Issue 5: Unstructured Guilt
And I think I am lazy.
Ramiro Gomez. Woman Cleaning Shower in Beverly Hills (after David Hockney’s Man Taking Shower in Beverly Hills, 1964), 2013. Currently featured at the National Portrait Gallery.A New Title:
I’d like to call this newsletter something else. Please send suggestions!
Coming up Soon:
May 25th: Reflections on being a barista
June 1st: Joining the Mari Kondo cult
Reminder, and for those just tuning in:
You can check out prior issues at https://tinyletter.com/gpd/archive
Revisiting Last Issue:
Melissa B. called for more compassion for the Basic. And Rachel T. shared concerns about the costs of judging:
Basically (har har), I’ve decided that the “basic vs. non-basic” (and “iconoclast vs. conformist” and “authentic vs. poseur” etc.) mode of thinking is fundamentally flawed and deeply soul-sucking. Among other things, you end up constantly examining every choice you make to avoid being part of the reviled “conformist” group, which is just a really exhausting way to live.
I agree that it’s wise to abide by the maxim: judge not, lest you judge yourself, and fall into a bottomless chasm of anxiety. But I still believe, and suspect you do too, that the Basic are awful. Sometimes I hope the Basic will stay exactly the same because then they won’t be able ruin any more of my stuff. And I’m tempted to avoid criticizing the Basic because their conformity makes them easy to identify and thus easy to avoid. But if I decide not to judge or criticize them, then I am, in effect, giving up on them. Placing the Basic outside of my community of concern seems like a much worse form of othering than judgement.
Mel C. wrote a powerful poem about the way Basic DC others her:
“Other”eachotheranotherotherloverover the citysinkingdwelling.againstbesidereaching.loving memories ofbrown and melaninagainst brightcolors, reflectiveof our language -culture.vulture.much like eachother.i tried to stayyou tried to staywe stayed.under.over theignoranceblindnessgreyness.so we became other.together.over and overgreen sproutsgrow onour skinis that what makes us other?the grey sky todayreflectsthe homesthey chosefor themselves.perhaps,reminiscent of asheswe are the fireof otherour ancestorsour colorsour loveour culture.your glanceslet me know youthink i’manother, other.my colors,forage -creativityand differenceand lifeand beatsgreater than
the grey box.
You may have noticed that there wasn’t an issue last week. It was supposed to cover whether we can be generalists, but I didn’t have anything meaningful to say on the topic. If you have things to say about it, feel free to write in.
Idle Thoughts:
In the last two years, I’ve often found myself trapped in a negative spiral of unproductive guilt - guilt for not being productive enough, which makes me less productive, which makes me feel worse, and so on.
My moods are considerably improved since I left a job that was somehow both extremely boring and stressful. Since then, I’ve mostly not worked: 6 months of travel followed by 6 months of (at most) 3 days a week at a coffee shop plus a few hours of LSAT tutoring. Yet I still find myself alternating between bright productive stretches and days mired in the do-nothing-swamp-of-guilt. Coffee helps, exercise too especially yoga, and so does this newsletter, but I’m still not in control of my days.
One reason for my mood swings might be the lack of structure. As Frederic Gros writes:
Boredom is dissatisfaction repeated every second, disgust with beginnings: everything is wearisome from the start, because it’s you who starts it.
A lack of external accountability (and forgiveness) might be one reason I’ve had such a hard time working on Potluck. In fact, the best way I’ve found to escape the destructive spiral of guilt is by temporarily giving up the expectation that I’ll work on Potluck at all.
It’s scary to find that I am happier when I put aside this world-changing project full of meaning and spend my flexible schedule on more selfish pursuits like reading too many books; waking up late and eating my oatmeal very slowly; spending 2-5pm at the Hirshhorn and then going to yoga; taking siestas, and staying at shows until late on a Thursday. This free life is terrifying because I have, for the last decade at least, imagined myself as person who needs to do work that makes the world better.
I’m concerned because diverse religions agree that it is dangerous to try to approach happiness directly. Finding purpose, Viktor Frankl persuasively argues, is a wiser pursuit and, paradoxically, one more likely to result in durable happiness.
But the Stoics, some of the earliest and strongest advisors against the pursuit of momentary happiness, also advise against too much work. Seneca writes:
Aren’t you ashamed to keep for yourself just the remnants of you life, and to devote to wisdom only that time which cannot be spent on any business?
Seneca sharply criticizes the hedonist who tries to ignore their own mortality with wine and sex. But he also criticizes the rich, powerful and famous for thinking that wealth, politics, or glory can protect them from the vagaries of life. If anything, more money or status simply means they will suffer greater losses.
In his compelling 1932 essay, In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell knows exactly who to blame for our toxic morality of work.
There are men who, through ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are idle, and I might therefore be expected to praise them. Unfortunately, their idleness is only rendered possible by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have every wished is that others should follow their example.
86 years later, we have an even stronger faith in this gospel. The wealthy leisure class have been replaced by an even wealthier supermanager class who justify their riches by the insane hours they work. For the rest of us, work is still dependent on the whims of the upper crust and even more scarce and unstable:
- Lawyers to protect wealth with elaborate contracts and lobbying, and consultants to help fire people;
- Baristas to caffeinate the work from anywhere young professional or programmer;
- Non-profit types to flatter and assuage the guilty consciences of the hyper-wealthy; and
- On-demand personal drivers for the medium-rich and even the medium-poor who can’t otherwise get to work because public transit has been defunded.
I can afford to step off the dirty hamster wheel of modern work thanks to my considerable privilege. But this only makes me feel more guilty! I’ve been given so much, don’t I have an obligation to use my remaining time to make the world better? Probably, but thinking that way doesn’t seem to help me fulfill that duty, which means I need to find a different way to think about it.
Recommendations:
A burned (thanks, Andrew W.) copy of Aesop Rock’s Labor Days (spotify) was often in my red discman in the 10th grade. Or maybe I had an iPod by then? In any case, it appears to have influenced much of my thinking in this issue. I am a bit queasy crediting white hip-hop with being unusually eloquent, but this album does have some very clever lyrics.
If you’re in a funk like I described above, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers’ Sidelong (spotify) is a country album with just the right mix of blues, meanness, and wit to help snap you out of it.You can see selections from past album recommendations and add your own to this collaborative spotify playlist.
I’ve recently started keeping track of the books I most enjoy on this tumblr. It’s easy to set up with this theme, which I found thanks to Austin Kleon. If you make your own, you should tell me about it.