Make as if the world is ending, because it is.
How to grow your mind by growing your body of work: A Must-Read for the unemployed!
Recession season is upon us again, and I’m not the only one fretting about the impending round of layoffs to come.
Then I talked to my friend, and all my economic worries went away.
He told me about the time he was told a year in advance that his team was getting laid off (they have to let you know in advance in Europe), which liberated him completely. After doing the bare minimum, he was free to do whatever he wanted.
He found an online language tutoring site and paid people to read books with him.
He leveraged the gig economy into his own personal book club. But what he did next was even more delightful.
Did he turn this into a book or an online course? Did he monetize this idea and found an empire with it? No. What he got out of it was far greater: he developed his soul. He read books he wouldn’t otherwise have read and got insights he wouldn’t have uncovered on his own. And yes, his English got better along the way.
Plus, he improved the lives of his tutors:
One actress with whom he read the tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides ended up booking real work on a regular show. Maybe the two had nothing to do with each other, but I can’t imagine all that pathos and catharsis had no effect.
It got me thinking that perhaps this is our future, that we’re all going to gig for one another in the new economy, and how that isn’t so bad.
Sure, nobody is getting rich, but barely anybody is going to get rich anyway. Instead of focusing on material maximization, which is a dead end no matter how far you go and a dead planet if everybody could achieve it, let’s look at what matters: maximizing potential:
For how long has humanity been enslaved by the need to obtain the basics? Too long.
So obsessed with footprints and animal droppings that it may have led to the invention of writing.
So cowed by rising water levels and backbreaking labor that they developed vengeful gods and thunder demons to explain them.
So concerned with later saving now and eking out a bare existence for later that they upheld the institution of sacrifice for millennia.
And now we finally have it. In every developed country and most of the developing ones, we have mechanized the means of survival to such a level that nobody is going to starve or freeze.
Shelter is available if you are willing to move.
Food has been bounteous since at least the 90s.
And we have so much excess clothing that much of it goes to landfills.
We don’t need much to keep going, and we’ve never had more tools to realize our visions.
The invitation is open to make whatever we want.
We’ve talked before about how the greatest works of Classical Greece, from Pindar to Plato, came after they beat off the Persians and before Athens lost her empire to Sparta.
A similar renaissance happened in Japan after the Tokugawas brought all other warlords to heel and ushered in an era of peace that would span centuries. Samurai like Miyamoto Musashi turned their skills with the sword to sculpting, painting, poetry and Zen.
We’ve been in a similar span of peace for a while now, we just haven’t realized it. The shame is that this era might be coming to an end.
How many times can the bankers bamboozle the public before we say, “enough”?
How many more wars can we afford to lose while pretending we didn’t lose them?
How much more empty rhetoric and presidential clowning can we endure before we admit that the people we’re told who run our government can’t possibly be running it?
At some point, the decaying world order can no longer pretend to hold everything together. Our economic if not literal survival will become a pressing concern once more, and we’ll need to go back to scrabbling for existence. Until then, the best way to develop ourselves and our skills is by communicating it to as many people who want to see it as possible, and doing so has never been easier.
Everything you need to create greatness is literally at your fingertips.
The flames of war and capitalism have finally died down to a point where we can think through our creations. At first, access to what’s necessary to create the truly great works was only granted to a select few geniuses: the Kurosawas and the Kubricks.
But now we’re at a point where anybody with less than a hundred dollars and time to scour eBay or Facebook Marketplace can obtain everything they need to create film of comparable quality. All that’s left is experience and focus.
Only instead of striving to carve the next David or make today’s version of Eyes Wide Shut, we give all our time and focus to media conglomerates in whose interest it is to keep you dumb and placid.
Most of what’s streamed today is bad and designed to disappoint.
It’s almost as if, knowing they can’t end everything in a way that will garner buzz and accolades, they’ve committed to viral-level disappointment.
You can’t please everyone, but you can piss them all off enough to tweet about it, and that’s almost as good for profits.
Let’s face it: nobody coming to save us or our beloved characters and stories (or as media moguls like to call them, “properties”).
There’s only one person left who can make something you’re 100% satisfied with: you.
It doesn’t have to involve using a brush, keyboard, stylus or musical equipment, either. Like my friend who created tiny book clubs for his own enjoyment, you just have to find ways to make what you love happen.
Remember when you were a kid and you imagined episodes to your favorite show in your head, or played your own music, or drew your own comics? Do that at adult scale. Because if you care enough to go off the Netflix/Hulu/Max reservation, there will be others who care enough to join in.
Want to know where I got all my ideas on Buddhism from?
I’m one of the few people in the West who actually read all 100 chapters of Journey to the West and broke each one down in podcast form. One of my best friends and I did it in part so we had a reason to chat every week, and in part because were genuinely interested in one of the most beloved classics in all of Asia.
I learned so much from going to the source, uncensored by the CCP or the constant need of modern media to “update”, “revamp”, and “make edgy” whatever it puts to screen, that it inspired me to go and read essential works of Western Civilization as well, I read Homer, Plutarch, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, and Girard to name a few. I found so much more depth in these brilliant minds than I thought possible for people living before Wikipedia. And then I realized it was because they didn’t have it that they were able to get so profound.
This is because they all shared something in common that we who can call up all the world’s facts near-instantaneously lack: the patience and focus to work deeply for months and years. Thousands of iterations, dozens of drafts.
We only think their ideas so-so because we experience them through dumb-down-and-shorten filters.
And the source ideas of these great writers inspired me to write this newsletter.
To make something that will hopefully get you to make something of your own.
I don’t believe legacy should be a driving reason for why we make things. Any more than I believe aesthetics should be your driving reason for exercise. The reason we should lift or philosophize or form any practice in life should be the development of your soul.
Because if you aren’t doing things to enrich it, then you are letting it degrade. It really is this simple.
Every single one of the great thinkers we have today made something, even if it was just, like Socrates, unforgettable conversations.
Today there is no shortage of ways to make something, and it has never been cheaper. Just make sure what you make is of interest to you
One free from pure material concerns, no longer beholden to the whims of “professional creatives” who are themselves slave to the dictates of advertisers and community guidelines.
Not only is there plenty of room for creativity in the new reality, it’s the only way to truly get the entertainment, education, and endings that you want.
in the same vein, you might be interested in this
https://youtube.com/watch?v=z-IHuKaKYJ0&feature=share7
Along those lines, I play bluegrass music for fun. He'll, even if I was really good, there is very little room to make any serious money in this genre. However, my musician friend envies me. He plays clubs, weddings and other private functions, but does not play what he like, but instead, what the customer's demand to hear. He's a great musician who knows he's lost his soul.