quick actions: join me where I’m spending time
Having gone through a dark night of the soul about the failures of social media, which drove me from digital utopian to technomedia cynic, there are just a few places where I invest my time online. And I’d love to see you in any of these places:
The one social media platform where I spend time & energy is Threads
I’m still thinking and talking about an Optionality-driven life, and we introduced a new no-cost Community membership, so you can join and check it out or just dive right into Premium membership too. (And yes, we still have the Substack, and I wrote this week’s newsletter. You can subscribe there too, if you prefer.)
I use Linkedin still, though it’s sometimes a lonely cry amid the AI slop!
And I launched the #BuffyLifeLessons newsletter (separate from this one)
So, about introspection
According to a podcast interview VC Marc Anderson gave recently, he doesn’t believe in an introspective life. Just go. Go forward. He takes it a step further and claims that introspection is a modern invention. That you can blame Freud and the like.
Let’s not be too surprised. This is the guy who thinks that worrying about the potential pitfalls or unintended consequence from cutting edge technologies is basically the move of a weakling.
It is one thing to say, “No regrets, brah!” That is not a new concept. And if Andreeson wanted to claim he didn’t look back at past decisions and outcomes when trying to make progress or innovate, I’d be skeptical…your pattern-matching investment style would like a word…but I can almost relate. I mean, I’ve been known to say that one of the questions I hate getting the most is, “If you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently?”
I hate it because I believe it's unanswerable. At every step in life, most of us do what we have the knowledge, experience, and perspective to decide to do. I don't find it useful to try to project current me into past me's decision-making.
In that sense, I get his point.
So, stay in your lane and talk about your approach, what works for you, what you believe has been the most effective tactic (even if I side-eye it).
But this whole ahistorical, “introspection is modern” thing…dude, that’s a liberal arts major’s lane, and you need to stay out of it.
Have you met Shakespeare? The soliloquy is nothing if not introspection out loud, by very definition, and that’s from the 1600s.
I’d argue the Bible has examples of introspection. In fact I asked Claude about several of the world’s major religions and the role of introspection and got a very interesting answer…one that drew distinctions between how different faiths both reference and direct introspective moments.
It’s OK too simply say what you believe works for you. Like. At least try leaving it there.
You don’t have to pretend that your opinion is really a sweeping cogent analysis. And that the rest of us have just been suckered in. And even if introspection was modern, aren’t we supposed to be evolving and innovating? Being modern seems like a reason to try it out not dismiss it.
The whole thing just pushes my buttons. Obviously. But as I wrote on LinkedIn, given that entire platform’s content is just people (or AI tools) mining their past experiences for insights to share:
“I imagine we will all ignore this statement and let it slide. And certainly not obey its implied recommendation to stop finding the lessons from past experiences. Because it's nonsensical. I would only suggest that maybe if we can ignore this pronouncement, we can ignore other pronouncements too? We can stop thinking money=wisdom across every topic?”
I certainly hope so.
Did you hear about this comment? What do you think?
a final word
Have you ever noticed how we call people, in aggregate, “talent,” but don’t really talk much about talent, and how talent is different from skills or training?
Until next time,
Elisa CP