Certain things should be harder.
what's the cost of an easy life?
In this week’s newsletter:
Some thoughts on friction in life
A little February challenge
Little more friction please!
We’re sold ease every day. I spend most of my money on making things easy, probably.
At home, at work, during what little time we spend out in the world, there are constant opportunities to pay for a smoother experience. Computers (by which I mean phones, watches, tablets, portals, etc.) are supposed to predict what you want now, what you’ll want later, and minimize the obstacles between you and that desire. Food? Tap a button and receive. Alcohol or weed? Same. Sex and attention? Scroll and swipe your sweaty fingers across your phone. Don’t forget to refresh your feed every five minutes, you don’t want to miss any new morsels. Just add another membership fee to your monthly expenses and you can get whatever you want without ever having to think about it or discuss with another person. Pay a little extra and you can probably even jump to the front of the line.
Of course, there are reasons we’ve allowed this to happen. It is easier for things to be easy. Duh. It’s also a powerful proposition to suggest that you can buy control over the uncontrollable. If you don’t want to have to plan ahead and budget time to take a bus to work, you can just order a car that will deliver you from door to door. And anyway, there’s a good chance you don’t even have to leave your house to work anymore, or to shop, since groceries and meals can be delivered, or for entertainment, since you’ve got all these handy screens at home, or to meet people, since dating apps have reached something close to ubiquity. Unless you earn your livelihood as one of the millions of gig workers (for a little while we cutely called them “essential workers”) who fit together to make a frictionless life possible, everything you want really can come to you.
For my money, the truest benefit of an online life is access to people. Through the magic of the machine, we are able to be “in touch” with people we wouldn’t have known in years past. I get to meet with an astrology study group made up of interesting people from across the hemisphere because of the Internet. I could join any kind of organization, no matter how niche, from my home in Philly. It’s understandable that this kind of magical connectivity entices us. Having all my friends and family live inside my phone was the only way I stayed at all sane during the first year of the pandemic. But there is also a cost to this kind of access. I think about this quote from a recent piece on loneliness that I shared a few weeks ago:
Home-based, phone-based culture has arguably solidified our closest and most distant connections, the inner ring of family and best friends (bound by blood and intimacy) and the outer ring of tribe (linked by shared affinities). But it’s wreaking havoc on the middle ring of “familiar but not intimate” relationships with the people who live around us, which Dunkelman calls the village. “These are your neighbors, the people in your town,” he said. We used to know them well; now we don’t.
Maybe the real cost has been the friends we didn’t make along the way?
An exercise I’m going to put myself through for the month of February is designed to push me out of my comfort zone in this area. I want life to be just a little harder, more analog. I’m still forming the structure of it, but here’s what I’m thinking as of now:
Deactivate social media for the month. This is easy enough.
Don’t walk with headphones in my ears. I know this has encouraged my tendency to not interact with strangers.
No rideshares. Taxis are okay if absolutely necessary. Plan on transit time.
Use cash as much as possible. This’ll hopefully slow down my spending and also increase interaction with whoever I’m purchasing from.
No self-checkout. Ask the cashier how their day is going.
Physically visit some worship services. Be friendly. Absorb the vibe.
Volunteer somewhere in my neighborhood.
No ordering delivery -- avoid takeout, but potentially okay if being picked up in person.
No cancelling plans within 24 hours of their occurring.
Something else??
Any other ideas? I’d be very curious to hear what you think of as “friction reducers” that we’ve become accustomed to. The goal is to increase the friction of my day to day a little bit more. Obviously I’ll be sharing thoughts on how it goes. None of it seems all that radical, but I have a feeling I’ll notice the differences more than I expect.
Some things to read:
This banger article about a gay mole in far right militias. More of this.
Apropos of nothing, this Sharon Olds poem that I’m definitely not connecting to the current confirmation hearings.
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.