Issue #41: Deacon King Kong, Punctuated Equilibrium and Trespassing.
Photo by Joseph Rosales on Unsplash
At the risk of sounding insensitive, rushing through the now, I want to believe that on the other side of this period we are going through will be a lot of positive. Because this period we are in is probably the worst most of us have ever witnessed. And it hurts particularly for marginalized and oppressed groups.
But what I see is a future where majority of us will work together in recognition of our shared humanity.
Empathy will be a shared approach to living in the world.
Family will become more central to our identities. And I mean family in both the traditional sense and the affinity or interest groups some us have adopted online/in our virtual worlds.
Work will have to adapt to the requirements of the most skilled workers. Some extremely skilled workers, stars in their domains, will be able to command crazy fees working multiple companies at the same time. All within the confines of a cozy office at home and self-determined hours of work.
Entrepreneurship will increase and we will all compete for and have a shot at opportunities in most parts of the world.
Some friends call me unrealistically optimistic. But that’s not the case. My optimistic realism is based on a belief that when people know better, they make better choices. And we now know better. We will have to make choices to do better because it will take action from the decent people (who vastly outnumber the not-so-decent).
My hopes and expectations are also based on the macroevolutionary theory of ‘Punctuated equilibrium’. From a paper written by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge. The theory suggests that most species originate in punctuations (moments) and persist in stasis. If that’s true, and it was hotly debated, this period is a punctuation nudging us out of our stasis. And, because I believe in the better parts of our nature prevailing during a crisis, we will come out on the other side of this moment with leaps of change from our evolutionary state and developed cultures - schools being confined to certain hours of the day in a certain room packed with kids, 9-5’s with people in large gaps between 4 walls masking as cool offices, obligatory handshakes, race as a dividing concept etc - that we’ve held as unchangeable for so long.
I maintain the positive slant of the articles and books in this issue and, for the most part I promise to keep doing that (even though it continues to be a tough time to be a black man with black sons in America). You can read about a true life ‘Lord of the Flies’ story with a twist in the tale. And whiplash to a story about a small town in Texas that did not watch the space flight with glee and would ‘Lord of the Flies’ Elon Musk if they had a chance to do that. Gauge your own personal political power against that of your fave celebrity or most despised politician. Dive deeper into ‘Punctuated Equilibrium’ or explore the battle between Barbie and Bratz. There are also reviews of books that will transport you away from the day-to-day, bring a smile to your face and spark neurons.
I've also added ~100 of my articles to the 'Life Judo' page on Polymathic Monthly. Contains predictions on Uber, Ring, Football going the way of boxing and many more in-depth articles. And it's all free!
I do hope you are doing well as you read this. I’m certain the links will open your mind and expand your thinking. If you could do me a favor and share with one person in your life who needs encouragement right now? I’d appreciate that greatly.
Articles
Is the ‘lord of the flies’ outcome truly how humans would respond to a shipwreck situation? You’ll be glad to know the answer in ‘no’. And the true story of 6 shipwrecked kids on an island will show you how remarkably resilient we can be.
I’ve always said that when I’m so wealthy and I got to the point where I don’t know what to do with my money, that I’d know exactly what to do with my money; I’d fund libraries. Because ‘If we have any chance of rebuilding a better society, social infrastructure like the library is precisely what we need.’
Boca Chica, SpaceX and the ever shifting line between public benefit and corporate disregard.
Develop a personal philosophy and it will go a long way towards helping you fight FOPO.
Pretty certain you’ve seen ‘The Boat’, yes ‘seen’. If you have, well worth another read/watch. If you haven’t, be prepared for a ride.
‘The feud between Barbie and Bratz occupies the narrow space between thin lines: between fashion and porn, between originals and copies, and between toys for girls and rights for women.’ That’s a sentence right there…
15 years after ‘Punctuated Equilibrium [Science, Longread]’ which shattered the a priori view that phyletic gradualism was the way of evolution, the work of Stephen Jay Gould (mentioned above) was Remeasured by Matthew Lau. It was relevant then and even more so now as we deal with science based racism, climate change and pandemics. Gould was a pragmatic optimist. We could learn a lot from him.
Because Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an expert at something, we assume he know and can speak on all things. Everyone has an epidemiological opinion about COVID19. The guy who built Netscape suggests that it’s time to build cities and we gobble it up as gospel. Even as we ignore skilled practitioners who are doing the work they have the expertise in. Neil DeGrasse Tyson/Marc Andreessen/Name your celebrity commentator who has and propagates a (non) expert opinion is committing Epistemic Trespassing [Research, Longread]. We are all trespassers at heart. But we can have questions and investigate things outside our domain of expertise (necessarily) but limit the confidence we have in our opinions about those questions.
What’s the difference between (say) Beyonce and (say) Katrina Lake? Turns out, not much. And there is a lot founders can learn from rockstars. And did you know Micheal Stipe of REM got equal pay as everyone else on the band? And it’s the same with Coldplay!
Marcus Hutchins became a hero, saving us all from Wannacry. And then it all unraveled [Longread].
And it is truly premature to call time on megacities. But we must build them differently from what we have now, with empathy and equity since we are not neutral builders.
Books
When regular folk read the Instagram story, No Filter, there are two possible takeaway’s i: what is this world where people get $100’s of thousands of dollars based on an idea and/or ii) our culture of perpetual fixations on some ‘ideal’ as represented in an image shared by an influencer should stay in the pre-covid19 days.
Super Pumped, the Uber story, was (uhm) uber revealing.
Recursion, by Blake Crouch, worked for the first half of the book. The author got carried away and ended up with too many instances of the same problem to be solved. Well written and fast paced, the movie (coming soon) will hopefully not end up like the ‘Cloud Atlas’ movie.
By far the book I read in the last few weeks was James McBride’s ‘Deacon King Kong’. Centered around a few blocks close to the Brooklyn waterfronts in the 1960’s, the novel is nostalgic, funny and the characters are as rich as I’ve experienced in a long time. Prepare to be transported and pleasantly surprised.
Thanks for subscribing and sharing Polymathic Monthly. I’m still taking book recommendations.
Stay well and stay safe,
Seyi