Hello from deep in the heart of my reading nook where I'm wondering why the hell my 90s-era walkman1 works better than my four-year-old Kindle. The cynical answer is planned obsolescence. But cynicism is too easy.
We found a spot along the Via Fonti di Moiano where the hillside fell away revealing the olive trees and homesteads dotting the lower slopes of Assissi village. Gelato fell down the sides of the cones faster than we could eat it. Laura, a Puerto Rican girl with short hair and a shorter temper asked what my philosophy was.
"Fuck it." I said, both quoting and emulating my elderly, surrogate-grandfather of a mentor.
"No, baby. That's too sad. You miss so much that way." Her words caught me like a left-hook out of nowhere but it was the pity in her voice that sent me to the mat. All my clever quips and jaded one-liners suddenly felt cheap and crass. Cynicism is too easy. It doesn't leave enough room for curiosity.
A few weeks ago, Natasha2 said, "And absurdism ftw. Nihilism gives no reason to live or let live." I've been thinking about that a lot if for no other reason than it rhymes with what Laura said 30 years prior. Cynicism and nihilism are not the same, but they share the same corrective: curiosity.
You've heard the phrase, "if you're the smartest person in the room, find a better room" or some variant? I've been workshopping the idea that this might be better stated as curiosity. If you're not the least curious person in the room, find a better room. It needs work. But the germ is there and it is this:
When I walk into a room, I don't want to waste time dick-measuring to see who's smarter, who has the most refined idea, the most letters after their name. Been there, done that, didn't feel any better for it. Instead, I want to walk into a room, see what everyone's been discussing and realize that it's something that had never occurred to me. I want to have to up my game just to stay in the conversation. I want to be challenged not on the basis of an I.Q. score or a post-doc but on how open people are to new ideas and to re-thinking old ideas. And that doesn't happen as often as I'd like because we're all, all too often, entrenched in our thinking.
And so, I'm making a conscious effort to avoid the cynical path. It's hard.
Rather, we make it hard on ourselves. I'm late gen-x. Which doesn't mean anything by itself other than tell you that by the time I turned 21 I had two different records called "Everything Sucks."3 So when John Gaboury perched on his bench outside the KAWC studios, smoking his last cigarette of the day and telling us that his philosophy was "fuck it," we lapped it up. Because, yeah, nothing matters, everything sucks, so, fuck it. It is what it is. Oh well.
And when it comes to things like wondering why my Kindle is broken for the umteenth time, maybe a little cynicism is warranted. Maybe Amazon doesn't have much interest in making an e-reader that will last 30 years. Maybe they shouldn't. After all, getting people to buy new things is how they make money.
But we're trying to be curious, not cynical. So what does that mean in a case like this? Should I be investigating modern design practices and materials sourcing so that I can understand whether Amazon has legitimate reasons for making their devices so breakable? Should I be enrolling in courses to understand supply-side economics better? Maybe. But that would all take a lot of time, skill, and energy that I don't have.
Instead, what if I turn my curiosity on myself, investigate my own reactions and emotions? That's no fun, but I think it's more beneficial in the long run: why am I angry that my Kindle isn't working? Why do I want to avoid buying a new one? Why does it seem like four years of almost daily use is too soon for a device to break down?
I can answer all those questions. I'm irritated that it broke because I only had a little bit of downtime in which to read my book and suddenly not being able to frustrated me. I don't want to buy a new one because it's expensive and is definitely a luxury not a necessity (if for no other reason than I have the Kindle app on my phone.) Four years seems too soon because I have much, much older pieces of kit that still work well and the discrepancy between mechanical and electronic devices is difficult to internalize.
Unfortunately, that's just step one. Because the real work of being curious is coming to terms with a difficult and demanding schedule, or discovering why I feel I can't buy luxuries, or working to balance the world I observe with my internalized feelings of the way things "ought to be."
It's not fun. And it's sure as hell not easy. But I'm trying.
A 1996-issue Sony Walkman Sports Edition. These things are selling for $50 on eBay. For a cassette player. From 1996. Is it possible to be both cynically appalled and intensely curious about who's buying these things? Yes, yes it is.
One of the many reasons I like talking to Natasha is that she packs enough curiosity to fell a thousand cats with a well-aimed questioning of assumptions.
Reel Big Fish, 1994; Descendents, 1996
Damn, dude. I love your cynicism, because it gives me more to think about. It's easy to be curious when negative emotions aren't triggered... me reading about you and the kindle, for example. When anger or sadness is triggered (bur especially anger) it's hard to slow things down and ask questions, but you did it. Practice makes progress, kitty boo.