Musical Evolution (9/13/20)
Hey Friends,
I’m back for another week of Sunday School and I’m honored to be here. This newsletter is an offshoot of the other writing I do on my personal website, but it’s something I always look forward to. If you hate writing you might think I’m sick for saying this, but it’s something I have a TON of fun doing.
So…thanks for being here to make sure I’m not writing into the void. If you like it, share it.
I spent last weekend at a lake house in Northern Michigan and it was the most unplugged I’ve ever been in my entire adult life. I had no work obligations, no emails to worry about coming back to, and spent the entire time completely focused on enjoying the weekend with friends.
We all talk about how good it feels to unplug from life or from social media, but what strikes me is the paradoxical relationship that exists here. There’s a big question I find myself asking:
Why do we continue to pursue adding busy things to life if we get so much enjoyment out of removing them?
Is this some sort of sick and twisted cycle where we add things that are “harmful” only to remove them to enjoy the satisfaction of relief?
I don’t think so.
But, it is a classic example of “you don’t get the good without the bad.” In this illustration, the “bad” isn’t actually bad. The busy things are part of life, and often some of the best parts. Kids, friends, professional passions; they all add complexity to life, but that complexity elevates everything to new heights.
Simplicity is certainly one route to happiness, but it’s not the only route.
So if these things aren’t bad, why does it feel so good to step away from it all for brief periods of time?
I think it’s because it allows us to live in a best of both worlds scenario. For those spells when we’re unplugged we get to pretend there are no other responsibilities in life other than the exact moment we’re living in, which is the essence of childhood. In our minds, we feel that we’ve “gone back to a simpler time,” which is a vibe everyone in the world is usually interested in.
And that’s why we like to unplug.
Now on to the lessons for this week!
Homeroom
No new writing from me this week! I’m getting back in the swing of writing and working on a few essays now that I’m done unplugging.
But I do want to share one thing.
This week one of our community members in Writer’s Bloc created a trailer from some of our group discussions. Almost every week we have a different online creator host our group and cover a topic of their choosing that they’re passionate about. Here’s the video:
Conformist Mindsets
Link: The Four Quadrants of Conformism - Paul Graham
This is a tricky subject with politically relevant undertones. I’m going to talk about this from a strictly non-political viewpoint, which Paul Graham also does in his essay. By the way, this essay is beautifully written and so thought-provoking. Give it a read.
Here’s a quick breakdown of Graham’s main point about where everyone falls on the grid of conformism. We can probably all self-identify as a member of one of the following categories:
Aggressive & Conventional-Minded: Believe rules need to be obeyed and believe everyone needs to be held strictly accountable to them if they're disobeying. In school they're tattletales.
Passive & Conventional-Minded: These are the aimless followers, the "sheep." This is probably the biggest demographic of people. They quietly follow along without challenging things, but keep their head down and mostly mind their own business. Beliefs come from things they read/hear vs. things they think/formulate on their own.
Passive & Independent-Minded: These are "dreamer-type” people. They know there are rules but can usually think outside of them. They challenge systems by creating new ones vs. aggressively overthrowing anything.
Aggressive & Independent-Minded: They're super rebellious. If you tell them a rule they think about how they can break it. These people usually question everything.
Here is my most important takeaway: Those on the conventional-minded side of the spectrum are those who try and restrict independent-minded thinking (particularly those aggressive & conventional-minded people), but do so from a completely blind perspective. As Graham says:
You can't know how much of the space of ideas is being lopped off unless you have them, and only the independent-minded have the ones at the edges. Precisely because of this, they tend to be very sensitive to changes in how freely one can explore ideas.
This is why people with big, Earth-shattering ideas get so annoyed when conservative positioned people try and restrict changes.
So, in an attempt to play the middle-man, here are the efforts we can make depending on where we fall on this spectrum.
If you’re conservative-minded, that’s okay, this essay doesn’t mean to discourage that. Your concession is to engage in your discomfort. When you hear new, progressive ideas, give them space to breathe. Let bad ideas marinate and become good ideas if they have the legs to do so.
If you’re independent-minded, your concession is to realize that the world doesn’t revolve around you. You may have some cutting edge ideas, but remember that most people aren’t like you. Engage with those who don’t think the way you do because they’re your biggest addressable market. Help create conversation out of necessity to understand and do so with open ears, without anger toward someone who doesn’t understand the world with the same rule-breaking mindset that you have.
Humanity & Music
Link: Music in Human Evolution - Kevin Simler
Moment of honesty: unless that title sounds like something you’re going to geek out over, maybe don’t take the time to read this essay. It’s long and it’s complicated, but it’s fascinating.
Here is the version that will be interesting to you.
In short, this essay is about evolution and how music and rhythm is unique to humans. There are a few interesting things about this.
Humans are the only ground-dwelling species that sing. There are over 4000 singing species — mostly birds, but also gibbons, dolphins, whales, and seals. But they all sing from water or the trees. When a bird lands on the ground, it invariably stops singing. That’s crazy, what is going on here?
Early humans defended themselves using a strategy of being conspicuous known as aposematism. Aposematism prevents an attack from happening by identifying yourself to a predator as unprofitable for attack. This usually means there is a hidden defense up the sleeve. For humans, it was stones. Humans used stones to defend against predators. Other aposematic species are skunks, bees, or snakes. Basically, humans evolved not like other species in the fact that we became more dangerous (with teeth or claws or speed), but in the fact that we become more obvious targets. Obvious targets with something up our sleeve which predators eventually caught on to, and therefore a viable defense strategy.
This is also the theory behind why humans bury their dead. The theory goes that humans should never let animals eat dead humans, letting them know that humans are in fact good for eating (which is true). This being the case, humans buried other dead humans because they didn’t want predators to eat them, whether scavenged or from a kill.
Evolution theories are pretty wild and interesting to study as a history lesson. The more we study about early humanity the more we find we’re simultaneously more like other species while our unique differences become more and more obvious.
The Future of NYC
Link: NYC is Dead Forever…Here’s Why - James Altucher
I’m a few weeks late to the party in sharing this piece, but I still wanted to share anyways. James Altucher, an author and NYC entrepreneur, wrote this piece about a month ago. As you can tell from the title, he thinks NYC is dead…forever. Altucher is a lifelong New Yorker, so he doesn’t take that lightly. It’s a pretty compelling argument. Here are the pillars of his argument.
Business is dead and most of it is gone for good. More companies are realizing they can allow employees to work from home for as long as they need, forever in many instances. With business leaving the city comes an increase in crime and a decrease in safety in Manhattan. NYC has always been a place full of endless opportunity in business. Now, the streets in midtown are empty.
NYC’s unique cultural hub is shut down, and may never be the same. A huge drawing point for NYC are the museums, comedy club, and of course Broadway. Tens of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars are gone because of these shut downs. Broadway is closed until early 2021, but what will it look like when it’s back? Limited capacities in already tiny theaters with huge demand? It’s not going to be the same.
Food is the other huge drawing point for NYC. Most estimates show that over 60% of restaurants in NYC have closed due to the pandemic. Restaurant clusters are being broken up in NYC which is a huge factor in going out in the city. Restauranteurs are leaving the city and popping up in other locations where COVID had less of an impact.
Altucher outlines several other reasons why he thinks it’s different this time. Why it will be forever, not just temporary.
Jerry Seinfeld wrote a rebuttal to Altucher’s essay with a much more optimistic (and comedic) view of the current situation.
I tend to agree more with Seinfeld. I don’t think there’s a high chance that New York is down for the count and never coming back. It’s just too important to the structure of this country, it’s really the heart and soul. It’s so geographically unique that once any semblance of normalcy returns, so will the culture, the restaurants, and even the business.
At worst, the business never comes back in the same way and residential real estate takes over former commercial real estate space making it cheaper for everyone to live there.
I’d buy low on NYC stock, it’s going to be on the rise again soon.
Digital Collectibles
No matter which generation we come from we probably had some sort of collectible in our room during our youth. For me, it was sports cards.
Recently a company called Dapper Labs has come up with a very 2020 way to do collectibles. They’re using blockchain to deliver fun things to everyday people, not just financiers interested in Bitcoin or cryptocurrency.
Ever wanted to own an NBA highlight instead of an NBA player card? Now you can. One of their products, Top Shot, would allow you to purchase Jordan’s Game 6 winner and prove that it is uniquely yours.
Blockchain (in case you need the layman’s terms definition) is a digital ledger that records transactions between two parties and can prove ownership for digital items.
The idea of using blockchain for something entertaining like collectibles is an unbelievable idea. As cryptocurrency continues to gain steam, so will blockchain-based products, and eventually, we’ll get to a place where people are comfortable using it for entertainment and fun. To me, this feels like an idea ahead of its time.
Photo of the Week
This is me, grilling on the lake in Northern Michigan. As good as it gets in the summer for me.
Quote of the Week
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast endless sea.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
That’s all for this week, thanks for attending!
See you next week,
-Ryan Mulholland