Nate Stranzl

What the heck is “happiness” if not a fleeting moment of peace and satisfaction; certainly not an “end state” goal in and of itself. Aim for the concrete! Fullness is easy to measure: How tired are you? How many words did you write today? How many people did you yell hello to?

The more people with control of their attention, the better our art, music, scientific research, political legislation, and, I believe, the more kindness and empathy in the world. Also, the more prepared you can be to fight. Without understanding and cultivating fullness, you lose sight of the battles worth fighting, and lack the energy to go after... See more

The good thing: It’s easy to experience fullness, to pull your head out of the muck, to be the Goon Antipode, to cleave space from the online sludge in the mind, to hear some kind of “inner voice” once again, and then to act on what inspiration comes from that.

The most successful (and certainly most prolific) creative people are pros at protecting and amplifying the number of full days in their lives. Owning your days is a superpower.

Peering into Goonworld’s darkest corners has convinced me that what we are dealing with here may well be a structural flaw of networked communication itself. Is there a timeline, a regulatory environment, in which the internet does not turn into a highly efficient manufacturer of niche suicide cults? I find it hard to imagine.

Nor can I so neatly separate the gooners as a whole from the rest of us. Think about it for a second: What are these gooners actually doing? Wasting hours each day consuming short-form video content. Chasing intensities of sensation across platforms. Parasocially fixating on microcelebrities who want their money. Broadcasting their love for those... See more

The modern smartphone, laden with the corporate ecosystem pulsing underneath its screen, robs us of this feeling, conspires to keep us from “true” fullness. The swiping, the news cycles, the screaming, the idiocy — if anything destroys a muse, it’s this. If anything keeps you locked into a fetid loop of looking, looking, and looking once more at... See more

I’d go so far to say that “full days” is one of the wells from which we derive our humanity.

Aim for fullness if you want happiness.