On Maps
May 9, 2024
Greenwich Village
Nico–These Days
Maybe you first realize in your teens but lose track as you try so earnestly to grow up. Maybe you always wonder but you’re too afraid to find out. Either way, one day in your twenties, like the sun rising—slowly, dimly at first; then all all at once, so bright you have to close your eyes—the truth hits you: something’s off. About this moment, this life, this country, this earth. The feeling has been there since you’re-not-sure-when, growing deeper and more inevitable the more you try to forget it. It’s the same feeling as being lost in the woods: sudden, menacing, total. Many of our goals in life are in part about finding a way out of this feeling. A calling, a person, a change in the world—the right one is the one that gets us out of here. We’re looking for a map.
I’m about to graduate from Harvard Law School. I hoped it would give me that kind of map. People talk about law as something that helps us do good and avoid evil, and people think that becoming a (certain kind of) lawyer is a way to do good in the world. So I thought law school would teach me to think through the feeling that something’s off and figure out what to do about it. But it didn’t. What it gave me, instead of a map, was a bunch of tools. I learned a specific kind of history and a certain style of writing. I learned to answer new questions by comparing them to ones we’ve already answered. I learned to persuade powerful people to wield their power a certain way, and I learned how to become powerful myself.
You need tools to survive the wilderness, and I’m happy to have these. But like the rapper Dave says: It can help you or harm you—depends on how you’re using the rope. Many of my friends and mentors, in law school and outside of it, have mastered a lot of tools. Yet they’re not sure where they are in life, why they’re there, or where they’re going. They still feel like I do: lost in the woods. People react to being lost in different ways. Some pick a direction and confidently start walking. Others sit down where they are and make peace with it. My two cents, though, is that the right thing to do is to make a map. Start from what you’re sure of, explore a little, make notes, erase your mistakes, and update your understanding.
This is all to say that I’d like to start making that kind of map. I want to read a bunch—ethics, political philosophy, history, self-help, cultural criticism—and talk to people, both friends and strangers. I want to collect and share different ways of understanding where we are today, what might await us in the future, and how we can get there. I hope the final product will be useful.
I hope to devote (at least some) future issues of this newsletter to updates from this mapping. I’d also like to invite you to think about the same thing, and if you’re interested in chatting about what you come across, get in touch with me!