reading, watching & listening to

if you want to predict the future, go to a history lecture or set your case study date filter to twenty years ago.

fascinating historical perspective.

our ancestors experienced day-to-day unpredictability (you could die from childbirth, starvation was a constant threat, etc…) but global stability (if your parents were peasants, you’d prob be a peasant).

modern humans inverted that - routine defines us but there is global instability (the world is constantly changing - technology, climate, politics)

other weird things about modern life:

• children teach their parents how to use tools that are critical to thriving in modern society, a complete inversion of the transmission of knowledge through generations.

• non-local social comparison - we compare ourselves to billions of people, not a few hundred in close proximity to us.

• we are distanced from nature, whereas for generations before survival was tied to understanding the natural world.

from the founder of Loom after he sold his company

averageness is a feature of modern life. scaling means figuring out what works on average.

I read this newsletter for years. This father’s story of his daughter passing away brought me to tears.