Hello there! 👋
I asked a bunch of my friends “What are you into these days? Or, if you had the resources, what would you like to get into?” It actually kicked off a deep conversation with branching lines of inquiry about how to judge the value of doing a thing, aligning hobbies to your personal politics and values, and whether or not one should find meaning in work. Effectively, we were having a discussion about eudaimonia.
Many of my friends and people I follow online make things. They are woodworkers, painters, musicians, gardeners, sailors, hackers building crazy custom keyboards or low-power permacomputing operating systems, or a million other things! I don’t really make anything with my hands, as I tend to live in a world of ideas… this is something I would like to change, I think. This month I have been particularly bad at making anything. I’ve mostly been consuming: 4 books and watched 5 movies, which is crazy for me, and never even wrote a single blog post!
The lack of making was not the only reason for considering the topic of a new hands-on hobby. As I prepare to return to Canada, to a new community, I am imagining different futures. We are house-hunting still so I am not sure where I will be, nevermind who I will be for this next chapter of life. The philosophical exchange with my friends drifted from one possibility to another. Humans have been discussing eudaimonia for nearly 25 centuries, so we obviously weren’t able to solve that particular issue. But we did come to some conclusions that I would like to submit for your consideration and comment.
It was unanimous that whatever hobby we do, while we may share it with others online, we do not “do it for the ‘Gram.” In other words, unless your hobby is performing, nobody wants to perform their hobby. That said, sharing your hobby with a good community is another thing. For example, one of my friends is a very good experimental baker, and I am grateful he shares his creations with us 😋 (for similar reasons I love being friends with gardeners!)
Sharing a hobby with “good community” unlocked a second, and possibly the most important insight: doing an activity as an individual can certainly be rewarding, but making with others is particularly rewarding. In other words, we should not be looking soley at picking up a certain skill or cultural hobby to find meaning, but should be looking to find a welcoming maker community and find meaning together. With this in mind, I look forward to exploring different communities when I return to Canada.
In conclusion, I would like to hear from you about what you are into, or what would you like to get into? Please share your passions as I consider communities to explore in the future.
Yours in future making,
Chad
🖋 From the Blog
Zero, zilch, zip, nada, nothing.
🧭 Elsewhere
10 years of Piketty. Was very influential on my own thought. Link →
Epic essay from Pankaj Mishra on Israel. Link →
How dense is your city? Link →
Fascinating follow-up to a recent podcast I enjoyed with an adversarial ML researcher breaking AI Podcast →
An accessible piece on the antitrust case against Amazon Link →
Technology is politics. Link →
📖 What I’m Reading
Northern Ireland: The Fragile Peace by Feargal Cochrane
(63% Complete)
Very detailed but eminently readable history of the various strands of Northern Irish resistance, the peace process (and its many iterations), and the aftermath. I am reading this as a companion to my reading on Palestinian independence, since the Irish express a lot of solidarity with those in Gaza and the West Bank and I wanted to understand their perspective better.
Connect with me on GoodReads → or on Bookwyrm →