I find value every time you acknowledge those feelings of uncertainty on the path you’ve chosen. Too often, people who’ve reached a certain level of “influence” pretend they have everything figured out. But you’ve been consistent. It’s always refreshing and reassuring to me (and I’m sure many others) when you’ve declared the opposite.
Thanks for being this open and vulnerable with us, Paul. I found myself thinking that it is a bit silly how much attention I devoted to Trump's actions and their possible consequences, especially after he put the majority of tarriffs on hold (for now). I asked myself: Will this really be something people think back at as imporant im ten or twenty years? Maybe, but probably not. I have to guard my time and attention. This is the reason I just cannot use platforms like Twitter: The constant noise of fundamentally ephemeral outrage would consume me whole and I would finally be completely unable to have coherent thoughts about what really happens in society.
Yup. It’s a race to the bottom. I think like in 2016 it takes some tinkering to set up your own healthy guardrails so you don’t get hacked by this stuff. I’ve definitely wasted too much time in the past few weeks which motivated this essay.
This is beautiful. I think what is most needed is a reframing of what we mean by talking about politics. To me, this is a very political piece in the best sense of the word. What matters to you, how you think we should be for and with one another. I loved it. Slapping labels onto millions of total strangers based on a guess as to which binary choice they made at a moment in time has always been lazy and now it is proactively unhelpful. It is quite a feat to be able to take the highly nuanced and terrifically interdependent issues that politics (especially at a federal level) must address and have the public discourse surrounding them be consistently so deeply, deeply stupid. But we seem to effortlessly accomplish the task. The way to change the depth of conversation is the to change the depth of conversation. Thank you for taking the time to do that here.
Hey Paul! Been a while; I hope you're well. I'm with you. I think we've reached an inflection point, especially with the current Internet age of a handful of giant social platforms dominating online culture, where people are starting to see them for what they are and what they're doing to us. The harvesting of everyone's attention for outrage, clicks, and ad-driven distraction, while trying to suffocate an open web that to me anyway, was far more conducive to the type of intellectual discovery and conversation you're describing as a kind of aspirational goal.
Lately I've been trying to extricate myself from algorithmic timelines/feeds almost entirely: X I've started using Pro/Tweetdeck again, looking only at lists. Instagram I've deleted off my phone entirely. I downloaded Inoreader to use for news consumption; sort of an RSS reader on steroids where I can bring in newsletter feeds as well and consume the information from the sources I want to consume, not whatever outreach bait accumulated enough likes/hearts etc. Basically, I'm trying to experience the internet again like it was 2004. Not that it was perfect back then, either. But as of now, it feels less noisy. Less saturated with the kind of hyper-partisan "yapping" and commenting on *~everything~* that feels exhausting to read through. I'm seeing how this goes and whether or not I can stay informed on the things that matter. But I think I'm going to stick with it and see how it goes.
Reading your thoughts this morning, I found myself nodding along and saying, "I think I'm feeling the same thing." Your thoughts echo a lot of what I've been feeling, viscerally, but didn't have words for.
I sometimes come up against this realization that the people I resonate with the most (even or especially on Substack) are the ones who don't have 10k+ followers and aren't on here every day. They're the ones out in the world living their lives and doing really incredible things. And the ones who have grown really large followings often haven't lived full lives in that sense.
I love the online commons, but almost wish for more of a "secret society" feel sometimes. Not quite the right words, but I hope the idea comes across.
Just to say thank you. And congrats on surviving a 16.5 hour flight.
I think substack notes is turning into a nice place. But I think I get what you mean. A dynamic place where people keep showing up and there’s no risk of the commons being polluted.
This is a wonderful heartfelt essay Paul. I especially love “many of the most inspiring people are not in the “village square” of ideas and that most people are going through life performing the heroic act of doing what they can in their own small corner of the world.” I think about this a lot when I am outside of the US and in cultures that are less digital. There are so many heroes out there, but they’re not necessarily sharing about themselves on the Internet. They’re doing the work of making the world go around - focusing on their own here and now, a lot less talking and a lot more being in real life.
My coach Catherine Andrews said at the beginning of this election cycle, think "firehose vs. sprinkler". Don't waste any precious energy fighting this bat shit crazy fire with a sprinkler (eg/ engage with people in political fights online). What is the one thing you can do in this political environment that is the most impactful? Fight with that tool and it will become your firehose.
Love your work Paul and so sad NYT didn't include pathless path peeps!!! Congrats to Angie!
Loved this piece so much! I relate to so much (writing to search for hope, but also because I simply enjoy it; feeling more and more cynical about online spaces; reminding myself that this too shall pass but finding myself caring nevertheless; wanting to embrace the ambiguity of life and set aside political battles that write off whole swaths of people). All of which you brilliantly expressed, but I especially loved this ➡️ "I want to participate in an intellectual commons that values thoughtfulness, civility, and depth." I still have faith something special will emerge from allllll this! Thanks for sharing and good luck settling in to your new home :)
I’ve genuinely been looking into becoming an outdoor guide recently.
This is partly due to the feelings you outline so well here, that non-participation is the sane choice, and that I miss the outdoors life of the athlete but also, that people face to face are people. Maybe I’d just prefer to encounter everyone like that.
Wow, Paul! Thank you for writing this. It’s the kind of reflection I didn’t know I needed until I read it. Thoughtful, grounded, and so utterly human. It’s rare to come across a piece on the state of the internet that doesn’t spiral into despair or detachment, but instead moves with care toward something more real.
Your reflections on the intellectual commons struck a deep chord. “I care about trying to mean what I say and being consistent with values I embrace. I want to participate in an intellectual commons that values thoughtfulness, civility, and depth.” That is the exact ethos I’ve been hoping to find and help foster. A space where ideas aren’t gamified but tended. Where curiosity is the point, not the posture.
This, too, captured something real: “Today’s online politics taps into a human creative impulse but in an incomplete way.” I’ve felt that pull. The lure of pseudo-creativity. That search for the cleverest “take” that promises belonging but leaves you emptier than before. You named it with painful precision. Ouch!
But the line that stayed with me most was this: “I write because I find it enjoyable and satisfying and will stop when that’s no longer the case. I mostly write about what I’m curious about but sometimes I write like this. Writing to make sense of what the hell I think.” That didn’t just resonate. It reminded me why I write at all.
Thank you for showing up in this space, especially when it’s easier not to. The way you wrestle in public reminds the rest of us that the commons are still worth showing up for.
And thank you for recording The Pathless Path in your own voice. I just downloaded it on Audible and look forward to listening.
Grateful for the work you’re doing. It matters more than you know.
This is a kind, vulnerable email. I will try to be both.
There is a clear difference between cruelty and kindness. Between a lust for power and following the law. Between thinking of yourself and thinking of the country. And between what's happening now and anything that's happened since the Depression.
The oil light has been on for a long time. Smoke has been showing for the past few months. The last two weeks showed a little flame or two coming out from under the hood.
Some of you know that my brother was a senior economic journalist (Reuters, Bloomberg) for many years. He's also far more affable than I am, so he's made friends with a lot of people you've seen on TV or read in the New Yorker. He's also close to a lot of people you only see on TV if you like to watch coverage of European central bankers.
They are all terrified. TERRIFIED. The nicest ones have expressed pity. Not about the President--that's old hat. About what is probably going to happen.
Just three days ago one of them, a professional economist with a Sinological specialty who works closely with many Chinese financial players, looked him in the eye and said "China holds $800 billion in US bonds. Don't you think they'd gladly spend $800B to destroy the dollar as a global reserve currency? They wouldn't even *blink*."
You may not care about history, but history is fixin' to care about you.
Thank you for such a thoughtful and refreshing piece of writing. I have been reflecting this weekend on how the liminal space - when we don't really know what's next, when we've detoured away from what others are doing - is a valid and necessary part of our journey.
Your essay reminds me of what Jung said about what will spare humanity from total annihilation is a critical mass of those who are able to hold the tension of the opposites - those who can resist the pull to side with one extreme or the other (both inside ourselves and outside ourselves), and are able to instead sit in ambiguity and hold a wider perspective. I really appreciate your contribution here as a model of how to do just that.
I find value every time you acknowledge those feelings of uncertainty on the path you’ve chosen. Too often, people who’ve reached a certain level of “influence” pretend they have everything figured out. But you’ve been consistent. It’s always refreshing and reassuring to me (and I’m sure many others) when you’ve declared the opposite.
thanks man - i learn from people like you too. pretending you have it figured out sounds more exhausting lol
Agreed!
Thanks for being this open and vulnerable with us, Paul. I found myself thinking that it is a bit silly how much attention I devoted to Trump's actions and their possible consequences, especially after he put the majority of tarriffs on hold (for now). I asked myself: Will this really be something people think back at as imporant im ten or twenty years? Maybe, but probably not. I have to guard my time and attention. This is the reason I just cannot use platforms like Twitter: The constant noise of fundamentally ephemeral outrage would consume me whole and I would finally be completely unable to have coherent thoughts about what really happens in society.
Yup. It’s a race to the bottom. I think like in 2016 it takes some tinkering to set up your own healthy guardrails so you don’t get hacked by this stuff. I’ve definitely wasted too much time in the past few weeks which motivated this essay.
This is beautiful. I think what is most needed is a reframing of what we mean by talking about politics. To me, this is a very political piece in the best sense of the word. What matters to you, how you think we should be for and with one another. I loved it. Slapping labels onto millions of total strangers based on a guess as to which binary choice they made at a moment in time has always been lazy and now it is proactively unhelpful. It is quite a feat to be able to take the highly nuanced and terrifically interdependent issues that politics (especially at a federal level) must address and have the public discourse surrounding them be consistently so deeply, deeply stupid. But we seem to effortlessly accomplish the task. The way to change the depth of conversation is the to change the depth of conversation. Thank you for taking the time to do that here.
Well said.
Hey Paul! Been a while; I hope you're well. I'm with you. I think we've reached an inflection point, especially with the current Internet age of a handful of giant social platforms dominating online culture, where people are starting to see them for what they are and what they're doing to us. The harvesting of everyone's attention for outrage, clicks, and ad-driven distraction, while trying to suffocate an open web that to me anyway, was far more conducive to the type of intellectual discovery and conversation you're describing as a kind of aspirational goal.
Lately I've been trying to extricate myself from algorithmic timelines/feeds almost entirely: X I've started using Pro/Tweetdeck again, looking only at lists. Instagram I've deleted off my phone entirely. I downloaded Inoreader to use for news consumption; sort of an RSS reader on steroids where I can bring in newsletter feeds as well and consume the information from the sources I want to consume, not whatever outreach bait accumulated enough likes/hearts etc. Basically, I'm trying to experience the internet again like it was 2004. Not that it was perfect back then, either. But as of now, it feels less noisy. Less saturated with the kind of hyper-partisan "yapping" and commenting on *~everything~* that feels exhausting to read through. I'm seeing how this goes and whether or not I can stay informed on the things that matter. But I think I'm going to stick with it and see how it goes.
Very similar to my approach.
Thank you for the tip, I'll check out Inoreader.
Reading your thoughts this morning, I found myself nodding along and saying, "I think I'm feeling the same thing." Your thoughts echo a lot of what I've been feeling, viscerally, but didn't have words for.
I sometimes come up against this realization that the people I resonate with the most (even or especially on Substack) are the ones who don't have 10k+ followers and aren't on here every day. They're the ones out in the world living their lives and doing really incredible things. And the ones who have grown really large followings often haven't lived full lives in that sense.
I love the online commons, but almost wish for more of a "secret society" feel sometimes. Not quite the right words, but I hope the idea comes across.
Just to say thank you. And congrats on surviving a 16.5 hour flight.
I think substack notes is turning into a nice place. But I think I get what you mean. A dynamic place where people keep showing up and there’s no risk of the commons being polluted.
yes. Exactly.
This is a wonderful heartfelt essay Paul. I especially love “many of the most inspiring people are not in the “village square” of ideas and that most people are going through life performing the heroic act of doing what they can in their own small corner of the world.” I think about this a lot when I am outside of the US and in cultures that are less digital. There are so many heroes out there, but they’re not necessarily sharing about themselves on the Internet. They’re doing the work of making the world go around - focusing on their own here and now, a lot less talking and a lot more being in real life.
My coach Catherine Andrews said at the beginning of this election cycle, think "firehose vs. sprinkler". Don't waste any precious energy fighting this bat shit crazy fire with a sprinkler (eg/ engage with people in political fights online). What is the one thing you can do in this political environment that is the most impactful? Fight with that tool and it will become your firehose.
Love your work Paul and so sad NYT didn't include pathless path peeps!!! Congrats to Angie!
Loved this piece so much! I relate to so much (writing to search for hope, but also because I simply enjoy it; feeling more and more cynical about online spaces; reminding myself that this too shall pass but finding myself caring nevertheless; wanting to embrace the ambiguity of life and set aside political battles that write off whole swaths of people). All of which you brilliantly expressed, but I especially loved this ➡️ "I want to participate in an intellectual commons that values thoughtfulness, civility, and depth." I still have faith something special will emerge from allllll this! Thanks for sharing and good luck settling in to your new home :)
Appreciate this! Long games!
I’ve genuinely been looking into becoming an outdoor guide recently.
This is partly due to the feelings you outline so well here, that non-participation is the sane choice, and that I miss the outdoors life of the athlete but also, that people face to face are people. Maybe I’d just prefer to encounter everyone like that.
I’ll go on your tours 😆
Wow, Paul! Thank you for writing this. It’s the kind of reflection I didn’t know I needed until I read it. Thoughtful, grounded, and so utterly human. It’s rare to come across a piece on the state of the internet that doesn’t spiral into despair or detachment, but instead moves with care toward something more real.
Your reflections on the intellectual commons struck a deep chord. “I care about trying to mean what I say and being consistent with values I embrace. I want to participate in an intellectual commons that values thoughtfulness, civility, and depth.” That is the exact ethos I’ve been hoping to find and help foster. A space where ideas aren’t gamified but tended. Where curiosity is the point, not the posture.
This, too, captured something real: “Today’s online politics taps into a human creative impulse but in an incomplete way.” I’ve felt that pull. The lure of pseudo-creativity. That search for the cleverest “take” that promises belonging but leaves you emptier than before. You named it with painful precision. Ouch!
But the line that stayed with me most was this: “I write because I find it enjoyable and satisfying and will stop when that’s no longer the case. I mostly write about what I’m curious about but sometimes I write like this. Writing to make sense of what the hell I think.” That didn’t just resonate. It reminded me why I write at all.
Thank you for showing up in this space, especially when it’s easier not to. The way you wrestle in public reminds the rest of us that the commons are still worth showing up for.
And thank you for recording The Pathless Path in your own voice. I just downloaded it on Audible and look forward to listening.
Grateful for the work you’re doing. It matters more than you know.
Thanks Glenn! And don’t worry I know the pseudo creativity because I’ve fallen into the trap too!
Appreciate a thoughtful reflection like this. Keep me going!
This is a kind, vulnerable email. I will try to be both.
There is a clear difference between cruelty and kindness. Between a lust for power and following the law. Between thinking of yourself and thinking of the country. And between what's happening now and anything that's happened since the Depression.
The oil light has been on for a long time. Smoke has been showing for the past few months. The last two weeks showed a little flame or two coming out from under the hood.
Some of you know that my brother was a senior economic journalist (Reuters, Bloomberg) for many years. He's also far more affable than I am, so he's made friends with a lot of people you've seen on TV or read in the New Yorker. He's also close to a lot of people you only see on TV if you like to watch coverage of European central bankers.
They are all terrified. TERRIFIED. The nicest ones have expressed pity. Not about the President--that's old hat. About what is probably going to happen.
Just three days ago one of them, a professional economist with a Sinological specialty who works closely with many Chinese financial players, looked him in the eye and said "China holds $800 billion in US bonds. Don't you think they'd gladly spend $800B to destroy the dollar as a global reserve currency? They wouldn't even *blink*."
You may not care about history, but history is fixin' to care about you.
I think this is spot on about china
Well said, Paul. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for such a thoughtful and refreshing piece of writing. I have been reflecting this weekend on how the liminal space - when we don't really know what's next, when we've detoured away from what others are doing - is a valid and necessary part of our journey.
Your essay reminds me of what Jung said about what will spare humanity from total annihilation is a critical mass of those who are able to hold the tension of the opposites - those who can resist the pull to side with one extreme or the other (both inside ourselves and outside ourselves), and are able to instead sit in ambiguity and hold a wider perspective. I really appreciate your contribution here as a model of how to do just that.
Thank you so very much for your writing today. It is exactly what I was needing to read.
Yesterday I made the decision that I had to put down and stop following all the “news of the day.”
My word for the year was supposed to be “creativity,” and the way I have been feeling has pretty much squashed any movement towards that.
Thanks again! 🙏🏻
Finding my way back too!
"It’s not worth it and that sucks." This was my favorite line!
🙏
Excellent article today, Paul. I feel very much the same way...lost. Thanks for sharing how you feel.
nice - two people lost is good enough to not be lost anymore haha