My Content List #11, Tues 9/17

Opening Rant: The Hierarchy of Suffering

Dovetailing from the topic of “hustleporn” (about which I’ve written previously), I recently found myself engulfed in a conversation about life circumstances. Everybody has a story of hardship — as the cliche goes — but once I learned about my friend’s upbringing in a home with an alcoholic father and a suicidal mother, I was unsure how to respond. I’d had my own experience surviving some tangentially-similar parental turmoil, so I shared some of that history in response, as an attempt to make my empathy clear (which is one of the toughest emotions to convey in circumstances like this, thus many people opt for the generic “I’m so sorry” without anything more)

My response was taken well; we started discussing coping mechanisms useful in those most trying times — keeping the mind and body healthy, having trusted friends/confidants, seeking cathartic/immersive activities like surfing, reading, playing music, etc. This served as a worthwhile segue to focus on the positives rather than to dwell on the negatives.

Then, in an ultimate seeing-forest-through-the-trees moment, my friend dropped the following quote (which I’d told him would be instantly added to my all-time favorite sayings list):

“Long ago, I adopted the belief that there are no winners in creating a hierarchy of suffering…We’re all doing our best and, ideally, learning to do better.”

Let that sink in for a second… “no winners in a hierarchy of suffering.” Adversity is contextually unique and always will be; relativity isn’t the guiding axiom here (or, really, in any interpersonal setting). Thus, comparing hardships and adversities (or hours worked, experiences sacrificed, etc. in the hustleporn domain) is the epitome of a no-win situation. Empathy and humility ought to be the guiding principles whenever such circumstances/situations are discussed — NOT the all-to-frequent (though oft internal) “how does my situation stack up → does that make me ~better~” type of response.

When coupled with empathy+humility, motivation is another desirable (though admittedly more self-interested) sentiment that can come out of situations like these. By motivation, I mean realizing that whatever constructs of excuses/impediments your brain has conceived really don’t mean all that much, especially since he/she can accomplish all that given XYZ circumstances, so you’d better get going.

In closing I’ll relate this to another topic I wrote about recently — the diversity of thought. Surrounding oneself exclusively with “privileged” and/or otherwise homogeneous peers, methinks, yields far less collective empathy than you’ll find in a group of diverse backgrounds — especially those in which self-disclosure about one’s struggles is as welcomed as touting one’s progress/success. And although “collective empathy” may not be readily quantifiable, I’d argue that it is highly correlated both to individual well-being and to overall productivity/satisfaction/etc.

This ethos can be summed up to the thesis of a speech made I heard as a Freshman by one of our deans — a thesis I didn’t think much of at the time but that has stuck in my head ever since:

Don’t compare — Connect!

Chalk all this up to “virtue signaling”? You’ve clearly missed my point.

Got something to contribute? Think my reasoning is flawed? Drop me a note; I’d love to hear from you!

Follow me @James R. Shecter. Or don’t.

My Content List #11, Tuesday 9/17

Articles

Personal Branding for People Who Hate Personal Branding | Fast Company

Will Your Uploaded Mind Still Be You? | WSJ

The race to create a perfect lie detector — and the dangers of succeeding | The Guardian

How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition | The Atlantic

How U.S. Banks Took Over the World | WSJ

White Claw Is What Happens When Being Cool Becomes Exhausting | The Atlantic

He Ran an Empire of Soap and Mayonnaise. Now He Wants to Reinvent Capitalism | NYTimes

Young Chinese Spend Like Americans — and Take on Worrisome Debt | WSJ

From Voodoo Economics to Evil Eye Economics | NYTimes

Stop Blaming Private Equity For The Problems Of The Retail Industry | Forbes

A Top Financier of Trump and McConnell is a Driving Force Behind Amazon Deforestation | The Intercept

Do Influencers Need to Tell Audiences They’re Getting Paid? | HBR

How Amazon and Silicon Valley Seduced the Pentagon | Fortune

Brexit & Benefits (Part II) | The EconoMiss

What Is A Tech Company? | Stratechery

From mind control to murder? How a deadly fall revealed the CIA’s darkest secrets | The Guardian

Silicon Valley’s Crisis of Conscience | The New Yorker

• There is a brutal irony that has arisen as part of the “time better spent” culture — that in order to advocate an approach on how to navigate the “attention economy” mindfully, one must first become part of that economy him/herself to attract attention!
• Secondly, have any readers visited Esalen (the oasis destination at the focal point of this story)? If so, please let me know! Sounds like a spot I’d like to add to my vacation prospect list.

Peloton is a Phenomen. Can It Last? | NYTimes

Belei, Amazon’s First Skincare Brand, Is Not a Hit | Marketplace Pulse

A Behavioral Economist Tries to Fix Email | The Atlantic

Why Can’t California Solve Its Housing Crisis? | RollingStone

A Single Math Model Explains Many Mysteries of Vision | Wired

If Everyone’s Left San Francisco for Burning Man, Who Are All These People? | WSJ

Alphabet and other giants are betting that the future of real estate is robotic | FastCompany

Which US companies had the biggest valuation jumps in 2019? | PitchBook

How to Major in Unicorn | NYMag

• Was Stanford always this startup-crazed?

UBS’s Julie Fox: “Why we should think about life in terms of three strategies: Liquidity, Longevity and Legacy” | Thrive Global

• Shoutout to my cousin Julie sharing her wisdom / channeling some Dalio-esque principles

‘He’s Full of Shit’: How Elon Musk Fooled Investors, Bilked Taxpayers, and Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity | VanityFair

Unfulfilled at the Amazon Tour | The Outline

Your Watch Says More About Your Status Than You Think | WSJ

Are Spies More Trouble Than They’re Worth? | The New Yorker

The Baffling Legal Gray Zone of Marijuana at the Airport | WSJ

The Evolution of Tennis in Four Grips | NYTimes

Bring Back Handwriting — It’s Good For Your Brain | Elemental

This Little Black Box Does Heavy Lifting for Wall Street | WSJ

The Next Recession Will Destroy Millenials | The Atlantic

Venture-Capital Stalwart Battles Washington’s Crypto Crackdown | WSJ

I Gooped Myself | The Atlantic

Surfing in the Age of the Omnipresent Camera | The New Yorker

US Open’s bad behavior trend is reminiscent of bygone era | ESPN

Podcasts

20-Minute VC: Jana Messerschmidt, Partner Lightspeed VC

The Unknown Brain | NPR TED Radio Hour

Believers & Doubters | NPR TED Radio Hour

The Modal American | NPR Planet Money

• When people say “the average American,” what they really mean is the modal American — i.e. what is the most frequent “type” of person you’re likely to encounter on any given stroll?

Decide Already! | NPR Hidden Brain

The Value Of ‘Deep Work’ In An Age Of Distraction | NPR Hidden Brain

Neither Confirm Nor Deny | RadioLab

• Do you know the history of that now ubiquitous phrase? I didn’t either…