The Messy Human Middle
Transformation as somewhere between revolution and submission, and how I came to see this
One of the biggest changes in my life has been my understanding of the sources and goals of my growth. When I was younger I believed that government action and technological advancement would save us all, and that these were the only things that could do so. I also believed that I, as an individual, was incapable of being wrong about what I am and what I want, and that society should organize itself around completely validating all self-assertions and immediately satisfying all desires. I resented and rebelled against any and all restrictions on ‘self-expression’, from the necessities of market economies to any actual commitment to loved ones or communities.
My exuberance for government action, technological advancement, and ‘authenticity’ has been severely tempered as a result of my lived experience. My hostility towards the constraints of market economies and the reciprocal obligations of family and community has been completely disbanded. I still think that government action and technological advancement and ‘authenticity’ are at least possibly good, but that they are not necessarily and automatically so, that they are not the highest goods nor the first things we should turn to for our own growth and development. In what follows I’m going to take a look at what I’ve lived through and how my basic human orientation has changed as a result.
In my brief lifetime I’ve seen my government be capable of great moral and technical error. I’ve lived through the great moral errors of the (second) Iraq war and the hyper-financialization that created the 2008 crisis. I’ve seen the great technical errors of Obama’s too-small stimulus and Biden’s too-large stimulus, good and necessary interventions that both failed for different practical reasons. On a more local level, I’ve lived through the administration of Ron DeSantis, who has shown me that the government carving society into a more appropriate shape only feels good when you’re the one holding the knife.
I’ve visited the remains of concentration camps and the Berlin Wall. I’ve stood in an old Stasi office in East Berlin, looking at the collected works of Lenin next to a proud report of a political dissident being driven to madness and suicide. I’ve seen how I myself could be in that world, creating equality by torturing the unequal to death, living a life that is articulate, creative, delusional, and cruel.
In my brief lifetime I’ve seen technology empower the worst tendencies of everyday people. I’ve watched smart phones and social media enter everybody’s life and come to dominate them. Where connection was promised isolation has instead been delivered, our shriveling attention spans channeled toward endless streams of undemanding content. Brilliant engineers optimize algorithms for maximum engagement, and in doing so flood our lives with the outrage and entitlement that keep people scrolling and scrolling. While real injustices exist, these platforms amplify grievance far beyond what's true or useful, making it harder to find authentic paths to a better life and a better world.
Government and technology can be capable of great good too, of course. But my experience has left me leery about the idea of expanding government and technological power for the sheer sake of doing so, conscious of known tradeoffs and unforeseen results, knowing that sometimes the badness of something can take a long time to become known and by then be too late to resolve.
On a personal level, I’ve experienced a tremendous amount of personal growth that was stimulated by economic necessity and social rejection, growth which was made possible by the intervention of my family and my sober community rather than any direct interaction with the government. I drank way too much for way too long, leaving me broke and socially isolated, a sorry position brought about by people responding to my bad behavior appropriately. My desire to not be broke and socially isolated - more deeply, my desire to live - moved me to stop drinking and start seeking better ways of living. I came to doubt that I automatically know what is good and true for myself by default, since for a while I thought that extreme alcohol consumption was what made me special and also that it was like a vitamin and that stopping me from drinking was immoral cruelty. Drinking wasn’t an expression of my freedom an authenticity, it was an expression of my domination by alcohol. The line between ‘self-expression’ and ‘denial’ is a blurry one indeed.
When I got sober I connected with sources of growth beyond my individual self, beyond what I could conceptualize and rationalize in isolation. Once I stopped drinking and started living differently, I experienced social mobility - not immediately, and with plenty of painful learning experiences along the way, but my life 8 years later (relationally and professionally) is orders of magnitudes better than it was as a part-time plasma donor. I’ve learned that people pay you a lot more when you work for their prosperity too rather than grabbing any cash you see lying around. I am where I am thanks to the incredible, unfathomable patience and kindness that people in my family and community have shown me, contributions that obviously go far beyond what market incentives would warrant. Families and spiritual communities are how we take care of people we know - markets are how we take care of strangers.
In sum, my experiences have left me feeling skeptical about attempts to save humanity by expanding the power of government and technology, grateful for the character-building necessities of market economies, and in favor of non-government non-market institutions like family and (for lack of a better term) faith.
What I am *for* is the idea of my experience being available to as many people as possible, the experience of doing the work to be a better person and having your life improve as a result. I don’t want the hyper-rich to yank the ladder up behind them, and I don’t want government programs to pay people to drink by themselves all day like I did. I don’t want people to be denied the possibility of social mobility based on things they didn’t choose - I want to mitigate discrimination for the same reason I want to mitigate economic instability and war. I want people to live a life of freedom, including all of the costs and consequences that come with that freedom.
If I had to sum up my current weird-feeling synthesis of progress and conservation it would be this: The path forward lies in enabling and preserving the conditions that facilitate personal transformation, the productive friction of market economies, the sustaining power of community, and the freedom to face and grow from the consequences of your actions.
These aren't the simplest nor the most exciting battle cries, but they reflect the complex reality of being alive.