Optimism
I'm a young, naive guy.
I try to make up for it with an enthusiasm to learn and a positive outlook as I face lesson after lesson that the pessimists always heed when they look onto the world from their bunkers of fear.
I am an optimist.
A real optimist who wakes up every morning knowing lots of stuff is broken, and more stuff is about to break.
Big stuff. Important stuff. Stuff that will make his life miserable. He’s 100% sure of it.
He starts his day knowing a chain of disappointments awaits him at work. Doomed projects. Products that will lose money. Coworkers quitting. He knows that he lives in an economy due for a recession, unemployment surely to rise. He invests his money in a stock market that will crash. Maybe soon. Maybe by a lot.
He reads the news with angst. It’s a fragile world. Every generation has been hit with a defining shock. Wars, recessions, political crises. He knows his generation is no different.
This is a real optimist. He’s an optimist because he knows all this stuff does not preclude eventual growth and improvement. Progress happens when people learn something new. And they learn the most, as a group, when stuff breaks.
So he expects the world around him to break all the time. But he knows – as a matter of faith – that if he can survive the day-to-day fractures, he’ll capture the up-and-to-the-right arc that learning and hard work produces over time.
I prefer this way of thinking. I like facing the day with a smile instead of with a frown.
And one of my most positive opinions about tomorrow is that with automation and artificial intelligence, the need for workers will grow EXPONENTIALLY.
History is my first source of evidence.
Automation and modernization have always given humans more things to do rather than less. Obviously, transition periods are very damaging as we go from one type of work to a completely different work style, and we humans have become worse and worse at "modern adaptation" as things further outpace us and our capabilities.
Still, all of my studies say it's true. The concept of labor is not at risk as much as what defines current labor.
Who knew about NFTs 5 years ago? How many EVs existed 10 years ago? Or about the blockchain 15 years ago? How many websites existed 20 years ago? How many people were employed in space-related industries 25 years ago?
There are whole industries, sectors, and specializations that we can't even fathom that are waiting for technology to evolve before revealing themselves to us.
We still need farmers, but we don't need as many as we did in the past. The future of every generation is that more people get more opportunities to do the things they love instead of doing the things they must do to make a living.
Imagine where we could be as a species if all the brainpower that’s spent doing mindless tasks and low-value work is given the opportunity to think about the things that fires off its neurons in new and exciting ways.
Imagine what we could accomplish if every person that’s spent their whole life in the desert gets to achieve their best self out on the “sea”.
As an optimist, I stand firmly in the belief that life has always gotten better in the aggregate and I believe this will always be true.
Necessity Scales Over Time
Necessity is the mother of all inventions.
Economic recessions, wars, and other calamities have one major commonality. They lead to course correction which manifests itself through new technology, new businesses, new policies, new perspectives, and new ideas.
Privilege is like oxygen, you don’t recognize it until it’s gone. If you regularly have access to electricity, to air conditioning, to food, to the internet, etc… You expect to have these things forever. All of the innovations that made these things possible started as novelties but have become necessities.
The point of "becoming a necessity" is that invention surfaces as a niche solution, innovation broadens that solution, and then the necessity that was solved by invention and innovation gets transferred to the solutions themselves.
As mankind evolves, so do our needs. When we once needed a few basic things, we now need many complicated things.
Imagine life without your smartphone. Three decades ago there were 0 smartphones on the entire Earth. Now smartphones are like third limbs for about ½ of mankind.
Or electricity. How hard would your life be without regular access to electricity?
Current scientific consensus pretty unanimously agrees that humanity, in its modern form, is about 200,000 years old. Thomas Edison is noted as harnessing the first form of electricity (as the lightbulb) in 1879. That’s only ~142 years ago. 142 / 200,000 = 0.00071% of human existence that had the potential to access the power of electricity.
There are still a billion people on our planet today that don’t have access to electricity.
All of these things in the modern world are not guarantees, we need to stop treating them like they are.
Our existence is a perpetually fragile one.
But that’s a good thing.
Positivity
If I have been graced with any strengths, chief among them is the ability to be positive.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel negative emotions often enough, but I have learned how to really just focus on the positive ones.
My first thought every morning is something akin to “Fuck my alarm, I don’t want to wake up and be an adult today.”
But I rocket myself out of bed, blast myself with cool water while listening to music, get dressed for the day’s work, go outside to feel the sun rays, and fill my brain full of grateful thoughts.
I am thankful that I woke up, that I have reasons to live, that I have a house that shelters me, and a job that employs me…
For every negative thought, there is a positive counter-thought.
Focus on the positive thoughts and let the negative ones drift away.
Kung Fu Panda
I watched the first Kung Fu Panda movie again this weekend.
If you know me at all, you know I’m a bit of an emotional and anxious guy.
This movie made me laugh uncontrollably, it made my eyes tear up, and it made me slightly angry when it was over.
I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to movies and I was extremely impressed with how well it was written, with how perfect the animation style complements the voice actors and plot, how powerful the music soundtrack was from the very beginning to the end credits, and how many thoughtful topics were explored in such a short timeframe.
Here are some of my favorite clips, let them bring joy to your day as they have for me:
One Final Thing
I changed the format again.
For the time being, I wanted to tell some more personal stories and perspectives.
I would then try to tie the rest of the newsletter’s themes together so that you can have a little bit more consistency from me.