TPO#18: Finding Beauty in Annoying Brown Dudes
TPO#18
This is issue 18 of The Purposeful Object, a newsletter about living the good life amidst the miasma of the technomodern. This time 'round: grudgingly finding something in YouTube productivity vids; middle-aged bisexual finds David Hume's Buddhist roots; and utter genius in the form of a drummer.
Ali Abdaal’s YouTube channel is not the sort of thing I should be watching. Abdaal, as he is very keen to tell you, is a doctor in Cambridge in the UK who is also a YouTuber. His oeuvre is that specifically modern genre in which successful people sit in a naturally lit room, stare into the lens of a 4K DSLR, and tell you how to be more productive — you know, how to maximize your note-taking, achieve your goals, cram more into your day.
This is annoying. Or at least, it can often feel that way. The most uncharitable read of these types of video is that they feed into the very worst aspects of what you might call the creator economy: the transformation of the self into a brand, the colonization of all hours of the day by work, the ruthless commodification of all facets of life in which the soul, the body, identity are all things to maximized.
Still. There’s something nonetheless seductive about Abdaal’s videos. As much as he might remind me of various annoying brown kids I grew up around in England, he has now himself become a kind of aspirational brand. He makes a million pounds a year. He has all kinds of nice stuff. As I sit here and type this on my iPad Air, I am reminded of Ali’s reviews of Apple products, the glossy videos, the crisp image, the vision of someone who has the tools he needs to “get stuff done.” I might resent him, and mock him, too, but secretly, almost surreptitiously, I find myself wanting to emulate some part of what he represents.
Whether it is something unique to the contemporary moment, or whether it is simply endemic to being alive, there is something compelling about people who want to offer you tools or tips to make things better. And as this newsletter creeps toward becoming less a clearinghouse for things I find interesting and more like “self-help for people who hate self-help” I find myself occasionally dabbling in this slightly pernicious world of self-improvement.
I say pernicious because it seems likely that the ceaseless dissatisfaction with one’s inability to succeed often has more to do with post-Fordist capitalism than it does some failure we all share to make it all work.
All the same, on the level of the individual, that’s not all it is, is it? While broad proclamations about success or work must take social factors into account, we must also contend with the fact that, within our own lives, there are bills to pay, MacBooks to buy, and long-held personal goals to achieve.
The question then becomes: how does one motivate oneself to face the challenges of life without becoming subject to the very worst of the 2020s?
Part of the answer seems to be seek out those things that root the idea of personal challenge in the human — or, to perhaps better ground that vague term, the humane, and the humanities. It is one thing to watch a YouTuber tell you how to read more books, but another to read someone discuss how one might fit beauty, art, ideas into a life that seems too busy.
The latter seems preferable not just because of my obvious ideological leanings. Rather, even people like Abdaal eventually recognize the limits of their approach. In a recent video called “My Toxic Relationship with Productivity,” Abdaal details how he worked himself into a rut, constantly feeling dissatisfied and forever feeling like he wasn’t achieving enough. Again: he’s a very young doctor who is now also a millionaire.
Even Abdaal who, let’s face it, isn’t exactly spending his free time writing scathing critiques of capitalism, can see there is something wrong. But while I wouldn’t recommend immersing yourself in the world of glossy YouTube productivity tutorials, I’d argue there is still a place for people looking for betterment but for whom both the tech’ed out quantified self and The Secret-style self-help are off-putting, or more plainly, a bad fit.
After all, thankfully, it isn’t merely grating YouTubers and self-help gurus who write about that nebulous idea of “making life better.” There are also those who have immersed themselves deeply in the history of ideas. Read on, and continue to read TPO, for more :)
Helpful Things
•Tech-induced distraction can seem like one of those topics that can get a bit tired — seemingly a relic of those moments of historical anxiety during which new technologies emerge. But I think it might better be thought of as an evergreen subject because it is a basic condition of modernity. And though this New Yorker piece on distraction is from 2015, it still feels very useful to me because it feels grounded in the tension between autonomy and late capitalism:
When you write an essay in Microsoft Word while watching, in another window, an episode of “American Ninja Warrior”—trust me, you can do this —you’re declaring your independence from the drudgery of work... Distraction is appealing precisely because it’s active and rebellious.
Needless to say, not all distractions are self-generated; the world is becoming ever more saturated with ads. And this, Crawford thinks, has turned distraction into a contest between corporate power and individual will.
•This is one of those long, luxurious reads you might delve into on a cloudy afternoon. In it, Alison Gopnik recounts her life falling apart in middle age, and how she found herself again through researching David Hume and his connections to Buddhist philosophy.
There is this gem:
I had always been curious about Buddhism, although, as a committed atheist, I was suspicious of anything religious. And turning 50 and becoming bisexual and Buddhist did seem far too predictable—a sort of Berkeley bat mitzvah, a standard rite of passage for aging Jewish academic women in Northern California.
But it is also just a long, delightful read about the possibility of life. Yes yes, it skips over the tensions of colonialism and power and, oh, you know. But I still think this is worth sitting with, perhaps with a cup of tea.
Good Things
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There is something incredibly satisfying about watching geniuses do their thing. In this video, drummer Larnell Lewis hears Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” for the first time — which, first of all: what? — but then, after one listen, plays the drum track of the song flawlessly. What is most fascinating is the way Lewis appears to sketch out the song in his head, almost in a visual manner, before diving right in. It is always breathtaking to see raw talent; it is another thing entirely to see talent that has been honed and refined over years. Also: he's a Torontonian!
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Another standup recommendation: great little set from Rob Haze on the James Corden show. The subtly smart, deadpan genre is a fave of mine.
That’s it for this issue folks! Look for another in April, which may well be the cruellest month… But with vaccines and the weather warming us for those of us in northern climates, hope is on the horizon, friends.