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#1 Nomads: I spent some time in Bali a couple weeks ago with friends, but had a few extra days by myself. I ended up staying at Roam, a co-living community that has been profiled by a few journalists - and in a way that makes it seem dystopian and work-obsessed. Given these low expectations, I was surprised to find people who were generally welcoming, kind and generous group of people that were living there for various periods of time. Intentional co-living seemed like a welcome improvement over hotels or even hostels that I’ve stayed at in the past.
In the people I talked with, there was still a general sense of “figuring it out” and pondering questions like “how do I balance community and adventure” / “how hard should I work?” / “how do I want to live my life.” However, I could not escape the feeling in myself and from others that there is still an underlying chase and the fact that Bali was hardly a challenging place to make a move. If anything, Bali has all the amenities of the bougie city life with more yoga, slightly cheaper food, cheap housing and better instagram views.
I stumbled across this article on nomads from Andrew Taggart on nomads which seems to point to some of the skepticism I have, “...we think that freedom as flight is the greatest good because we’re away from all that ails us and because no one can coerce us or make us move this way or that.”
He goes on:
“So flight is both problem and solution, both cause and comfort. I don’t think this is going to work. Freedom as flight may move us about, may make us relieved that we’re not stuck, but in actuality we’re not getting anywhere and we’re really really stuck. Flight is a way of going in circles.”
The article also talks about some of the ways to explore nomadic life in a non-escape way. I’ve been telling people over the past year that my business goal is “to live a good life” - half provocatively / half seriously. I’ve been exploring nomadism as a way to lower my cost of living as a way to free up more time to figure out both what a “good life” looks like and attempt to live it while also using it as a way to spend more time with my family, which provides me sanity, purpose and meaning.
Alas, I am not sure Bali is the right fit for my life at this moment.
#2 Platforms/Tech: Jaron Lanier rails against the tech world while still being curiously employed by Microsoft. He shares his perspective on the downfalls of social media: “And unfortunately there’s this asymmetry in human emotions where the negative emotions of fear and hatred and paranoia and resentment come up faster, more cheaply, and they’re harder to dispel than the positive emotions” and sees the only options for the future of tech platforms as a decision between socialism (turn companies into non-profits) or libertarianism (charge people to use them, pay people who contribute).
#3 Dating As Philosophy: This professor gives students extra credit to go on a sober date with someone to think more deeply about the types of lives they want to live. (may be paywalled).
#4 Personality Tests: I have been a vocal critic of the test that shall not be named (it starts with an M and has four letters). Here is another article making the case. #endtheMBTI
#5 Skin in the Game: I find Nassim Taleb so entertaining as a thinker and provocateur. Some of his ideas are useful while some just crack me up. I’ll let you decide which, but I highly recommend his book Skin in the Game. He argues that without “skin in the game” - that is systems that expose participants to failure - you do not have stable systems over the long-term. An example is the financial industry, where benefits accrue to employees and large scale costs are pushed to broader society (see: 2008 financial crash). He argues skin in the game (potentially exposing people to personal bankruptcy) could fix this. Here is the short article version and the book.
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