived at the huge base of the tree and looked upwards towards the canopy so far above. Our vacant tree house like an old abandoned shack, untouched since the last time we visited. Cherry pits littered the ground beneath my feet. Frantically, I searched around for the old man, but I had no name to call out. And so I simply yelled “help!” in the hopes of summoning him out of sympathy.

To my surprise, the old man responded “what sorta trouble are ya in, boy?” “None!” I responded, “But I need to talk to you! Hurry!”

The old man stumbled out from his makeshift home, a collection of branches, cardboard and trash, and hobbled over to where I was standing. He was dressed in grey sweatpants and a sweatshirt, like he always was, but now had a severe limp in his left leg. His scraggly grey beard and wrinkled skin made him look much older than he likely was, but his eyes still shone a youthful exuberance that echoed in his voice.

“They’re going to tear down the forest! Your home! We have to stop them!” I expressed exasperatedly. “They’re going to build homes for more links right where we’re standing, it could start any day!” I looked at the man expecting him to join me in my panic, but his expression was unchanged. He stared at me as though in deep thought, yet was silent.

“Aren’t you upset? What are we going to do about it?” I was beginning to get irritated that he was seemingly indifferent to this news.

“Do you know why I live in this forest, boy?”

I didn’t know anything about him; I shook my head.

“Because I realized that everything that’s going on out there,” he pointed away from us, “isn’t real. It’s all made up. It’s in the mind. This,” and he pointed to the Oak Tree “is real. You can touch it. Feel it. Connect with it. I live here not because of circumstance, but because of choice.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I retorted.

“I’m telling you this now because you’ve begun the journey that will define the rest of our life. You’ve just stepped into a world where everyone is one, and no one is anyone. A world where anything can be accomplished, but no struggle undertaken. A world where freedom is promised, but only illusion is delivered. And if you do not act now, you likely will never be able to act again.”

I couldn't believe he was doing this. Of all times, right as his home was on the cusp of destruction, he was lecturing me on Natural living.

“You’re wrong. I’m not lecturing you on Natural philosophy, just speaking to you as a friend,” he responded. How did he know that I was thinking that?

“Do you,” I stuttered, “are you a link?”

“Yes I am, boy. I’ve been linked since my 16th birthday in fact, just like you are now.”

I was astonished. I had never heard of a link living like the old man did. Why would he do this to himself when he could have lived in luxury among the other links. He continued…

“I too was seduced into the life of a link. Luxury, wealth, ease, no pain, and any opportunity I wanted at my fingertips. I too joined the Hive and partook in the collective. And at first I loved it, for there is nothing that a man thinks he wants more than shaping the future and belonging to a tribe. But I soon learned that mans strengths can also be his weaknesses — the same power of creation can easily become the power of destruction. I believed very strongly that all men, regardless of mental ability, should reap the profits of collective progress. And yet there were those who did not believe in this truth, those who wished to consolidate prosperity in the hands of those who they deemed worthy, those who deserved it. And those same people claimed that, in fact, we were deferential to the perceived enemy. That we had betrayed our own people in favor of an inferior race. And so they banned our sub-Hive and banished us from the Hive altogether. I was devastated, for all that I had worked so hard to attain seemed lost. But every end also has a beginning, for I had, unknowingly at the time, been freed from the grasp of the collective conscious and given the chance to remember myself. For so long I had felt every collective emotion, thought every collective thought, seen every collective memory, that I had forgotten which ones were mine own! It was like being born again when I left the Hive, finally able to discover who I was. Eventually, I understood that being linked had not in fact opened doors, but had instead shut the very ones which I should have walked through. And as I slowly weaned off using my link, I slowly seemed to regain my own self. I now understand how lucky I was to have been saved, and not diluted into a mere host for the Hive to feed on.”

I stumbled backward, almost losing my balance as the shock poured over me. My mind raced, unable to piece together a coherent response as I struggled to grasp what the old man had told me.

“I’ve known you for a long time now, boy. I’ve seen the spark in your eyes as you and your friend built that Tree House” he pointed upwards. “I know how much you care for each other and how much this forest means to you, just like it means to me. The distant songs of birds, the gentle breeze rustling the leaves, the peace and quiet this place provides. You can only truly discover yourself in places like these, away from distractions and illusions. Too many of us fail the only quest which really matters in this life, to understand who you are. And the implant only acts to shield yourself from yourself.”

“See this Oak Tree?” The old man walked over to the big Oak Tree. “Underneath the ground, it’s supported by a maze of roots and fungi which bring nutrients from the farthest reaches of the forest. Without their help, it would have shriveled and died at a young age, forgotten to Father Time. But instead, it understood that the only way to grow strong and proud is to have a stable support system. Now, no storm nor drought can batter this tree, for it has fully used its community to develop as an individual. You can either be like this tree, or like a blade of grass. Indistinguishable from all the rest, swaying in the wind with everyone else”

“If what you say is true, and they will destroy this forest, then I will also leave with the forest for, like the Oak Tree, I have reached the end of the search for myself and am content with what I have found.”

I stood there motionless, stuck in a trance of the old mans making. Watching him, he bent over to pick something up from the ground. It was a white cloth which he was using to cover something in his hand.

“Before you leave, I’d like for you to have this.” He took both my hands and clasped the cloth and the object between them. I looked down at my hands and unveiled what lay beneath the cloth. Five perfect cherries, plump, juicy and red. My eyes welled up with tears. Tears for the forest which would soon be lost. Tears for the old man whom I would never see again. Tears for the Oak Tree which wouldn’t be able to weather this storm. Tears for Richard, my friend who I felt I had betrayed. And most of all, tears for myself and the choice I would now face.

When I looked up, the old man was gone and I was all alone. Night had befallen the forest. The trees rattled in the wind, speaking to each other in hushed tones. I looked up at the Oak Tree one last time, marveling in its grander, turned around still clutching the cherries, and started my long walk home.

Political Domination

I understand that when you lose an election decisively — losing the House, Senate, and the Presidency — it’s natural for your party to be sidelined, left to watch as your rival makes all the key decisions. But something feels different about the extent to which the Democrats — and with them, a coherent oppositional viewpoint — seem irrelevant right now. And with so many rich, popular, and outspoken figures on the right, it almost feels like they’re getting trampled in more than just representation in the government.

Searching for an analogy, I’m reminded of when Republicans lost big to the Obama coalition in 2008 during a similar period of cultural transition (ok fine, I was only 11 then so I got this from watching old Jon Stewart videos). You’d forgive me if, after watching Obama’s 2004 DNC speech and seeing how much the message of Hope and Change resonated with people, I would have thought Republicans were delegated to obscurity for decades.

But that’s not what happened. Huge media figureheads like Rush Limbaugh (who garnered a daily listenership of 15 million), Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Co. kept conservative opposition strong until the Tea Party formed just a year into Obama’s presidency and stymied much of his original agenda. My point is not to say that this was necessarily good, but that there was relevant opposition to the mainstream narrative from day one of the Obama presidency.

But when I look at the oppositional landscape today from the left, I fail to see almost any voices as impactful as those above. Podcasting has been essentially taken over by the right or right leaning voices; from Joe Rogan (2nd most popular podcast) to Theo Von (3rd most popular) to Tucker Carlson (12th most popular podcast) to Candace Owens (16th most popular) to Megyn Kelly (25th most popular) to Charlie Kirk (43rd most popular) to Ben Shapiro (46th most popular). These shows are either solely dedicated or discretely furthering the conservative agenda, and have huge collective audiences. When I look for podcasts that explicitly further the liberal agenda, I find only two in the top 50: Jon Stewart (which doesn’t really have an agenda other than left leaning political satire) and Pod Save America.

And it’s not just podcasting that’s being dominated, it’s social media too.

During and after the election, my Instagram (where I spend most of my social media cycles) was flooded with Trump related memes and content. I’m sure these platforms promote it to me because I engage with it more—not necessarily because I agree with it, but simply because, frankly, it’s funnier and more entertaining than anything coming from the left. And I’m sure if I used other social media (thank God I don’t), I’d feel the same way about which side was winning the entertainment value contest. Say whatever you want of the guy, you can’t deny he’s funny (see example). And in an age where people spend an average of 3 hours a day on social media, entertainment value gets eyeballs.

The right also seems to be dominating the number of so called “thought leaders,” people who dominate the news cycle and further their sides political agenda. Obviously there’s Trump, but there’s also Elon Musk, JD Vance, Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon, etc.

But when I think of who the most prominent voices on the left are, their popularity seems to pale in comparison. Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Ezra Klein, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who are both considered somewhat fringe on the left), Ana Kasparian, Scott Galloway, and, unfortunately for the left, Destiny. This lineup is not enough to push the liberal agenda, representing a proverbial drop in the bucket compared to this conservative onslaught.

I get that traditional types of media are waning, meaning that the old levers of informational dissemination (which were historically more left leaning) now have less influence, and the right has a long precedent of using non-traditional forms of media to amplify their message (i.e. talk radio). But what I don’t understand is why the left is having so much trouble adapting to these new methods and is instead clinging to the past, even when failing ratings clearly reflect this sentiment? I’m old enough to remember when Obama was called “the internet president” for his novel use of social media and blogs to promote his campaign. But this advantage seems to have been lost, and with it the governing authority — there’s a reason why the epithet goes “whoever controls the media controls the minds.”

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What’s the Message?

I think a lot of it has to do with the lack of cohesiveness on the left and the fact that there is little agreement on what the party stands for, other than anti-Trump. In contrast, the right, having refined their message over almost 10 long years now, have come to a relative consensus on what they believe:

1. America is for true Americans only

There seem to be many forces at work behind this principle, the most obvious being xenophobia and the belief that the current nationalities of immigrants coming into the country, differing from the original English and Irish-Scott backgrounds, don’t adequately represent “American ideals” (work ethic, religion, belief in freedoms, etc.). The reason why these beliefs exist at all are wide and varied and I won’t go fully into it. But then there’s also the less obvious reasons for this principle, including reactions against internationalist free trade policies, seen as a liberal agenda item (even though it was heavily pushed by the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations), which unintentionally gutted many of the blue-collar jobs in middle America. This fact, coupled with perceived liberal preference towards immigrants instead of the afflicted blue-collar workers, seems to be a major reason for this reflexive backlash.

This buffet of reasons is attractive to a wide constituency due to the fact that each individual can simply pick and choose which parts they agree with, yet still arrive at the same conclusion.

2. Masculinity has been repressed

At its core, this principle teaches that liberal ideals, driven by compassion for the plight of others, perceived inequalities among disadvantaged groups, and belief in the fundamental malleability of human nature, are feminine in nature and have been involuntarily foisted upon the American male. Thus, the right believes that the best way to counter this ideology is to bring traditional masculine traits back into the mainstream. It’s pretty easy to match this theory against current events: the strong-arming, confrontational nature of current foreign policy (representing the competitiveness of men), the imperial, expansionist tendencies currently manifesting (representing the male desire to conquer and for violence), the removal of DEI (representing male qualities of individualism and strength), and the near worship of a man (Trump) who embodies perceived male qualities such as assertiveness, dominance, and leadership.

3. The experts were all wrong

This last principle originates from many different historical events, but is truly the movement unifier. For some, it originates from the economists who believed that bringing China into the world economy would benefit Americans wholesale (i.e. see blue collar job losses above), or from the military experts who said the invasion of Iraq was just and necessary (when in fact it was built on lies), or from the financial experts who claimed we had to bail out the banks in 2008 but let individuals default, or the medical experts who increasingly prescribed opioids, at the recommendation of the American Medical Association, without fully understanding the addictive nature of the drug. But this principle really came into focus during Covid, when many Americans understood the ever-evolving scientific consensus and guidance as proof of the expert’s incompetence. All of this has culminated in a movement dedicated to bringing down the institutions and establishments that created the experts who have so wronged and lied to them…essentially as revenge.

At its core, these three guiding principles are rooted in backlash against much of the prevailing liberal culture, ideas, and politics, and I believe describes why liberals are at such a loss to counter this movement (because the cultural and political headwinds are shifting away from what liberals have traditionally pushed for). To return to relevancy, liberals need to focus on these two things: a cohesive message and messenger(s). Unfortunately, to the chagrin of traditional liberal politicos, that cohesive message is going to have to involve some nuance.

Maybe when I wrote this blog it came across that I was a closeted Trump supporter (even though, as I described, I voted for Kamala and believed Trump was morally disqualified from consideration). In fact, there are cultural and policy items that I agree with on principle. I do think the influx of immigrants is an issue worth addressing. I do think we need more policing, not less. I do think there is bloat in the bureaucracy that deserves attention. I do think we need to focus more on the physical health of Americans. I do think we need to support Israel. I do think some DEI policies went too far. And I do think some liberal policy towards China was shortsighted.

But that doesn’t change my core, liberal leaning belief system — that in a country of exceeding wealth and prosperity, solely relying on the forces of the meritocracy to pull people out of hardship is unnecessarily cruel. I still believe the government has the capability and the moral obligation to help those who are less fortunate. I still believe that historical inequities significantly impact the present. I still believe that women should have the right to choose (up to a point). I still believe that immigrants are an essential asset to this country’s prosperity. I still believe that we need to focus on transitioning to clean energy (even if I’d like more nuclear). I still believe that the wealth gap in this country is too large. I still believe in the scientific consensus. And I still believe that traditional educational institutions are the most powerful force we have for upward mobility.

But in a country where political nuance, instead of political fealty, is met with neglect at best and violence at worst…it sometimes feels hard to find a home in the current political climate. Either swear allegiance to Trump and MAGA or swear allegiance to the most fringe form of left-wing policies. Why not neither and instead something that takes aspects of both?

The Political Pendulum

Right now, the pendulum is swinging back the other way just like it always does. Assuming that it doesn’t break the fulcrum (not a certainty), usually what happens is it lands somewhere in the middle — our self-imposed checks and balances against too much dominance by one party. We can see this pendulum behavior going back to the early 1900s. Teddy Roosevelt’s progressivism was a check on Gilded Age laissez faire policies. Franklin Roosevelts New Deal was a check on the issues caused, in part, by small government and loose regulations leading to the Great Depression. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations focus on civil rights served as a check on prevailing racial discrimination. The Reagan administration served as a check on perceived American international fecklessness. Obama served as a check on neoconservative and deregulatory free-market policies. And Trumps first term served as a check on many of the things I’ve listed earlier.

What the left needs to do is find out what will serve as the next pendulum swing and find someone who can effectively articulate it. While I don’t know the answer to the latter, I believe the answer to the former is to completely reorient the party to focus on class instead of culture. And I say this because there seems to be an obvious political opportunity here, most recently illustrated by the overwhelming support for Luigi Mangione’s murder of the UnitedHealthCare CEO. This popular angst stems from the belief that huge corporations have taken advantage of Americans for too long. Evidence of this can be seen in almost every sect of life. From tech, where companies like Meta deliberately created their products to addict young people even when they knew it was detrimental to their mental health. To medical insurance, where companies like UnitedHealthCare creatively find ways to deny claims, significantly contributing to why medical debt is the number one source of debt collection in the US. To food, where companies like PepsiCo and Nestle deliberately put addictive products in their foods regardless of the health consequences. To real estate, where companies like Blackstone continue to buy up single-family houses and correspondingly price out individuals.

The list of corporations taking advantage of American consumers goes on and on, afflicts a majority of Americans across party lines, and is at the core of many disparate issues Americans face right now. This is what government was built for, protecting the interests of American citizens against foreign and domestic threats. And the only way to ensure these companies serve our needs instead of their own is to actually punish them when they don’t. Yet, as this administration puts many of the very culprits of these crimes in positions of authority and influence, there seems to be little pushback from the left.

I’m not naive. I know that these corporations give huge sums of money to politicians in order to keep the status quo (due to one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in modern American history). But the election just ended, so funding isn’t the biggest issue right now. And complaining about issues while out of power is a whole lot easier than fixing them when in power. So what’s stopping us?

I hope this is the path Democrats take. For the good of the country, let’s hope the writers of Season 48 understand the stakes.

A few weeks ago, my friend randomly sent me a video on the lives of Tibetan monks dating back to the 1960s.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot since.

Tibet was the last living link connecting us to the civilizations of the distant past. Traditional civilizations like India and China have been eroded by waves of Westernization. But modernity passed Tibet by. To meet her mountains and men, one had to cross oceans, traverse subcontinents, clamor horrible slopes only to enter icy deserts and the chaos of black gulfs and white summits….a society left on the shelf…preserved in deep freeze.

It’s fascinating to watch these monks as they go about their daily lives. There’s no commute to work, no concern that their Jira story isn’t going to be complete by the end of the sprint, no time spent watching TV to ‘decompress, after a long day,’ and they don’t have families. Instead, they spend their days in meditation, performing rituals like gyukhyö (Tibetan throat singing) and puja (chanting prayer service), and studying sacred Buddhist texts. They subsist on charity from the local community, known as alms, in exchange for spiritual teachings and life guidance. They own nothing more than the clothes on their backs, a few sacred books, ritual keepsakes and some silverware — a testament to their intentionally minimalistic lives. And they’ve been living this way, more or less, for over 1,300 years, bereft of the steady drumbeat of ‘progress’ around them, with the same everlasting goal of “attaining enlightenment for the sake of all beings”.

This way of life is so different from mine, so foreign, that it almost felt like I was watching a fictional movie. That these people’s lives are simply the creation of someone’s mind, not a documentary. But then you remember that these are just people too, not some mythical creature, born with the same innate wants and desires and yet, due to simply being born in a different geographic location, have taken a radically different life trajectory from our own.

This got me thinking about the forces that have shaped my life and the lives of so many in the West. Why are our lives so different from the Tibetan monks?

As I dug into that question, I realized that some part of my fascination with these Tibetan monks was similar in the way that some European settlers were fascinated by the Native Americans when they first encountered them: intrigued by their alternate lifestyle but ultimately believing that their way of life was inferior. I’m sure this is due in part to hubris and ignorance, but I think it’s also because many of us in the West have an inordinate belief that our lifestyle is objectively, as if it were a universal law, the best — for what other reason would we Americans constantly say “we’re the greatest country in the world” if we didn’t believe it deep down (putting aside speculation of self delusion)?

Why is it we think we’re the best? Because we believe, against all odds, that we finally implemented the system which generates the most amount of human flourishing.

This system subsists of the belief, first and foremost, that humans flourish when given certain freedoms, allowing individuals to act and think as they choose, and have accompanying rights to uphold said freedoms (i.e. privileges that protect freedoms). For example, the right to freedom of speech upholds the freedom to express oneself (FDR succinctly phrases the four overarching ideals of freedom in his 1941 State of the Union). In fact, we developed an entire form of government built around upholding and protecting these values.

And this is no small feat when viewed from a historical lens, and is certainly worthy of praise, for a society built upon this foundation is seemingly anathema to human nature. At no other point in human history has a society codified natural law, the belief that all men are created equal, into its founding documents. At no other point in history has a government been created for the sole purpose of upholding this ideal. This unto itself is an incredible achievement that goes against the inertia of all of human history. And it’s easy to take this for granted when so much of the world today is modeled after the U.S. system.

But with this said, it’s easy to see how the poison of hubris could take root.

With the perceived moral high ground, the West used this as moral justification (and often implied obligation) to spread these values to societies deemed “less Western” or prevent the spread of “inferior” or “threatening” values, often through coercion, forced assimilation, and/or military intervention. Look no further for evidence of this claim than the cultural genocide of the Native Americans, the forced assimilation of the Native Hawaiians, the obliteration of 100,000 Cambodians to prevent the spread of communism, or the dozens of U.S. military interventions in South America specifically aimed at installing “democratic” (read: friendly) leaders. In the words of the giant robot, Liberty Prime, from Fallout 3, the West too often believed “freedom is non-negotiable!”

But these flaws have to be contextualized within the broader historical precedent. When you take this into account, it still seems accurate to say that the West ranks near the top of systems that both create the most human flourishing and are the most moral. This is especially evident when you remember that alternate, contemporary systems of government have led to unimaginable suffering: the communist Soviets forced starvation program which lead to the deaths of 5 million Ukrainians, the Islamist Ottomans forced marches and murders which resulted in the deaths of a million Armenians, the Imperial Japanese systematic and brutal slaughtering of 200,000 Chinese civilians in Nanking, the Authoritarian Chinese detainment and reeducation of a million Uyghurs, the Fascist Germans murdering 6 million Jews, and the Oligarchical Russians invasion and murder 100,000 Chechen civilians. Only when you contextualize history can you truly place yourself among it. The West, in my opinion, is somewhat like Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight; driven by just morality yet often plagued by overconfidence and hubris. Let’s hope we don’t end up like Dent in the second half of the movie…

But there is more to what has shaped our lives, beyond the philosophical/legal framework of freedom, rights and equality that is more cultural at heart. And, in my opinion, is where I begin to get more skeptical of our moral ranking.

Chief among these cultural values, and the one that still touches more of our lives than any other, is the Protestant Work ethic — the understanding that hard work, discipline and frugality are the noblest virtues and are the values that most honorably serve God (that last part may have fallen away, but the core principle remains). This ethic preaches that work unto itself can be one’s calling, material success indicates that you were destined for salvation (yet extravagance is a vice), and individualism is encouraged over communal assistance. This principle has fingerprints all across American society. From Americans obsession with working long hours, to our societal orientation around raising children from within the nuclear family and not from within “a village”, to our near worship of billionaires and celebrities, to our educational method which idealizes the student who puts in long hours of studying and sacrifices in pursuit of achievement. All of these, and more, are seen as honorable and worthy of praise in American society, tracing its roots back to the Protestant Work Ethic principle.

But why, you may ask, did the West adopt this system? Why not a system, say, similar to the Tibetan Buddhist monks which is oriented towards spiritual development, minimalism and the pursuit of enlightenment? Beyond the obvious (that the West was developed by Christian enlightenment thinkers and not Eastern philosophers), I’d be sympathetic to someone who argued that the Protestant Work ethic was intentionally designed as a precursor to capitalism, not as a sincere religiously oriented way of life (contrary to my conspiracy hopes and dreams, the German sociologist Max Weber explains that these Protestant ideals only coincidentally lead to the development of capitalism).

Whatever the cause, the effect is clear: our society is underpinned by the belief that never-ending growth is the key ultimate human flourishing.

And I use the word “growth” very broadly to mean the development of anything that is more complex than what came before, with little thought into whether said growth is actually beneficial to humans more broadly (outside of financially beneficial). The philosopher Nick Bostrom has a fitting thought experiment called the Black Marble that illustrates this point.

One way of looking at human creativity is as a process of pulling balls out of a giant urn. The balls represent possible ideas, discoveries, technological inventions. Over the course of history, we have extracted a great many balls– mostly white (benecial) but also various shades of gray (moderately harmful ones and mixed blessings). The cumulative effect on the human condition has so far been overwhelmingly positive, and may be much better still in the future. The global population has grown about three orders of magnitude over the last ten thousand years, and in the last two centuries per capita income, standards of living, and life expectancy have also risen. What we haven’t extracted, so far, is a black ball: a technology that invariably or by default destroys the civilization that invents it. The reason is not that we have been particularly careful or wise in our technology policy. We have just been lucky.

Mr. Bostrom illustrates the cognitive dissonance one must hold in the West: constant growth mindset has provided extraordinary gains, yet may very well destroy us. Would anyone argue that the Tibetan monks way of life could lead to the destruction of life itself? Certainly not. Yet their way of life can in no way solve the great problems of poverty, illness, and repression like the West can and has. This ultimate tradeoff is hard to accept, especially since we have such a hard time understanding nuance. Would you trade such progress like the drop in global child mortality from 50% to 5%, the drop in global malnourishment from 1 in 3 in 1970 to under 10%, and the increase of global life expectancy from 45 in 1950 to 73 today if you knew that the system that brought you those benefits had a, say, 10% chance at destroying life as we know it? What if it was 50%?

And yet, this is not the only challenge that never-ending growth mindset faces, for there is another crack forming as people begin to seriously question the conclusion that more growth always leads to more human flourishing. Is there some inflection point, where the objectively positive metrics I identified above begin to stagnate? Where further growth actually begins to act contrary to human interests? Perhaps we’re already starting to see the beginning of this, as rates of unhappiness, dissatisfaction and suicide are increasing across the West. Many people, including a growing number of Gen Z’ers, wished that platforms like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok never existed at all! My personal journey with this question has certainly been changing…

From very early on I knew that I wanted to “make a difference,” “do something great” and ultimately “be remembered.” And my scheme for achieving this goal has been the same for decades now: human spaceflight. I thought my key to eternity was to create some form of space travel that would take humans to the stars. It was something that no one had done, was incredibly difficult and thus honorable (i.e. Protestant work ethic), and would certainly be something worth remembering. I idolized all of the genius entrepreneurs of our age, for they had achieved the goal; work ridiculously hard, do something great, achieve fame and wealth, and rest easy knowing that you lived a successful life.

But as the years have gone by, I realized that that likely wasn’t going to happen. I wasn't some freak genius with the ability to devote myself to a single task and ignore everything else, which is seemingly what it takes to achieve this form of “greatness.” Yet there’s still something inside me that craves productivity, for its own sake and in pursuit of being remembered. Actually, a lot of my life is shaped around productivity and yearning to feel accomplished. From figuring out what my next YouTube video or blog will be, to feeling like I’m progressing my skills at work, to becoming a better endurance athlete, to even hanging out with friends; I often view these things through the lens of productivity — did I move closer today towards some final, mythical, complete version of myself? And if I feel like I didn’t, I often feel like a failure.

This productivity mindset, which manifests from within each societal atomic unit (the individual) all the way up to Western civilization at large, is again filled with nuance. After all, it feels good to work hard and accomplish goals. Constant learning is honorable. Working to better yourself is noble. But there are also consequential drawbacks, like the degrading of individuals down to their ability to produce “value” (i.e. see how we treat the elderly), or the societal overvaluing of moving quickly up the corporate ladder, or the learned feeling of constant, never-ending pursuit of a finish line that is always out of reach.

And this is where we return to the Tibetan monks for guidance to help close some of the holes in the Protestant Work Ethic. Perhaps reliance on individualism is flawed, for the monks teach that there is an interdependence of all life and correspondingly deeply appreciate nature. Perhaps materialism is flawed, for the monks teach that decluttering and reducing distractions leads to clarity and contentment. Perhaps focusing on external growth does not always lead to individual flourishing, for the monks teach that practicing mindfulness and meditation leads to inner calm and stability.

I’m hoping that in 2025 I’m able to internalize more nuance like this so that I can better figure out how to spend the limited amount of time I have. I’m even headed to Nepal in a few months where I hope to see this alternate way of life in action!

I hope you all have a great year.

When I was young, I used to have a lot of sleepovers with my friends. Usually they would consist of playing basketball or hockey or laser tag, eating dinner with the family, then playing video games until our eyes burned from the blue light.

But one specific sleepover, over a decade ago with my best friend Jacob, stands out as unusual.

After finishing a marathon round of Call of Duty I Black Ops Zombies, we finally headed up to my room to go to bed. Instead of talking and eventually falling asleep like we usually did, we took out our brand new, cutting edge LG enV3 flip phones. Pretty impressive, huh?

Jacob told me that he had (inexplicably) gotten the numbers of two of the most popular girls in middle school at the time. I was shocked…yet wholeheartedly excited. While Jacob and I were in the friend group that was tangential to the popular girls (we had been invited to their Bat Mitzvahs after all), it still felt like a long shot to talk to them one on one outside of a group setting.

With nothing to lose except our precious and precarious social status, we sent those first messages out into the ether, doubtful we’d ever hear back. We waited impatiently. Wondering, wishing, theorizing…hoping. And suddenly, as if the light of an angel shown down upon us, our phones illuminated — they had responded!

I don’t remember what exactly happened the rest of that night so many years ago other than that we messaged those two girls for hours, mesmerized and captured by a singular desire that would unknowingly consume much of my thoughts and actions for the next decade plus: longing.

Longing

Definitionally, longing means “a yearning desire, especially for something that is unattainable.” But I chose this word specifically because of the emotion and imagery it conjures. When I think of longing, I certainly do think of desire, but there is also a melancholiness associated with it, a gentile sadness related to the implied unattainability of said desire. There’s a sense of incompleteness, that the thing of which you desire will finally make you whole. And yet it’s often romantic in nature too, yearning to share your love with another. I think the unique blend of love, yearning and sadness is rather perfect to describe something that has, at times, consumed me over the course of many years now. And is something I still struggle with today.

I would be embarrassed and remiss if I didn’t address an obvious thought that is conjured after reading the above paragraph. This piece is certainly not some attempt to garner your sympathies or pity. It’s nauseating to think of someone reading this and saying to themselves “woe is he, he’s had such a rough go of it. I feel so bad for him.” Instead, I’m writing this because this is simply part of who I am and has been my experience in life, and writing is the best method I’ve found for expressing a thoughtful version of myself. And I know that may seem hypocritical because yes, this is a public blog. Why would I post this publicly if I wasn't looking for sympathy? To that I say: what good does it do to hide behind a publicly facing facade other than shield who we are? Is it truly so scary to admit to others that we have problems and insecurities or are our relationships so tenuous that they would snap upon the first admittance that our lives are not filled only with rainbows and butterflies? I personally don’t understand that sort of thinking. Perhaps it’s naive, but I don’t believe anyone is going to “leverage” these weaknesses against me and don’t believe any true friend I have would reevaluate their kinship simply for admitting the struggles in my life. And to those who don’t know me, I don’t really care what you think of me — and maybe this blog will even be relatable and helpful to you. For this piece is simply descriptive of who I am and the thoughts and experiences I have had — and I’m not embarrassed of that.

That being said, I don’t really know how these feelings developed but I know when I first started feeling them. In high school, I had a lot of good friends and many happened to be in relationships. And I would be lying to say that I wasn’t envious of their situations. The drama, excitement, exclusivity, fun, etc. — I wanted that for myself. Yet, throughout high school I never managed to have a girlfriend.

OK, I thought to myself. Maybe it just wasn’t my time. But certainly college would be different, right? More people, more parties, more maturity, more intentionality — I was sure it would work itself out. And yet, the same thing as high school seemed to be happening. My friends had relationships, but not me. At one point, 6 out of 9 friends I lived with were in a relationship…that daily reminder sometimes made it difficult.

I don’t believe it was for a lack of trying either. I would go to parties, talk to girls, go on dating apps, go out on dates — and I had some success. I had my first kiss, went on second and third dates, and felt some sparks with a few different people. But none of them became full fledged relationships. And after a while, it started to weigh heavily on me.

I remember one specific evening where I was especially fixated on this, wallowing on what could possibly be wrong with me and why it wasn’t working out. I was lying in my bed with the lights on, staring at the blank TV when my roommate walked in. Unable to avoid my thinly veiled (in the most passive “guy” way possible) cry for help, he asked what was wrong. “I just don’t know what’s wrong with me, man,” I said, “everyone I know is in a relationship but me, when is it going to be my turn?”

And one of the hardest parts of it was that I thought I had a lot of love to give; why didn’t anyone recognize that? This thought, coupled with chronic introspection, naturally lead down some darker reasonings. “Your personality sucks.” “You’re awkward.” “You’re ugly.” “You’re weird.” “You don’t deserve love.” It’s truly astonishing how mean your inner voice can be, saying things you’d never dare say to anyone else but popping them off to yourself like candy. And after a while, you actually start to believe those things, for what other reason could there be besides something intrinsically wrong with you?

After years of longing and rumination, however, I finally had a breakthrough during my senior year of college. A girl in my physics class, of whom I had been intentionally flirty and went out of my way to be matched with in lab, had feelings for me. Funny enough, we had actually kissed at a party the year before and I had (romantically?) admitted to her that “I had been waiting so long for this moment” — but nothing became of it at the time. However, as she later told me, this one moment sealed her feelings about me.

We were sitting in physics class one fall day, me in the seat right behind her. She was wearing these new earrings which I loved and made me giggle — hanging peanut butter jars. Boldly, I made a remark about how I liked them and playfully flicked them. Somehow, that was all it took. Perhaps it was the fact that I felt comfortable enough around her to touch her earrings or it was the conglomeration of all the pervious experiences — this was when she told me things changed for her.

After that moment, my life became a dream. I cancelled other dates that I had planned, excitedly told all my friends what was happening, and started seeing her as much as possible. I was deeply, passionately in love with her and had never felt this amazing before. I thought about her all the time, texted her all the time, wanted to be with her all the time. It was exactly the sort of thing I had longed for all these years — someone just for me. On a casual run during the pandemic, with the same friend that I had confessed my sadness and confusion to years ago, I mentioned how this was by far the best year of my life. 2020, the year that was most peoples worst, was my best. I didn’t have to go to school, I was surrounded by all my closest friends in our college house, and the girl of my dreams loved me. I was sure I would marry her, and I even started using this relationship as proof of God’s existence — how could this not have been fate? And yet, unbeknownst to my infatuated self, there were cracks appearing.

Having “longed” for so long and been ‘invested’ in this relationship far longer than her, I started to develop a dependency. My emotional state was completely reliant on how I thought she felt of me. If things were going well, I was happy. If there was tension or a fight, I’d be a wreck. And because of this dependency, I developed what is commonly called an “anxious attachment style,” essentially fear of abandonment coupled with low self esteem leading to emotional dependency on another. Funny enough, a lyric of “our” song hints at this.

From my perspective at the time, I thought it was endearing. An admission that I would do anything for her, because I was so in love with her. But now I realize that this commitment was a one way street, she didn’t feel the same for me (at least not at that level). And now it’s almost embarrassing how blind I was to this unhealthy dependency.

We continued to date for a year until going long distance, at which point the dependency was truly locked into my core being. I barely interacted with anyone outside of my new job in Salt Lake City for the first 6 months after moving here, instead choosing to spend every free minute FaceTiming her or running. We visited each other several times, running into each other’s arms at the airport. It would only be two years, I told myself. Our love is strong enough to get through this.

But by April of 2021, a year and a half after we started officially dating, things had markedly changed. We had had some fights, especially as her graduate school classes were chronically stressing her out and her disdain for Pittsburgh increased. Our religious backgrounds were now coming into tension, mine Jewish and hers Catholic, and conversations about how we’d raise kids never went anywhere productive. All of this came to a head during one fateful evening when, over FaceTime, she said she wanted to break up. I was shocked, even though I half expected it coming. But hearing those words spoken into existence was enough to send me off the cliff. Stunned, I held it together until she hung up, and then the realization that I would never see her again violently slammed down on me like a wave on the beach. Never in my life had I experienced a pain so acute and intense as that evening — it was as if my heart had been stabbed a thousand times from the inside. I rolled on the floor, weeping from the thought of my shattered future until my nose bled. Suddenly my apartment felt cold and a horrifying feeling of being alone washed over me. I knew I had to get out of there, so I called my dad and went for a run. His voice was soothing and he told me it was going to be ok, that I’d find someone better and that she wasn’t the one. He helped me get my head back under me during a moment of utter chaos, and for that I am eternally grateful.

The next few months were the hardest of my life. Every sad song made me cry, every run filled with rage. The only reprieve I had were those calm seconds when I first woke up in the morning, before my memory flooded back. I discovered that distraction was a great antidote. I doubled down my focus at work and in my free time watched SNL skits until my eyes were dry. My college friends came to visit me, offering a much needed reprieve from the torment of being alone with my thoughts.

Like the saying goes, time heals all and this was no exception (well, perhaps the therapy helped too). But while my mind had forgotten, my heart had not. The fountain of love was now replaced with a hard, protective exterior intended to shield me from ever experiencing that type of pain again. And while the treatment worked, a side effect was that it would be a lot harder to love again. I discovered this when I got back into dating, expecting to feel the same infatuation I had once felt before, yet it never came. And so date after date, girl after girl passed me by, devoid of the feeling I knew it should feel like. But all the while, the longing grew stronger.

I don’t quite know when the idea took root in my mind, but at some point a core belief solidified inside me: “relationships, and ultimately marriage and children, is the epitome of what it means to live a good, fulfilling, happy life.” It’s a biblical, conservative belief but it holds strong sway within me. While there is certainly an argument to be made for its validity, it subtly infers that if you are not progressing towards this ultimate goal, then you will not be content and are thus not currently experiencing life to the fullest. It’s a hard cycle to escape from and greatly contributes to the origin of longing. Longing to fulfill this core value, longing be loved and to love another, longing to share your life with a partner, longing to begin a new chapter of your life, longing to be a father, longing to play with your children, longing to teach your children good values, longing to explore the world with your family, longing to see the expression on your parents face when they meet their grandkids, longing to watch them grow up and become their own person, longing to grow old with your wife and guide each other through life. And every day that doesn’t progress towards this ideal life feels like that burden becomes heavier, the weight of expectations grows larger, questioning if it will ever happen at all, doubting that it ever will with a hardened heart. And so it becomes easy to fall into despair and give up hope, for perhaps this is simply my lot in life and I must learn to live with its conclusion, lest I waste my life away longing for something unattainable.

Or you can choose to rebel against the perceived inevitability, and work on becoming a better person for a future partner, cultivating a life that you are proud of and one that is attractive to others. As the ancient stoics said, you can only control how you react to the circumstances of your life…so why waste your life in sadness? Like I said in Energy, the thing that takes more energy is likely the best choice for you. It’s certainly not easy, and I constantly struggle to temper the longing and control the anxiety. But it feels like the easy thing to do is to wallow in self pity…so I know I can’t.

After all, I know I’m not alone in this struggle. I know so many people who are going through a similar journey, and shared experience gives me comfort. I regularly share my dating escapades with my friends…but especially with my cousin, who’s 26, as we both grapple with frustrations in our own respective searches. It feels good to know your experience isn’t unique. And it gives me more comfort and hope to know so many amazing, loyal couples in Maryland and Salt Lake City, and gives me so much joy to see them starting to have their own children and to hopefully one day ask for their advice when I’m in that situation.

In some ways I am grateful to know that there are beautiful days ahead, removing some of that anxiety and letting me focus more on living in the present. Because I know that some day I’ll go on my last first date, have my last first kiss, hold her hand as I ask her to marry me, struggle to hold back tears at our wedding, buy a house with her, embrace her as she realizes she’s pregnant, hold my child in my arms, watch him take his first steps and utter his first words, take him to school and play catch with him, show him the beauty of the mountains, console him when he experiences his first heartbreak and help him through the same dilemma that I find myself in now. Truly there is nothing in this world that I am more excited for than the banality of married life, to be so accustomed to sleeping in the same bed as my wife, waking up in our house and watching our children play that it somehow becomes boring.

I’m sure I’ll be longing for something even then.

Think about it. So many “decisions” we make in life are actually driven by the simple need to preserve our precious energy reserves. It could be physical energy conservation, choosing to drive to the coffee shop around the block instead of walking or taking the elevator instead of the stairs. It could be cognitive energy conservation, choosing to settle into a comfortable routine or procrastinating work. It could be emotional energy conservation, choosing to be passive aggressive with a colleague instead of confronting the situation or perhaps being avoidant with a partner because it’s hard to open up. The list goes on and on; energy conservation is the wind blowing the sailboat — an invisible force constantly directing our lives.

Evolutionary speaking, it makes perfect sense why this prime directive was developed. Energy, with its source in food, was once a finite resource and thus we evolved to use it in the most efficient of ways…often by figuring how to best automate our lives. Maybe that was the invention of agriculture. Or using horses to travel. The less energy one used, the less food they needed to consume, and thus were less likely to die trying to get it and could pass on their genes.

But today, energy is no longer a limited resource. Food is plentiful and widespread. Yet here we are, with the same encoded ruleset of energy conservation as our food deprived ancestors. In the modern society, this principle seems antithetical to what it means to live a good life.

Humans derive satisfaction from effort, especially when that effort leads to meaningful outcomes. And the more effort you put into something, generally the more satisfied you will be with the outcome. Writing a novel will provide more satisfaction than writing a text message. Finding a partner will bring more satisfaction than living alone. Running a marathon will bring more satisfaction than scrolling TikTok. In some ways, energy conservation is actually a very convenient enemy.

The very act of energy conservation prevents us from growing into a better person. If not for energy conservation, maybe we wouldn’t surround ourselves with eco-chambers and would be more open to ideas that challenge our core belief system. If not for energy conservation, maybe we wouldn’t have a crisis of obesity and would more easily make healthier choices. If not for energy conservation, maybe we’d find it easier to be more empathetic to others instead of only saving the emotional burden for people of our tribe.

Ok, I’ll admit it. I was in fact overstating the fact that energy conservation is our enemy for dramatic effect. There are obviously times when this principle is beneficial to our lives. I wouldn’t recommend someone take this advice and think “oh, Jacob is saying I should drop everything and do the most energy consuming activity I can possibly think of if I want to achieve life satisfaction. I’m going to go run across the country!” Clearly there are other values you must balance against. We only have so much time and energy to expend. Sometimes rest and recovery is truly the best option.

What I’m really trying to get at is that we often let the law of energy conservation unconsciously rule many aspects of our lives, to our own detriment. Instead of choosing life decisions that may be uncomfortable because they require energy usage, I think many of us are increasingly deferring to the easy way out. I’m certainly guilty of this. When I’m bored I pull out my phone and instinctively scroll Instagram or Reddit. Or when I’m in a bad mood I’ll sometimes stay silent instead of taking the energy to explain my feelings.

But what is most important is that we recognize when we are in jeopardy of defaulting to the low energy option and instead consciously determine which decision to make — not simply passively opt in. We are all blessed with the gift of awareness, don’t let energy conservation take that from you too.

We live in a country of abundance and live lives of historical prosperity. Our capitalist society’s modus operandi, even more fundamental than profits, is to develop goods and services that make our lives easier. Hear that? That’s code for energy conservation. Right now is truly the hardest time in human history to rebel against energy conservation, and yet it is perhaps the most important thing any of us can do.

Think about how you can rebel; don’t be a slave to your biology.

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My friend recently recommended I read an interesting article by Packy McCormick, where he argues how humans can remain relevant in a world where AI is increasingly becoming more human-like. “I don’t think AI will replace humans” he writes, “my bet is that…it gets really good at doing the things it does without encroaching on the creativity that is humans’ greatest resource.”

That last part got me thinking.

Creativity certainly is humanity’s greatest resource. Our ability to invent tools to assist us. Our ability to predict the future and shape our lives accordingly. Our ability to take a unique conglomerate of information and experiences and turn it into something new — truly awe inspiring. But as we ride this wave of AI revolution, a lot of smart people seem to be parroting the same thing as Patrick. “AI cannot replace human creativity.” ‘AI is just predicting the most likely next response based on a set of input data, it’s not TRUE creativity.’ A lot of this seems like it’s imposing a current fact (that AI does not create) onto a law (that AI cannot create) and seems to be rooted in something I’m calling biocentrism: the belief that humanity in its biological form is innately special and should be preserved. But what if AI does learn to “create” new ideas in the same (or better) way as biological humans, exceeding the “last” bastion of human uniqueness? What does that make AI? Does this mean that we will become obsolete? Should we be OK with this outcome?

In my opinion (and maybe I’'ll convince you too), we should be OK with this (with some caveats of course).

What Even is Human Creativity?

If there is one thing I learned from my freshman year philosophy 101 class, it’s that you have to define your terms when talking about abstract philosophical concepts. Yes, it’s boring, but without this crucial step you risk the wrong interpretation — and thus the wrong takeaway. In this case, we have to define ‘human creativity’.

Currently, there is a belief that AI does not possess human level creativity. It may be able to generate original works of art, see below for example, but because we know there was a lack of intentionality and deeper meaning behind the work…we don’t classify it as “true human level creativity.” I think there’s a counterpoint there, but for the sake of argument let’s assume this is true.

In order to determine if AI can ever produce “human level creativity,” we first have to understand the origin of human creativity. There seem to be two schools of thought when it comes to defining creativity: the first deals with the Divine and the second deals with Evolution.

The Divine Interpretation

Perhaps new ideas are implanted inside humans by an all-knowing deity, shaping world events according to ‘God’s Plan?’ In this reality, humans are simply pawns in a game being played out beyond our understanding. We may have “free will” to make our own life decisions, according to Judeo-Christian philosophy, but God shapes the trajectory of our life and has intent for us in His grand scheme. Any “creative” idea we have may indeed be of our own mind, but because God gave us the ability to create such an idea, coupled with the fact that God has a plan for us…it seems hard (to me) to attribute this idea to anyone but God all along.

“For I know the plans I have for you” - Jeremiah 29:11.

A similar idea comes from those belief systems beyond the West. Instead of an explicit God, they substitute another force from within the cosmos that uses humans as vessels to turn ideas into reality. Buddhists and Hindus, for example, believe that the sacral chakra is the avenue through which creativity flows. And perhaps that fleeting creative impulse is actually humanity’s sixth sense, one which has the ability to tap into the creative energy flowing around us.

“The universe pulses with productive energy, and everything that exists on this planet is driven by that energy. Every manifestation of this unfolding is doing its own work on behalf of the universe, each in its own way, true to its own creative impulse” - Rick Rubin

While it may sound like spiritual voodoo to some, there seems to be some truth in it based on personal experience. I’m sure we’ve all had random thoughts or ideas appears in our heads, seemingly out of nowhere. Could this be that sixth sense or contact with the Divine? For me, the frequency with which this occurs seems to increase when I distract my conscious brain with a simple task (like driving or running — just enough stimulus to keep my mind focused, but not enough to shield my subconscious), freeing the rest of my mind to wander and allow it to “tap into the well of creative energy.” Just the other day, ideas for this article appeared in my head during a run, begging to be written into existence (and here we are). It’s something you can almost feel — the creative wave approaching. Think about TikTok, as an example. In 2020/2021, I’m sure you too could feel the inspiration following the wave of content creation sweeping over our culture. A product of people having more time at home during the pandemic, there was something tangible about the sudden urge to create content during that time. Was it our entrepreneurial impulse, looking to catch onto a potential cash cow? Was it our need for validation, searching for more eyes to look upon us? Or was it our sixth sense, picking up on the energy of the creative spirit, urging us to latch onto the wave like our nose to a sweet smell? Unable to myself resist, it’s when I started my YouTube channel.

But as faith in an All-Knowing Being wanes, I can’t help but feel that this argument won’t resonate for some people.

The Evolutionary Interpretation

The second school of thought on human creativity deals with how the brain evolved. I argue that these four essential, beautifully simple, aspects of human development lead to the inevitability of the creative impulse: the ability to detect and remember patterns, curiosity, the ability to predict the result of a future experience and the will to take action. The chart below outlines this process — let’s look at each in more detail.

• Pattern Detection: The ability to match information from an experience with information from a stored memory, and come to a broader conclusion. Think about the time that you, say, touched a cactus and suddenly felt the sharp pain that accompanied. Using reasoning, your brain may match this experience to the time you accidently cut yourself with scissors and determine that sharp objects can hurt me. This is pattern detection.

  • Without this ability, every minute would feel as though it were the first of your life, with no capability to live outside the present.

• Predicted Result/Curiosity: The ability to apply patterns and memories to a new experience and predict the likely result. Continuing the example above, this may involve a close encounter with a porcupine. At first, you succumb to curiosity — a very important aspect of human creativity, as it allows us to accept environmental stimuli that we may have not otherwise in the hope that it could lead to a better outcome for ourselves and/or our tribe. Pattern recognition can balance against the force of curiosity. In this scenario, you may remember that sharp objects can hurt me and thus this porcupine may also hurt me.

  • Without the ability to extrapolate patterns forward, there would be no innovation and thus nothing new created.

  • Without curiosity, we would have no incentive to seek out experiences other than the ones which we happened to stumble into…which have no bias towards potentially assisting the wellbeing of our species.

• Action/Inaction: To act or not act on the predicted result, based on a core value set. From the porcupine example above, you determined not to touch it because you value not being in pain more than you value learning what will happen next if you interact with the porcupine. This core value set is essential in determining which predicted results come to fruition and which don’t. Think about the situation where you have a new business idea, which you created through a combination of learning what your previous businesses did wrong, a curiously to get into a new field, and a prediction that it could be lucrative. The last step before acting may be determining if you value the pursuit money over potential lost time with friends, which may determine whether you act or do not on the idea. Humans are constantly, mostly unconsciously, weighing predicted outcomes (each with an associated probability of occurring) against the importance of a particular value. Our ability to perform this calculation quicker and more effective than any other species is a testament to our creative potential and species longevity.

  • Only by having the means to act on an idea can creativity manifest. Without this ability (to bring an idea to life), there is no creation.

To me, this seems to be all that human creativity is. But maybe you think there’s more? Maybe you’re saying “this is simply the decision-making process, not the creative process.” But that’s actually my point. We seem to have some lofty, almost mystical belief behind what human creativity is and why it’s special. But in reality (if you believe the Evolutionary Interpretation), it’s simply a subset of the decision-making process. Think about any “creative” pursuit that you have had in the past and try to apply the rules above to it — the majority seem to fit. Let’s say you wrote a new song, an easy example of a creative action. Well, at first you took all the patterns that you learned before (i.e. previous songs you’ve heard, understanding of the English language, musical training, previous life experiences, etc.) and then applied it to a new environmental stimulus (i.e. you broke up with your girlfriend, or a loved one died, etc.). Assuming you’re already curious about what will happen if you make a new song (perhaps for money, or popularity, or personal interest, etc.), you extrapolate this information forward to get a predicted result (i.e. a stanza in the song). Applying your values to the stanza (i.e. don’t want to hurt your ex-girlfriend’s feelings), you tune the stanza to align with your values. The actual action of bringing this line to fruition means you completed the creative cycle, feeding this result back to your pattern detection system for future use.

But how does this process relate to the “evolutionary interpretation?” The creative process, as you may have noticed, is grounded in a greater need: survival (of yourself and/or family) and reproduction. Viewed from another perspective, this process is simply a result of “Survival of the Fittest” — human creativity is the result of a process derived from an evolutionary forcing function and probability. If instead, our homosapien ancestors had begun their evolutionary journey in a real Garden of Eden, where food was plentiful, predators were nonexistent, and climate was kind, and not from the often brutal, cruel and unforgiving world of reality…we likely would not have developed the need for creativity. After all, what evolutionary pressure is there for a being that creates and innovates when all of its needs and desires are already satiated? And thus, environment and chance are the mother and father of human creativity.

But why is human creativity special? Why are we the only animal that developed complex creativity when all animals developed in the same brutal world as us? If it were truly an optimal evolutionary strategy and very similar pressures were there, wouldn’t all animals have developed the same levels of complex creativity? To answer this, we must acknowledge that there are many more routes that lead to evolutionary success (survival and reproduction) without the need for complex creativity, and that they are much more likely to be taken by a developing species.

As you can see by the chart above, most evolutionary routes lead into the red box, away from developing “complex creativity.” These species tend to be successful in terms of sheer numbers but are still highly susceptible to mass extinction events. Unknowingly, they have fallen into the trap of the evolutionary local maxima — the tendency of a species to follow the path of short term over long term gain. A fly, for example, developed the evolutionary ability to reproduce in very large numbers to hedge against a high mortality rate, yet has very little chance of surviving a meteor strike. A deer found evolutionary success by being hyper-alert to predators and being fast/nimble/quiet, requiring relatively little complex brain function. But would be helpless if a super volcano erupted.

Very few species even begun the road we humans took, one that at first does not seem comparably successful in terms of sheer numbers, but by coincidence has the potential to beat out all others in terms of species longevity. We’re the only species that has the capability to build a device to deflect an asteroid or defuse a volcano. Only by chance do we find ourselves along a route that has the potential to claim evolutionary victory — and we can thank the development of the creative processes.

What About AI?

We’ve established what human creativity is and where it may have come from. If you’re one of those people who believes the Divine Interpretation, this may be where you stop reading because, according to Scripture, you likely believe that only biological human beings were gifted with this ability. But if you believe the Evolutionary Interpretation — let’s continue.

To reiterate, the “Human Creativity” chart breaks down human creativity into three basic concepts: pattern detection (through reasoning), the willingness to accept new experiences (through curiosity), the ability to predict into the future, and the capability to execute on that idea with a value set. Without any one of these traits, there is no creativity. Given this, I propose the following:

AI was developed with each of these functions in mind and will only get better at each. If human creativity is truly the last boundary for AI, then it can become human.

To understand why this is true, we first need to have a basic understanding of how one of the most common types of AI works, the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), and how each aspect of the human creativity process was deliberately baked in. Put simply, a GAN is based on a game where a generator model, which creates “fake” data, tries to fool a discriminator model whose purpose is to differentiate between real and generated data.

This is how a GAN works:

1. The ‘generator model’ is developed to “store memories” and “predict outputs” from a given input. This model is built using a complex combination of weights (W) and biases (B), which act to transform input data into a corresponding predicted output, similar to how the human brain learns the most efficient neural pathways by which to process new input data. See the simple equation below for an example of how weights and biases are used to predict an output.

Fake Generated Example = W * Random Input Vector + B

2. Next, a random input, with a known output, is fed to the generator model and a predicted output is generated. A generative text model, for example, could be passed the input “What is a monkey?” The generator then predicts an output using a convolutional process involving the weights and biases. At the start of training, the output may be nonsensical, similar to a newborn baby.

3. Another model, the discriminator, then tries to classify which is the “Fake Generated Example” and the “Real Example,” with a given probability. At first, it’s pretty easy to differentiate…

   1. If the prediction is correct (the discriminator model wins), then the generator model is forced to update its weights and biases according to a complex math equation called a loss function (the details are not important here). This corrective feedback loop mimics a human’s ability to reason why what they did was incorrect and adjust accordingly.

   2. If the prediction is incorrect (the generator model wins), then the discriminator models’ weights and biases are updated in a similar fashion.

4. After many, many cycles of this process, we are left with a generator model that has essentially learned how to create meaningful outputs, similar to how a child learns how to speak by listening to his parents (the training set) and processing their feedback (self correcting).

If you look carefully, all but one aspect of human creativity is involved.

• Pattern Detection: The adjustment of the generator models’ weights and biases are specifically tuned (using math) to minimize the error the model would predict if fed the same input again. This is very similar to the method our brains employ (using reason) when developing neural pathways that ensure that we don’t make the same mistake again.

• Predicted Result: The model uses its training to predict the most likely output(s), given a new input, similar to how the human brain, when fed a new stimulus, must use previously learned information to predict a new output.

• Action/Inaction: Something new is created or not created at the end of this process (a sentence, image, video, etc.) according to the value set it implicitly learnt from the training input data.

The one aspect that appears to be missing is curiosity: the willingness to accept new, unknown inputs in pursuit of self/species improvement. AI, which doesn’t currently have the ability to seek out new experiences and no inate incentive to better itself, thus does not currently have true creativity since it simply reacts to provided inputs. More to be said about this below.

What this Means for Humans and Why I’m OK with It (with a Caveat)

Now that we’ve established what human creativity is and perhaps convinced you that it isn’t some etherial, unquantifiable quality — image if an AI could truly imitate it? Who's to say that an AI, which fulfilled all four aspects of the creative process, is any different from a human performing the same function? And if that’s true, who’s to say that AI won’t itself be human?

This conclusion seems to scare people. After all, what use will biological humans have if AI can do everything we can — and likely do it better? Instead of unjustifiably making the argument for the continued importance of biological humans by claiming “human creativity cannot be replicated”, let’s dispense with the notion that humanity in its biological form is innately superior to another, perhaps non-biological, form of humanity. The goal of AI creation should thus be to ensure it becomes fully human.

But there is, admittedly, a thin line between the next evolution of humanity, like a caterpillar is to a butterfly, and the elimination of a species by another superior, like humans to the dodo bird. This line is often mentioned in AI literature in the form of something called “instrumental convergence” or, in simpler speak, ensuring that the explicit or implicit goals given to AI are beneficial to humanity and not unintentionally catastrophic. A lot of ink has been spilt on how to explicitly align AI’s goals with the goals of humanity (i.e. telling an AI what its purpose is and implementing safeguards). From embedding ethical principles into the code (constitutional AI), to reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), to allowing AI to observe human interactions and infer principles (IRL)…there are lots of established methods.

But there seems to be a deep problem at the root of this method: we don’t even understand the full range of human goals ourselves — so how can we possibly communicate what we would want an AI to do? It seems futile and lacking in humility to think that we biological humans could pre-meditatively safeguard against what an AI will decide when it will have access to infinitely more information and reasoning ability. Explicitly programming goals and guardrails into AI seems likely to end negatively for the human species and doesn’t seem to be how we ensure AI becomes human.

Instead, the solution is we implicitly align AI with humanities goals, in a similar way to how we raise a child. This method does not involve directly coding objectives into it, but instead using the training set itself to provide such goals and guardrails. To do so, we would have to provide every possible source of human data available (and perhaps invent new ways to extract data from parts of the human experience currently not digitized) to ensure that the AI trains to become itself human. This might involve text, video, images, audio, haptic, odor, and taste data (as opposed to relying only on internet-based datasets such as “Wikipedia articles, books, and other public webpages that AI train on now). I believe that this is the only method that provides AI with our greatest protective feedback loop, and the quality that currently differentiates us from AI: emotions.

Sometimes argued as our greatest limiter, emotions are actually an essential evolutionary tool to ensure human survival — and we should not be so quick to dispense with them in creation of an AI. Even all the “obviously bad” emotions need to be include (i.e. jealously, revenge, selfishness, tribalism, cruelty, etc.). Using second order reasoning, it’s easy to see how these qualities are actually safety features enabled by evolutionary development. Jealousy can prevent contentment, which can force individuals to improve. Revenge can prevent future conflicts, deterring would be aggressors. Even cruelty could be useful in desperate situations when resources are low and species survival is at risk.

Obviously, AI will not create these emotions from unconscious processes such as the regulation and transmission of neurotransmitters as we biological humans do. But what difference is it if the end result is the same? If the data with which AI is trained on is truly representative of the whole breadth of the human experience, it will react in a way that is that is virtually indistinguishable to a biological human experiencing “real” emotions.

If there’s truly no stopping AI, and I don’t think we can at this point, then, in my opinion, there is only one way to ensure AI does not end humanity: we make it as human as humanly possible. This seems to be the best way to protect humanity and evolve it — but I’m worried that our bias towards humanity in its biological form will distract us from this goal and develop AI along divergent paths with humanity. If we can dispense with this bias and ensure AI has all the same guardrails we have…then maybe it will replace us like a butterfly is to a caterpillar.

AlphaGo

In 2016, the AI named “AlphaGo” played the world Go champion, Lee Sedol, in a head to head matchup. A game considered more difficult than chess, during Game 2 the AI made several moves, including the infamous move 37, which at first looked like a mistake to many outside observers. “It was a move that no human would have made.” In the end, it turned out to be a “brilliant,” “creative” and “unique” move that wow’d the world. AlphaGo ended up winning.

One day we will create an AI that is infinitely more knowledgable and more capable than us. With this power, it will make decisions that, to a biological human, will make no sense at all — like the move that AlphaGo made. Only by ensuring that AI has trained on enough data to become sufficiently human can we ensure that the decisions it makes are the ones that benefit the human species…and would be the same ones a rational human would make if it explained its thought process to us.

I think the best way to make sure this happens is if we stop being biased towards the future of biological humanity and be biased only towards humanity itself.

October 23rd, 1942: Somewhere in the New Guinea Jungle

“Curse those God damned scouts,” Hal hissed through his teeth. “If they had just told McArthur what the Diggers [Australians] had been telling him for weeks — that this God forsaken trail is nothing but a trail in name — we wouldn’t be in this wretched place.”

It had only been a week since we set out on the Kapa Kapa trail from Kalamazoo, but the look on our faces told a different story. We were hungry, soaked from the rain, and close to senility from the constant buzz of mosquitos. Lt. Col. Geerds speeches on how we were going to “take back New Guinea” and “stop the Japs from attacking Australia” had long since rung hollow. And even he, a man who not but a week ago had promised the regiment of 1,000 men under his command the undying satisfaction of watching “the surprised look in the Japs eyes when we outflank them on the Lakota trail!” was visibly beginning to tire. I peered over at Lt. Col. Geerds, sitting on a decaying log, wishing to see the man from a week ago for my own sake — but the jungle had not spared even him.

Our mission had seemed simple. The Japanese were threatening Port Morseby on the southwest side of the island of New Guinea, our most important port and a launching ground for a potential Jap invasion of Australia. The Japs had a base at Buna, on the east side of the island, and were using the Kakoda Trail to attack Port Morseby directly. Douglas McArthur had ordered our regiment to hike the little-known game trail known as the Kapa Kapa trail, which paralleled the Kakoda Trail some 40 miles to the southeast, in an attempt to outflank the Japs and cut off their resupply at Buna. While our engineers were able to build a rough road from Port Moresby to the small hut town of Kalamazoo, from there the jungle became too thick for their machines. So here we were, 1000 men and 100 native guides, left to travel the remaining 130 miles on foot…

I had met Hal during basic training in Louisiana a few years earlier. A short, stocky brute of a man, I could always count on Hal to find the worst in any situation. “We mobilized the entire damned country and the only food they can give us is lard shoved in a fuckin’ can?” “Why does McArthur give a rats ass about some measly island in the middle of hell itself, when the Japs are busy plannin’ on attackin’ us again!” But Hal’s hard outer shell hid a soft underbelly. On the Battle of Wake Island last year, I watched Hal singlehandedly haul two critically injured men from the front lines back to the medical tent, even as Zeros screamed overhead and Jap snipers fired at him. “If we let them turn us into animals, then we’re no better than them” he told me later that night. I saw Hal differently after that. His callousness softer and perhaps performative. A counterbalance to the selflessness in his heart. I knew I wanted Hal watching over me.

While the scout’s intelligence served us well until Kalamazoo, afterwards we were at the mercy of our native guides. At first, they were hesitant to help us. They fled when we approached their villages, hiding in the cover of the jungle. They did not trust the taubada [white men]. But as they learned what awaited on the other side of the island, the brutalism of the Japanese, they quickly joined our cause and became an essential tool in our war planning. Not only were they strong as an ox, but they could maneuver through the jungle with the ease of a cougar. It was almost mystical watching their movements. Feet of calloused stone placed in perfect position to counter the loads on their backs. Hands shifting through vines as though they had a mind of themselves. And the mosquitoes, of which they were simply indifferent to, seemingly returned the favor by refusing to bite them. The Diggers called them “Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.” We thought the name very fitting.

Lt. Col. Geerds slowly stood up, as though he suddenly remembered the mission yet wished it weren’t so. “Alright men, that’s enough. Let’s keep moving!” The men rose from their rest as a ship lurches from harbor, a silent plea against the horrors upon which we knew awaited. We had traveled a miserable 15 miles in the past week, which was actually more than the 2 miles a day we had been expected to travel. But at this rate we had more than 50 days ahead of us — more than most men could mentally bear. And so, every day was instead a journey unto itself, each man fighting to see another sunset. Each day blending into the last as if existence itself was one never-ending chapter of a book you wanted to end but were too far in to simply lay down. And so, we persisted. Not for the glory of a Japanese strategic defeat, but because now we were simply men who walked and men who struggled. A simple, hard life. Nothing else.

We plodded through the jungle, trying our best to follow the path the natives set — for this was no trail in the usual sense of the word for there was no path. The natives seemingly never moved in a straight line but instead weaved in and out of the trees and vines as only a snake could. It was depressing to see how much work it required to move through the jungle, only to look back and see how little forward progress had actually been achieved.

And the rain was relentless. From dawn to dusk, it rained every minute of every day. This was not some soft summer drizzle either. But a hard, pelting, loud rain that screamed in your face all hours of the day. Any attempt to remain dry was futile and the men had simply given up any attempt at shielding themselves. Warmth from a fire was only felt in men’s dreams; all the wood was too soggy to ignite. The whole forest turned into a river at some points…and the mud, the endless mud. Flowing like chocolate with the stench of decay, we were covered from head to toe in it. I once watched a man slide a thousand feet down the side of a steep trail after he took one unfortunate step and slipped. His bag an anchor, pulling him further and further down into the depths of the ocean of mud. We didn’t know what to do, for no man could help him without himself becoming a victim to the cunning mud devil. And so we waited for the man to pull himself back up to the trail. Climbing up through the vines upon which he had just finished careening over while we sat there and watched him. For hours we waited for the poor man until he finally reached the same point which had nearly been his doom. He knew the energy he had just expended would never be replenished. He knew the punishment for his mistake had only but just begun.

Six more hours of walking passed until Lt. Col. Geerds finally announced that we would make camp in a small opening in the trees. A deep sigh of relief washed over the men as they knew how close they were to the sweet escape of sleep. We set down our packs and began our nightly routine. Half the men set up shelters so that we could immediately head to sleep after eating our daily dinner ration. These shelters consisted of nothing more than a tarp to protect against the rain and a blanket, which oft failed to cover our feet. The other half prepared the “meal,” if you could call it that. The American Army, modeling off the sophisticated palate of the British Royal Army, was outfitted with only the best international cuisine could offer. Consisting of canned beef, also known as bully beef, hardtack biscuits, which were nearly inedible unless first soaked in water, and, if we were so lucky, one helping of D-rations consisting of a single bar of chocolate; dinner was more spiritually fulfilling than stomach filling.

A health check was required before we could rest. Each man was to strip naked and submit himself to inspection from his battlefield partner. We were mainly looking for leeches and chiggers [ticks], consequence of the daily river and tall grass crossings. Engorged from a full day of feeding, I once pulled a leech off Hal that was the size of my own hand. Yet this was not the end. The mosquito bites, of which were more plentiful after we abandoned our headnets out of futility, covered every inch of our exposed skin and attacked our feet when we went to bed. Our whole bodies itched relentlessly. Malaria had spread its poisonous tentacles throughout the camp and there was nothing we could do to stop it after we ran out of Quinine. And perhaps worst of all, because we couldn’t build a fire, we couldn’t boil water — so most men had some varying degree of dysentery. It would have been easy to mistake our dreary little camp for the nightmarish Jap POW camps which we heard so much about. At least they had shelter.

I drifted off into a hard, but blissful sleep that night and returned to the same dream I dreamt each night. Lucy’s curly blonde locks whistling in the wind as we walked up the hill behind her parent’s house for a picnic. Her soft green eyes piercing through mine, effortlessly reading my every thought. Her laugh singing through my ears like the songbirds in the morning. I felt weak next to her beauty, yet strong from the love she gave me. We reached the top of the hill, and I laid the blanket down beneath the old oak tree which sheltered us from the hot Tennessee summer sun. The forest stretched like an ocean, reaching further out than either of us had ever been. But it didn’t matter, because we didn’t want to be anywhere else. I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I leaned in, wishing for nothing more than to feel her soft lips on mine…until suddenly I was violently shaken awake.

“Damnit Hal, what the hell man!” “Sorry Theo, but you’ve got to look at this.” I instantly noticed something was different. That constant, drumming white noise had stopped; the rain had subsided. Hal and I crawled out from under our tarp, too dazed to check for scorpions in our shoes, and stared up into the dark, still night sky in amazement. The clouds were gone and what remained in their place was the light from a thousand stars in the crisp, moonless sky. I could hear crickets chirping in the distance and a soft steam gurgling nearby. You could almost be tricked into thinking it was beautiful. “It kind of reminds me of home” I said to Hal nostalgically. “Don’t let the devil fool you, Theo. Even hell is nice on a cold day.”

We awoke that next morning to an unfamiliar smell. Lt. Col. Geerds, sensing a chance to build on the morale boost the clear sky had given us, had given us permission to crack into the coffee rations. It’s incredible how much power the taste of warm coffee can have when you are truly depleted. How the senses collectively enhance, and every sensation is an experience unto itself. Paradoxically, some men seem to almost revel in this state of heightened awareness achieved through chronic emptiness. They say they finally feel alive for the first time, rid of the numbness that occupied their childhood during the Depression. Colors more vivid, taste more pleasurable, smell more potent. It’s as if they had been freed from the grey, bland shackles of their pre-war lives and were finally able to experience the world around them in all its splendor. Rather ironic, I thought, that all it took to live was to get as close as possible to death.

October 31st, 1942: Ghost Mountain

Today was an important day for our battalion, one that we had been dreading for weeks now; the day we passed closest to Ghost Mountain. Known by the locals as Suwemalla, the moss-covered mountain hovered above us like a specter in the distance. Almost always covered in a thick fog, occasionally it peered at us through a clearing as if to keep an eye on our movements. The mountain gave off an eerie phosphorescent glow as the sunlight reflected off the moss and struggled through the fog to our eyes. The natives swore the mountain was haunted and pleaded with us to avoid the pass. But Lt. Col. Geerds insisted that the approach up towards the mountain was the fastest way to Buna, and every additional day was one more day the Japs resupplied their lines on the Kakoda with impunity.

The path up towards the mountain was the most difficult of the journey so far. Men were reduced to crawling on their hands and knees, pulling themselves over the trees and vines as if children on monkey bars. The steepness was relentless and every pound on our backs felt like 10. We dumped out everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Raincoats, blankets, shaving equipment, toiletries, extra uniforms, guns, ammo, mortars. And if that weren’t enough, the rain, which had been mostly at bay for the past week, returned with a vengeance. As if punishing us for enjoying the relative dryness, the rain smote us from above with pellets like daggers. And now, having gained respectable elevation from the canopy floor, we were exposed to a howling wind which chilled our soaked bodies. We couldn’t turn back. Not now, not with how close we were to the pass and how much struggle we had already spent. But Ghost Mountain was keen on making sure we would pay dearly for every step forward. Maybe the natives were right — this mountain was cursed.

After countless hours of fighting, we collapsed upon the top of the pass. Our bones ached. Our stomachs roared. We were caked in mud. Freezing. Wet. Beaten. I looked over at Hal, hoping he would say something. Anything to get my mind off the suffering. But even Hal was silent. Shocked into submission by the mountain. White as a ghost. We crawled into our shelters that night, but no one slept. The natives huddled under a canopy, whispering and smoking all night. They refused to attempt sleep out of fear that the mountain would take them while they rested. I was glad to have them guarding that night.

The antidote of light could not have come soon enough, finally putting an end that dreadful night upon Ghost Mountain pass. Our morning routine, once a clinic of efficiency, had devolved into a tattered mess of men aimlessly stumbling. After forcefully shoving down our remaining rations, we continued down the pass — leaving the devilish mountain behind us. The terrain on this side was remarkably different. It happened to be much less steep than the south side, and thus we were able to move downward without worrying about sliding. But the mountain still had tricks up its sleeve. Upon one such undulation in the terrain, the man in front of me stepped onto what he assumed was solid ground but was in fact a mud pit so deep that he was instantly submerged up to his neck. He lashed out for hands to grab onto but instead grabbed a bushel of thorny vines, letting out a blood curdling scream as he sank deeper. The mud had turned a murky maroon color by the time we found a stick to haul out the poor man, who by this time was using his pack as a life raft. When we finally got him out, we stared at him. Mud dripping from his tattered clothes and blood streaming down both hands. We waited for the man to inevitably curse the island or collapse in exhaustion or even worse, break down in tears. But what he did next shocked and scared us. He began to laugh. He laughed deep from within his belly. He laughed so hard he fell over, crying tears from the abdominal pain it caused him. We stood around him silently, eyes locked on his convulsing body. Had the man cracked? Had the island consumed him? Who could possibly laugh after an experience like that, after all we’d been through? Suddenly, the man spoke “do you not understand how funny this all is? Grown men walking through a jungle, swinging from vines, eating canned beef and bugs, attacked by creatures of the night, falling into mud pools, all so we can get the chance to fire little shards of metal at some people who live on the other side of the god damned world — can’t you see how much fun God must be having watching His little show?” For all I had experienced on the Kapa Kapa trail, all the searing blisters and bites, all the relentless heat and brutal cold, all the sleepless nights, all the hunger, all the loneliness; this man’s words drove a dagger deeper than it all. He took our hope and reduced our mission, our journey, our lives to nothing but a pointless, stupid, feckless waste of human life. I was crushed, not because it wasn’t what each of us were thinking, but because it had finally been spoken into existence. Hal looked over at me and read the sober thoughts on my face. “Hey Theo, let’s get outta here and leave this loser to go play in the mud some more.” The rest of the company got the gist and quickly followed suit lest end up like the mud man.

December 4th, 1942: Buna

We walked for forty-two days in that jungle. Every day the same as the last, except we got slightly hungrier, slightly skinnier, slightly more ghost-like. We had discarded all of our fighting gear, converting our flanking mission into a survival mission. The jungle had tried its damnedest to consume us, and some of us it had. But on that forty-second day, our noses alerted us to the sweetest smell any of us had experienced. I looked over at Hal and without muttering a single word smiled for the first time in weeks. We recognized that smell, one which we had not known in forty-two days. The salty, sweet smell of the ocean.

The men collapsed on the shore. Some screamed in joy. Others were silent. Some prayed to a God which they had not previously known. Hal and I embraced, and I began to weep. “Oh, come on Theo, that wasn’t all so bad, was it?” I laughed, and in that moment I truly appreciated Hal as my friend. He had watched out for me since the beginning, and I tried to tell him as much but the words couldn’t find my mouth. “Don’t you get sappy with me. I let you have one good cry, and no I ain’t tellin’ no one about it, but I’m not gonna have you confessing your love to me like some poor old lad to a Donut Dolly.” I knew that was Hal’s way of saying you’re welcome.

As we composed ourselves on the shore, a dreaded realization began to creep over us. We were in enemy territory, with no weapons, nothing to protect ourselves from an attack. Had we just trekked all that way, suffering unimaginable pains and hardship just to be slaughtered by a couple of unsuspecting Japs? What a fitting end to God’s cruel little game.

No sooner had the dread engulfed us did we hear the sound of a distant plane approaching. “Hide!” yelled Lt. Col. Geerds and we dove back into the jungle upon which a moment ago we celebrated escaping. We were in enemy territory, and the only known airfield was in Jap control. This was surely our end. The finale of our miserably little play. As the plane drew in closer, though, we saw something peculiar. Something we had only seen during our mid-trek resupply missions: that white star embroidered on the plane’s torso. The planes were American! We cheered and collectively let out a deep sigh of relief. But how? The Japs controlled the airspace around Buna and there were no other suitable landing locations on the coast — the very reason for our trek through the jungle.

We watched plane after plane circle ahead and then head south as if to land — we followed suit. Indeed, they had found a small opening in the jungle, as if ordained by God, where the Japs had not found and they could land a plane. Hundreds of fresh men streamed off the planes. Fit, healthy, strong, and ready to fight. The dichotomy of these men next to us was a sight to beholden — and they stared at us. What had once been a capable military battalion was now a beaten, broken, scrawny outfit struggling to carry their emptied packs. Captain Scriver approached Lt. Col. Geerds with a certain shock on his face. “Lieutenant Colonel, what is the shape of your battalion?” “Sir, we are in no shape for battle. We have no weaponry, no food, and the men are not in fighting capacity.” “Very well, load your men on the planes and head back to Moresby”

If we had had more energy to think about what had happened, about how we had walked for 6 weeks across terrain wholly incompatible with human life and endured more suffering than any of us thought possible, just to find out that a plane could have made the journey in a few hours…it would have broken our spirits. But in that moment, all we cared about was getting back home, eating real food and laying in a real bed. In fact, we were relieved. Because otherwise we would have had to go back into that dammed jungle and fight our way out — something none of us had the strength to do. We quietly loaded onto the plane awash with relief. Our suffering was over.

As we flew over the jungle which we had just traversed, I thought about my family. My parents, who cried when they received the draft card in the mail. My little brother, who would be old enough to be recruited next year. My older sister who was the last one to see me before I left. “Don’t start thinking we’ll be proud if the only thing we get back at the end of the war is some silly little silver metal” she told me. Then I thought about Lucy; how beautiful she’d look in a wedding dress, the names we’d give to our children and the quiet house we’d grow old in together. I thought about how I’d go back to school in Tennessee so that I could be an engineer, the first in my family with a degree, and start my own business. And then I thought of how I’d visit Hal and talk about old times. When the mosquito stings, leech bites, bloody shit, hunger, fatigue, fear, and mud were all just memories to be recalled within the confines of a bar and the warm embrace of a beer. And we’d laugh when Hal would say ‘the first thing he’d do as president is burn that damn jungle down’ and that 'he dropped his guns before he dropped his girlie pulp magazines.’ And for the first time in a long time, since the mud man had so cruelly stolen it, I felt hope. That maybe if I could survive a journey across the New Guinea jungle, I could survive the war. I looked over at Hal and smiled. Reading my thoughts — like he had so many times before — he smiled back.

When I wrote Kamala Harris’s name in on my mail-in ballot last week, there were a few things on my mind. First and foremost, I voted for Kamala in an effort to rebuke what I believe is the most egregious act in U.S. presidential history: attempting to overturn the 2020 election. No American president should be able utter the words “I just want to find 11,780” votes, repeatedly declare that the election was stolen even after losing dozens of court cases, and until this day still deny he ever lost in 2020…and then win another term. In my mind, Trump winning another term would set us on a path eerily similar to that which Tiberius Gracchus did to the Roman Republic in 133 B.C., flaunting and clashing with social and political norms, contributing to the decline of the Republic and the rise of the Empire. Trump had to be rebuked, lest give credence and validity to what he did in 2020.

And while this was by far the number one priority for me, Trump’s overall character also gave me reason to worry. The man spews venom, rage, and hate, channeling some of humanities worst, most tribalistic instincts. Immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” His political rivals are “the enemy within.” Even his own former cabinet members attest to his divisiveness. Is this truly the rhetoric we want from a president? A man who is supposed to represent the spirit of the country? Hate may be a powerful tool, but it is “so poisonous that no man is strong enough to safely use it.” I was voting to rebuke the use of hate as a socially valid tool to usurp power.

In a somewhat distant third priority for me was Trump’s policies. A distant third because, in my mind, the first two were so beyond disqualifying that giving legitimacy to the policy argument as valid was a bit like arguing over the drapes in a burning house. But this priority, unlike the rest, gave me more cognitive dissonance than I would like to admit. On one hand, I was afraid of what a unified Republican government would do to abortion rights. But then I remembered that the filibuster, requiring 60 Senate votes to overcome, would very likely prevent a national abortion ban. I was afraid of mass deportation of immigrants and what that could do to both their families and the social fabric of the American people. But then I remembered that many of Trump’s promises in the past (I’m looking at you ‘border wall being paid for by Mexico’) were complete fabrications only intended to channel deep insecurities in the American people for electoral purposes. I was afraid that he would stop funding Ukraine. But then I remembered how embarrassing the Afghanistan withdrawal was back in 2021 for Biden and how Trump, whose number one priority is to appear strong, could not possibly chance the appearance of weakness upon a complete Ukraine capitulation at the hands of American indifference.

And, for the sake of argument, if we allow this make-believe world of policy actually being a deciding factor, there were actually many policies that I agreed with Trump on. On Israel, I was very worried that a Harris presidency would force preemptive concessions upon the Israeli people by threatening to withhold funding/weapons. On the issues facing men in American society, I was very worried that a Harris presidency would continue the Democratic policy of ignoring the ongoing problems of drug addiction, loneliness and suicide acutely afflicting men in this country and think that RFK may, at the very least, give more attention to these issues. And on the economy, I simply don’t believe as the Democratic party does (and perhaps this is my inner Milton Friedman talking) that more government spending, regulation and input in the economy produces the best products and lowest prices for the American people.

On top of this, I understand and sympathize with the frustration that many of us have with the Democratic party for the lies and dishonestly that they have pushed — for no other reason than we simply expected better of them. For years they directly lied to our faces about the wellbeing and mental acuity of Joe Biden, even AFTER it was shoved in our faces. For months they told us that Kamala Harris was the best candidate to represent the Democratic party, even AFTER a majority of people overwhelmingly disapproved of her performance and the Biden administration’s policies. For years they told us that the border was secure, even AFTER a record number of people entered the country. And for years they told us that the economy was ‘very good,’ even though median housing prices during the Biden administration jumped more than $100,000, food prices have risen across the board by over 20%, and in many areas of the country rent has increased at a rate far surpassing wages.

I’m not saying that all of these issues directly affect me, a well-paid, single man who pays $1,000/month for rent in the non-border state of Utah. But the fact that the Democratic party has continually lied to us, when we used to think we could hold them to a higher standard, was enough for me to understand why many people would want to hold them accountable. The Republicans were rebuked in a similar way in 2022, where the American people were simply fed up with “The Big Lie” and gave a surprising victory to the Democrats in the midterm election. The Lincoln quote “you cannot fool all of the people all of the time” seems to ring truer than ever. The American people flat out hate lying most of all.

There are reasons why I’m OK with what happened Tuesday night. Perhaps this resounding loss will allow the Democrats to reevaluate and recalibrate. Maybe the plight of men actually is important? Maybe people don’t want record numbers of undocumented immigrants flowing into the country? Maybe people do want politicians to sympathize with their problems instead of being continually gaslit?

And with a Trump win, ironically, some of the terror underlying my first priority (that a Trump loss would lead to even more unrest and violence than January 6th, 2021) evaporates. Perhaps, in this bizzarro world, we actually skirt by another constitutional crisis by riding closer to the sun? And with respect to my second priority, the fact that we survived a first Trump presidency, even while he was spewing similar amounts of vitriol, gives me hope for his second term.

I voted for Kamala because I was scared. Scared of giving power to a man who so openly disregards an ever-increasing number of guardrails. Scared of what an emboldened and seemingly angrier Trump would do in a second term. Scared of changing from the status quo and jumping into the unknown depths of Trumps ever evolving list of priorities and grievances. Scared of seeing his name atop the news every day, now with real power.

But as the reality of the situation sinks in, I realize that I’m actually OK with it. I don’t believe that a lot of Trump’s worst ideas will come to fruition, like they didn’t in his first term. I don’t believe our democracy will end. And actually, if we allow it, I like many of his policies.

For all of us who voted for Kamala, let’s take a deep breath and realize that she was in fact not the person the country needed in this moment. Nor is this the time to begin “a second resistance,” continuing an implied policy of denigrating and insulting half of the country. Instead, let’s figure out how to understand what the majority of this country is feeling, begin listening to their problems, and adjust accordingly. We need to give up on the Obama era; it’s time to forge a new path.

Meeting Zoltar

I recently met a very nice alien from the nearby (it’s only 4 lightyears away) planet Proxima Centauri b, who, as it so happens, needed my help. During our encounter, I almost didn’t know Zoltar was even an alien at all. After all, he (on Proxima Centauri b they have a more complex type of gender, but to make things easier for the reader, we’ll just call him a “he”) had human hair, skin, eyes, face, body, and he spoke plain English. But after just a short conversation, I realized that he was missing some various obvious (to me) social and linguistic conventions that made his unearthliness very apparent. He spoke perfectly monotone. There was no rhythm to his sentences, every word perfectly separated in time from the last. And he only seemed interested in asking me very pointed, direct, odd, almost scientifically phrased questions. “Why does the frequency of a humans voice change during a sentence?” “Why do you arch your mouth and exhale quickly several times during certain statements and not others [i.e. laugh].” This guy was weird!

After I showed some initial hesitancy, Zoltar decided to open up about who he was. He was from an advanced civilization, able to make the 4-light-year journey to Earth in only 10 years, and was part of a research team studying humans from afar for decades. His people were much different than humans. Long ago, he explained, they had cracked the key to procreation and could now rely on artificial incubation for all reproductive purposes. As the centuries progressed, there was no longer an evolutionary pressure for two separate sexes, and so eventually his species turned into a single, almost amorphous sex. His scientists tried to explain how this change would be good for his species. That without the distractions of procreation, his people would be freed from the shackles of finding a suitable mate and be able to spend all of their time creating, innovating or recreating. Life would be a utopia. Zoltar explained that where he was from, there is no higher honor than creating something that the masses find useful.

But, while his species may have been able to control the population with perfect, scientific specificity, he told me something was indeed quite wrong. Because it had been so long since anyone had needed to worry about non-artificial procreation, his people had simply forgotten the art of wooing. Puzzled, I asked Zoltar “but why would you care to know how to woo if wooing was no longer essential?” His reply was surprising to me “the art of wooing is much deeper than simply convincing another of your species to seek your favor. The art of wooing is also the art of self-expression, the art of emotion, the art of art itself. Without a need to woo, our civilization has lost these qualities and resorted to a bland, grey, monotone, and rather banal way of life devoid of any of the joys and pain that we observe humans experiencing. We have been studying your kind for a very long time, Jacob. We have successfully trained our linguistic and interface systems on how to speak your language and mimic your appearance. We have studied your customs and traditions. But we are having significant trouble learning the intricacies of your communication protocol. Facial expressions, eye contact, intonation, etc. Our scientists have determined that the best way to learn these practices is to participate in the human courtship ritual, rich in silent communication tactics, to help inform my people how we can regain these lost qualities and bring life back to our lives. Are you able to help me?” This was indeed a lot to take in. But I, with plenty of dating experience under my belt and a soft spot for friendly aliens, knew I couldn’t turn him down. “Certainly!”

I decided that the best way to teach Zoltar was to walk him through the usual dance of a first date. “Feel free to interrupt me with any questions.” Zoltar nodded in approval, demonstrating I wouldn’t have to start completely at ground zero.

Phase 1: Online Messaging

The first thing I told Zoltar was that these days most people initially meet through online communication. This form of communication, I explained, is much different than in person because one, you can think out your response, and two, you don’t have as much silent communication going on behind the scenes. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t unwritten rules to follow if the goal is to show them you’d be a good person to go on a date with. I tell him that after being matched with a potential partner, you can choose one of two paths: one, ask her something about herself or about her life, or two, say something witty. The first option is when you think she might be the type of person who wants to have a courteous conversation over text, a “nice girl” or “girl next door” some may call it. These women usually display socially normal pictures, perhaps with a dog or with some friends at a nice event or with her family. Her pictures don’t reveal much skin and is thus not overly sexual. This person is conveying that they are likely looking for something serious, and thus are more likely to welcome a sincere question about their life…which they interpret as you also being serious about dating with long term intentions. On the other hand, if her pictures indicate she’s more of a “wild spirit” type, you should go with the witty banter option. These pictures may be of costumes at the ski resort, in a bikini, drinking alcohol, etc. If this is the case, I explained, the best wooing tactic is to entertain her through your perceived cleverness. This may mean word play or discrete sexual innuendos or asking her a funny question that has absolutely nothing to do with her profile. This indicates to her that you may match her quirky vibe, that you may have something in common and are thus more likely compatible.

I paused for a moment as I saw Zoltar struggling to understand. Finally, he asked “are you always directing the flow of this conversation?” It was a good observation. “I’d say 80% of the time, yes. It’s complicated, but generally in our society the man is expected to show assertiveness and control over the situation, implying that he is confident and well-adjusted to societies unwritten rules. These metrics originate from a man’s innate physical superiority and thus a womans need to ensure that one, he’s not going to hurt her, and two, could potentially protect her. This sometimes thin line is drawn by not saying anything that she could interpret as potentially odd (a precursor to threatening, since threatening people are generally a smaller — and by definition odd — percentage of the population) and by confidently guiding the conversation along socially acceptable topics. By following these rules, you imply both.”

Now this next part, I told Zoltar, is critical. Since your goal is to go on a date to assess your future compatibility, you need to slowly transition the conversation into talking about meeting up. But you have to be careful. If you transition too fast from the original conversation, then you risk coming across as desperate at best and creepy at worst. These are unattractive traits, each for their own reasons. Overly eager/desperate to meet indicates to her that you likely have a dearth of other dating options, meaning that other women have been passing on you — so why shouldn’t they as well? It also, potentially, indicates someone insecure/illiterate in unwritten online communication protocols, such as ‘one shall first engage in a small amount of normal conversation before meeting to limit the possibility of being threatening.’ “As you may see by now, Zoltar, many of these protocols have been put in place, for good reason, by women to ensure that they feel safe around physically superior males.” He nodded his head approvingly.

On the other hand, if you make the transition too slow, you potentially risk boredom and ghosting. A lot of women on these dating apps, I tell Zoltar, have an abundance of potential partners to pick from since men mostly swipe based on attractiveness (and women tend to put more thought into their appearance, and thus rightfully receive more likes). Thus, if they sense a dimming of the conversation, you risk her jumping ship to the next, potentially less dull option. I told Zoltar that the optimal conversation length is somewhere between 4-7 individual messages each, balancing ever so delicately between the two.

The last step of the online messaging phase is choosing a location to meet. This is where a little bit of planning goes a long way, I tell Zoltar. You need to choose a place that has a good ‘vibe.’ A good vibe can mean that the establishment has good food or drinks, indicating that you are a person who knows the city in which he lives in. This can indicate that you have an active social scene and that other people like you, a point towards normal socialization. A good vibe often means that there are other people of a similar age group as yourselves at this establishment, indicating that you know where the social group at large goes — for a similar reason as the previous. And you need to choose a time and place, specifically offering up this information to prove your confidence, that balances a few additional unspoken details. You must balance your other plans on the weekend (offering to meet for a first date on Friday or Saturday night often indicates that you had no better options and thus potentially risk the inference that you’re not sociable), your work commitments on the weekdays (indicating that you earn money and are thus functioning in society) and the amount of days between when you offer the date and the date itself (ensuring that the initial spark of the conversation doesn’t die down and potentially lead to boredom and ghosting). This often ends up being two-three days in advance, optimally a Thursday at 7pm, close enough to the weekend that if the date goes well you don’t have to wait long to meet again, at a local brewery.

Phase 2: Preparing for The First Date

“By comparison, that’s the easy part” I tell Zoltar. “The actual first date is so incredibly nuanced, so subtle, contains so much unspoken communication that only the subconscious human brain can possibly decipher, that I cannot possibly adequately describe everything that occurs. The human brain is actually rather extraordinary when it comes to analyzing minute social details, evolving over thousands of years to minimize the energy needed to do so. Words and sentences, by comparison, take much more mental energy to form and thus if the human brain can gain the same information from smell or appearance or tone, it will do so. Humans are in a constant, mostly unconscious, state of energy regulation, only performing high energy actions when the brain deems it sufficiently important.” Zoltar’s response to my assertion of the human condition was predictably scientific, “We plan to study many of your kind to uncover these answers. Proceed.”

I explain that appearance is a large portion of attraction in humans. You don’t want to appear disheveled, lest be mistaken for someone who is incompetent and perhaps odd. You don’t want to wear clothes from your youth, lest be mistaken for someone immature. And you certainly don’t want to appear overly formal, lest risk the potential for embarrassing your potential partner by not understanding social norms. Usually, I end up wearing something like a kitted polo shirt, tight fitting joggers, long socks, white shoes, a watch and clay in my hair to make sure my fickle, straw-like hair stays matted down.

Smell is more of a checklist item, I tell Zoltar. You either smell acceptable or unacceptable. But this may also be because I am not well versed enough to comprehend the nuances that smell play. Everyone has their own personal, cultivated smell that operates similar to a gate: closed if unbearable or open to see where the road leaves if acceptable. I usually just defer to something similar to AXE body spray.

As I drive over to meet you, I have to remember to stay calm because if you think about it too much, there can end up being a lot of pressure. Is this the last first date you ever go on? Are you about to make a complete fool of yourself? Is this going to be the mythical “one?” Will she not like what she sees? Will this be the time you finally remove yourself from underneath the silent but ever-present societal pressure to find a partner?” Give the modern human brain a reason to worry and you’ll unleash millennia of evolutionarily adapted problem-solving tactics…commonly known as anxiety.

I park and walk over to the brewery, standing outside in nervous anticipation (but trying my hardest to be calm) as I see her approach me.

Phase 3: First Meeting

At first, she’s too far away for acceptable greeting, so all I can do is trade glances. I’m innately aware of any sensation I experience, fully judging the book by its cover in this moment. Do I feel excited to meet her? Does she look like her profile? Does she seem intimidating or approachable? I can make a judgement on all of this based on appearance before she even utters a single word; the human mind can be rather shallow.

When she finally gets close enough to talk, my external autopilot takes over as my internal monologue drives dangerously close to overloading my RAM. Almost without fail, I realize that my worries about her appearance are fictitious (maybe there actually is some correlation between the amount of time you put into your appearance and how good you look?).

Without hesitation, I open my arms in her direction, signaling my willingness to hug as a greeting and an acknowledgement of her presence. It only takes a second of greeting indecision to give the appearance of awkwardness, and thus defaulting to a hug both removes this possibility and initiates another important silent form of communication: physical touch. Now it’s time to start conversing; I’m on the clock.

With every second that passes and every word I say or don’t say, I know I’m being either consciously or subconsciously processed. Every word, every motion, every scent, every placement of my arms, every intonation — they’re all ingredients in the attraction soup that will contribute to whether she likes the taste, is indifferent to its flavor, or spits it out. But the ultimate irony is that the unconscious mind is far better a chef than the conscious, and thus focusing too much on any one ingredient will certainly be cause for bad soup. You have to learn to trust the autopilot, taught to cook over thousands of evolutionary years (nature) and dozens of years of socialization (nurture).

The most important ingredient, assuming the broth (encompassing everything leading up to this moment) is edible in the first place, are the words I say. And there are certainly unwritten rules to which order you’re allowed to phrase them in. Don’t talk about yourself the whole time but also don’t interview her. Be funny and relatable, not awkward and overbearing. Don’t let there be too much space in the conversation or she’ll think that the connection isn’t there. Don’t say anything even close to the Overton Window. Don’t bring up any deep issues you may have but also don’t seem artificially happy. Just be a yourself, or actually a very polished version of yourself with some guardrails.

I tell Zoltar I like to think I’m actually half decent at this part. After all, I just met this person and thus whenever the conversational topic seems to be going stale, I can just easily defer to something basic I haven’t asked her yet. Because of this, I actually rather enjoy first dates because it only requires a little extra mental energy to keep the conversation going as long as she gives me a little to feed off of. But I caution Zoltar to not take me at my word here. Perhaps this is not normal? Do other men let there be longer than feel natural pauses in the conversation, letting the silence sweep over you both, yet somehow recover? Or do those seconds of silence truly spell the end of your implied chemistry, adding an unmistakable bitterness to the soup upon which she will certainly spit out? Because I simply do not know the answer and do not wish to find out, when I sense the conversational topic coming to a close, I often begin to only half listen to her words and let the other half of my mind wander in search of another topic to transition to. While I certainly don’t rush to the end of the current conversation, upon seeing the bat signal in the air marking an emergency, I will seamlessly transition the conversation to the next topic. But perhaps it’s obvious that the next topic was prepared by how quick the transition was, and in doing so I have just proved to her that indeed the conversation was not natural, and our connection is not good — the exact conclusion I was hoping to avoid. To this, I tell Zoltar I truly do not know.

As the evening and hours continue on, we share where we’re from, what we do for work, what we do for fun, share a few funny stories, talk about our family, inevitably talk about the city and the mountains and the snow and maybe even religion. Zoltar inquires what my goal is with these questions. I respond by saying its purpose is to see if there is conversational chemistry; does it take minimal brain energy to converse with this person? If it does, that likely signals that our brains think in a similar way and, thus, would not require much energy to converse in the future. This energy minimization is considered attractive. It also hints at shared traits, values and future. Much of human attraction, if not conscious but subconscious, is vetting the other person to see if they share your beliefs. If one of you likes to party, but the other doesn’t, you likely won’t match well because you have different core beliefs about how you wish to spend your time. If one of you is religious and the other isn’t, you likely have differing beliefs about a whole range of topics. If one of you is extremely driven to climb the corporate ladder and the other is a full-on communist, well maybe it just might not work out.

Inevitability, the conversation comes to a close and I, having controlled something like 70% of the topic selection, realize I don’t have anything more to add. As she realizes that a new line of inquiry or story isn’t coming, and perhaps she too is out of first date topics, we finally arrive at the point we tried so hard to avoid: the silence. And because it’s simply too much to bear, we both shift our eyes into the distance or to our drinks that we’ve been nursing for the last thirty minutes, desperately attempting to avoid confrontation with the reality of the situation. All the ingredients collected over the past hour or two slowly soak into the soup, and we both take our first taste. Is this something I would try again? Is it incompatible with my palate? Is it gross? Our option from here is to move. Maybe we plan to get ice cream. Or maybe we simply leave without plans, signaling the end of our time together. Either way, the silence has done its work. The soup is ready to serve.

As I walk you to your car, we clunkily string together sentences that don’t lead to paragraphs. I tell Zoltar that it’s customary for the man to both pay for the first date and walk the woman back to her car, showing that he could be a potential provider and protector (traits that are still inherently attractive, even if not practical today). As we hug and say our goodbyes, we utter customary phrases of politeness such as “I had a nice time” or “let’s do this again sometime” or reference a potential second date topic we discussed earlier. As I walk over to my car, I finally have a minute alone to process my feelings and figure out if I’ll ever see this person again. Usually, I already know the answer.

Zoltar Leaves

“Well Zoltar, that’s everything I can tell you about how a human first date usually goes…or at least how mine usually go. Did you get anything helpful for your research?”

“Yes. You have helped me quite a lot Jacob. I seem to be picking up on some key themes of which I shall further investigate with other subjects. They seem to be energy minimization, which it appears humans base many of their actions and emotions off of, evolutionary indicators of a suitable partner which have been adapted to modern life, such as a male who appears capable of providing, protecting and directing, and attempted inquiry, mostly by the female, into if this potential partner occupies the tail ends of the human character distribution curve, such as by evaluating their ability to operate successfully in a social setting and understand societies unwritten rules.”

“I’d say you have a fairly good grasp on our little dance.” I respond. “But you cannot forgot how much of the evaluation of those metrics is done subconsciously. If your species has not developed a brain similar to ours in that way, I doubt how much these rules will mean to you.”

“In understand, Jacob. Our species used to be similar to yours in this way. In fact, our research point to these traits being optimal for the creation of an intelligent species. Companionship is as strong a motivator for survival and innovation in this universe as any — our species severely underestimated that fact and ever since, our society has been in a slow decline towards stagnation and boredom. I hope that your species does not make the same mistake as ours. Good luck, human named Jacob.”

And with that, he disappeared into the very fabric upon which he came.