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Hi friend.
I have a lot on my mind.
Yesterday was a good day at work, even though I went to bed late, woke up early and energized and was kind of a zombie all day. We pounded a lot of posts, set a lot of things as-right-as-possible at the work sites, corrected errors, organized and tidied. It is satisfying to make things, real things with purpose.
Even so, there is so much wasted effort at work. We can be more efficient, and this is my passion project with met tower work. It means a healthier work environment, better pay, better outcomes for the company and the client. From a bird’s eye view, one can design a system to have as few tradeoffs as possible – but it requires context. I must put myself in the shoes of the client, the owners, the crew boss, the workers. I must be patient and open-minded. I have much to learn, even as I refine my 30-60-90 plan with CCR.
I was so fried when I got back to the hotel, I played a little guitar (which was so deeply satisfying even though this guitar has totally different fret spacing and my fingers are a little stupid from so long without practice), I ate too much junk food, and did some zoning out with Netflix.
One of the guys was talking about this program starring Zac Efron, which I grew weary of, so I tried another recommendation about the evils of Ikea, an overwrought documentary trying to personalize the harms of industrialization (which is a subject much-better covered by many people over the last century). Basically, they point out that Ikea ought to be more concerned with safety and environment. They fail to mention the ratio of dressers made to child deaths is pretty extreme, and many other things are far more dangerous.
They fail to mention that Ikea’s supply chain issue is not limited to wood for furniture (famously, they accidentally snuck horse meat into their meatballs) and that many brands, especially clothing companies and big box stores, actively struggle with managing their supply chain to keep out unsavory practices.
Unfortunately, people learn how to circumvent your rules in order to protect their livelihoods. The best way to know what’s happening is to visit yourself, and use statistical tools to infer from that what the big picture actually looks like. The show does not talk about the real ways companies can improve. It is aimed at consumers, not corporate workers and executives, and therefore I find it impotent.
I hated how they made Ikea out to be a villain, without nuance, but I did really appreciate that they put more pressure on manufacturers rather than blaming the users of products for errors, and how they gave concrete action steps for viewers at the end.
I learned that Consumer Reports has real scientists working there (even if they sound ridiculous interviewed in a documentary) and that it’s a nonprofit.
I then began watching an Italian drama about a woman’s effort to become a lawyer in the late 1800’s.
The Law According to Lidia Poet is fun to watch, a little like Bridgerton. It is very sexy and I love the way the Italian wit lands on my ears. At one point they laugh about women’s suffrage as a far off dream and I was shocked to realize that 2020 marked the centennial of a woman’s right to vote in the United States. It took 80 years of sustained and organized effort to get this into the constitution.
I am amazed at the tenacity and farsightedness of the leaders of this movement, so I’m planning to read their book soon. These are people, mostly women, who were actively being assaulted by a system they had already rejected, but which they had to learn to understand in order to change. It is a powerful lesson that social progress is a very winding path, full of pitfalls and difficult climbs.
I also finished the Cal Newport interview from 80000 hours. I’m still a bit underwhelmed, but I am loving Rob Wiblin, the host.
He was very polite, summing up a massive argument into a single sentence: “Often the things they are doing are the problem.” He then gives a brief summary of how maybe work with fewer distractions would lead to fewer harmful side effects, but gives no evidence.
I can’t help but think I could help Rob with his “advocacy about the right problem.” I think there is a hierarchy which needs to be stressed – inaction as the default over action.
We must ask ourselves: “Is the change I am seeking really necessary?” and then fill in the obvious blank, necessary to do what? If you believe it is necessary, then you begin working, but you must continually reassess. If at any point you realize the work is not necessary, the best plan of action is to stop. Even if the work feels lucrative or valuable, it is not worth the unintended consequences.
We must learn to choose the lesser of many evils. This is a big idea of buddhism and especially of Daoism – you might have heard of “wu wei” or seen the principle at work in Tai Chi. Doing by not doing. Being by not being. The highest possible state we can achieve is to do as little as possible. We could be so much more intuitively zen than we are right now.
This is not to say that we do nothing. We still respond to the world around us, but we become acutely aware of the interconnectedness of all things, and we learn to be responsive as opposed to reactive, or worse, blindly productive.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ‘ideology’ of the cancer cell.” -Edward Abbey
Finally, I’d like to share one of my long obsessions, which I’m planning to dive back into soon – the origin story of UC Santa Cruz.
If you have never been to this campus, just imagine a massive research university rhizomatically interwoven into an old growth redwood forest. Picture modern architecture which blends into the landscape and invites you to explore in equal parts solitude and community. Imagine little colleges which feel small and intimate but are all interlinked as part of a bigger system, so that you are never more than a few minutes from inspiring minds in physics, engineering, social activism, biology, and art.
Now imagine that this magical place stems from deep thought into how compromises could be reimagined into something greater than the sum of their parts (for example, valuing serious academics but also ditching grades to promote curiosity, or the benefits of a large research school melded with the feel and values of a small rural liberal arts college).
I hope you’ll enjoy taking the journey with me as I read Seeds of Something Different, the origin story of UCSC.
I love you friend, and I hope we talk soon.
Brad