Reflections on May 2020
Hey patrons,
Can you believe it? The year is just over 40% complete, and what a year it’s been. Hope you’ve been well, and that you’re spending your time in a meaningful way.
It’s time to share a few reflections I’ve had over the month, so let’s jump into it.
(1) Ideas as pebbles, and ideas as statues
I’ll be sharing this in the newsletter tomorrow, but for the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a long essay on money’s impact on society (big topic, I know). It’s over 5,000 words already, and there’s more to go. It will likely be out in June, depending on how much there’s left to do, and how many illustrations I’ll have to do for it.
At the same time, I’ve been publishing posts on the site with some regularity, and while they’re shorter in length, they still address the topic at hand with a degree of depth. When I look at these posts compared to the longer one I’ve been building, they remind me of the way we look at ideas.
Whenever we come across a compelling idea, there are various ways we could gauge our engagement with it. Some feel like small pebbles, things that we want to stash away and address with our attention, but on a more limited time scale. Others are so deeply compelling that they feel like big statues, things that we want to spend a lot of time on because we know there’s something great here.
I don’t think it’s the idea itself that determines whether it’s a pebble or a statue. Ultimately, it’s about how willing you are to wrestle with it.
The theory of relativity was a truth about the world that already existed, whether we figured it out or not. Perhaps many people got close to distilling it down to an equation, but Einstein was the one that wrestled with it deep enough to uncover its core. That idea became a statue only because he devoted himself to this cause fully, and of course, because he had the requisite knowledge and skill to define it.
We live in the information era, where ideas come flying at us in so many directions at all times. Most will simply be ignored, but a few will resonate. Some of those will be pebbles, things that invoke our curiosity but we won’t delve into too deeply. Even fewer will be statues, only if we are willing to put in the hard work to construct them in that way.
Which ideas do you have that are pebbles, and which are statues? And which pebbles do you want to convert into statues at some point?
Keeping inventory of your relationship with ideas is a great way to keep the mind curious at any stage in life.
(2) The power of fiction
For a long period of my adult life, I viewed fiction as a form of entertainment, and not as a source of wisdom. I used to think that reality was already strange enough, so there was no need to waste time reading fiction.
How naive I was.
Both fiction and non-fiction are powerful tools, but those that ignore the power of fiction ignore the power of subjective experience. As much as we tout the necessity of objectivity, we have no choice but to view the world through the lens of our individual consciousness – through the boundaries of what our physical and mental capacities can stretch to. Additionally, emotions are an integral part of what make us human, and nothing is more powerful than a beautiful story to touch us in that way.
When I read the work of a philosopher (let’s say Thomas Nagel), his work is great, but his job is to present information as a package of knowledge. It feels like an assortment of data I must sort through to get to his central point. There’s no real story involved, it’s just a distribution of knowledge from his mind to mine, through the direct tunnel of explanation.
But when I read fiction, I can disconnect myself from the author, suspending my disbelief for a moment as well. Instead, I connect with the subjective experience of the characters, the voyage they go on, and the various emotions they must wade through in their stories. And it is through experiencing all this with them that I get to the kernel of wisdom that truly resonates with me.
It’s like the difference between (a) simply hearing the platitude, “Love is the answer,” and (b) actually experiencing the long road of being someone’s partner and truly feeling that “love is the answer.” Scenario A will make you roll your eyes, while Scenario B will be deeply profound.
That’s the difference between non-fiction and fiction.
For example, I’m currently reading the Three-Body Problem, a science-fiction novel by Cixin Liu, and consider this section from it:
Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean…
On its own, the idea itself could be something you read from a philosopher’s take on morality. But in the context of the novel, it took multiple pages of knowing a character, feeling her struggles, and identifying with her journey until that line was revealed. When I read that line, it felt like a beautiful revelation, something so powerful that I wouldn’t have felt if I read it on its own.
It took the author two chapters to build the set up to that one wisdom bomb.
Don’t ignore the power of fiction.
(3) Connecting with an audience
As More To That grows, I’ve had the privilege of hearing from many readers that share personal stories and interesting musings with me on a regular basis. I find it amazing how deep some are willing to go, despite having never met me or chatted with me before.
This likely has to do with the medium of writing. When it comes to building a direct, intimate relationship with someone, I don’t think there’s anything more powerful than writing. Some might say that podcasts do that now, but the fact that a podcast is usually listened to while doing some other activity (washing dishes, driving, etc.) dilutes things a bit. When you read someone’s work, that’s all you could be doing, and you’re 100% dialed into the information you’re interacting with.
This also carries to the other side as well. When a reader decides to write to me, they are seeking to reciprocate that feeling on their end too. They want to express themselves by structuring their thoughts, and then packaging them in a way that I can digest. And a lot of the time, those thoughts are deep and full of insight – a distillation of a life experience that I would never have known about if it weren’t for this blog.
So even if it could be difficult at times to keep up, I try to reply to every reader that writes in. Sometimes it could feel like a task to reply to emails, but I try to remind myself that on the other side of those words is a human being, one with a vast pond of experiences and memories that has somehow found their way to this website. And somehow, the site connected with their pond enough for them to compose an email over to me.
When I think about connecting with an audience, it’s about keeping that in mind. That instead of seeing text as mere bits on a screen, it’s a representation of life experiences from a human being on the other side of an email inbox.
Viewing it in that way makes every message a special one.
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I hope your May has been great, and as always, thank you so much for your support.
-Lawrence
