1. It’s graduation season, which means the interwebs are buzzing with a fresh crop of clips of celebrities and thought leaders giving their valedictions. I’m pleased to report that the competition for this year’s winner was over before it began; the best speech has already been given. I’m referring to the wise and winsome (and highly creative!) address that Eric Church gave at University of North Carolina, his alma mater. It’s definitely worth the 18 minutes, and not just for those of us who treasure that low E string. Think I may have to dig into the man’s catalog now. Bravo:
2. Graduations are natural occasions to contemplate next chapters, to think about not just where we’ve been but where we’re heading. I remember reading an early description of social media as an “endless high school reunion” in which you and I are inundated on an hour-to-hour basis by what our peers are up to and what we missed out on. Makes sense.
If that’s true, then I wonder if our larger discourse has turned into an endless graduation, where we are assaulted by descriptions of what comes next, especially if it’s “doom” colored. I know I can’t scroll through any feeds, social or otherwise, without being bombarded by predictions. Predictions about elections, predictions about gas prices, predictions about birthrates, predictions about the church, and so on. During COVID, one commentator went so far as to diagnose us with a “prediction addiction,” and I think he was right.
Course, if anything could’ve jolted us out of such an addiction, it would’ve been a global pandemic that no one saw coming — or grasped the fallout of. But here we are, more strung out than ever, and just as terrible at seeing into the future. Cue a terrific article in the New Yorker by Joshua Rothman, which asks “Do We Think Too Much About the Future?” Um, yes.
First, since no one actually knows the future, guessing, speculating, or simply making things up remains the state of the art for almost everyone involved in describing it. (Prediction markets, the biggest recent innovation in forecasting, are based on the recognition that experts are often wrong.) And second, our views of the future tend to be dark, and seem to be getting darker. Young people, in particular, increasingly report that they’ve “lost the future” as something to look forward to; they feel trapped in a world careening out of control. A survey conducted by Pew Research found that only fourteen per cent of Americans would transport themselves to the future, if given the choice; nearly half say that they’d prefer to live in the past. Looking ahead, we see mostly malevolent inevitabilities—climate change, oligarchy, autocracy, A.I. overlords, and the like. The open future has closed up on us; we’re back in the end times, where we started. […]
Putting visions of the future at the center of society seemed reasonable, [philosopher at the University of Oxford Carissa] Véliz argues, only because so many took a “naive view of prediction,” imagining “predictions as quests for truth.” In fact, “predictions are power moves much more than they are attempts at acquiring knowledge”; often, they are actually “commands disguised as descriptions,” made by those who know that “the most effective way to predict the future is to determine it.” […]
To begin with, making good predictions is simply more difficult than we’d like. Would-be predictors face “data troubles” (numbers can be incomplete, deceptive, or outright fraudulent); “social troubles” (people are weird); “scientific troubles” (“We cannot predict through any rational or scientific methods the future of our scientific knowledge”); “coincidental troubles” (“flukes that forever alter the path ahead”); and “ironical troubles” (by “selling risk management,” predictors can actually increase systemic risk). These are all reasons to take any given prediction less seriously.
Which is another way of saying the only thing we know for certain about the future is that it won’t look the way we think it will. I suspect things will be much like they are now, getting better and worse at the same time. Alas, like all addictions, I doubt any of these “reasons” to abstain from prediction will have much of an impact. I find it a comfort nonetheless that the hysteria that surrounds us is ultimately just that.
A wise father figure once told me that the gospel means that your past has been dealt with and your future secured. God, meanwhile, dwells in the present. This is good news, since that’s all we have anyway.
One of the warning-less ways God showed up this week was with the announcement of a new Mountain Goats record:
3. When it comes to predictions about the future, there is no topic more irresistible than artificial intelligence. I’ve been asked why Mockingbird has (mostly) avoided the subject, and the truth is, I just don’t feel like we have anything interesting to contribute (yet), beyond “keep your anthropology low and your pneumatology high.” Oh yeah and Blade Runner 2049 is a masterpiece.
You’d still be forgiven for mistaking this next one for a humor piece. If only! “Meet the Sad Wives of AI” by Alessandra Ram in Wired begins with this priceless admission: “If I had to listen to another minute of my husband talking about Claude Code, I might have actually died.” It goes on from there, lamenting the tunnel vision that AI is fueling for an increasing number of men on the coasts of this country.
Speaking as a peer of the doods in question, I share Ram’s suspicion that the topic functions just as much as a means of emotional and spiritual avoidance as it does a source of innovation or opportunity. We talked about this a bit on the most recent Mockingcast, but somehow the only thing guys my age are allowed to talk about anymore are sports (gambling!), real estate, and AI. It gets old fast, even if I can acknowledge that the hopes and fears (and pressures!) involved aren’t entirely fabricated or illegitimate. Which I guess means I share not only Ram’s reservations but also a bit of the accompanying self-righteousness.
Who will deliver us from this loneliness-inducing self-justification feedback loop? Hint: his name does not rhyme with “Maude.”
There’s a strange and under-discussed side effect of the AI boom: what it’s doing to family dynamics. By which I mean: how it’s potentially destroying family dynamics … Often it goes like this: He works in AI, and she does everything and anything else. Other times, it’s bleaker: He desperately wants to work in AI — or feels he must work in AI — and she wants him to do literally anything else […]
Here’s how Bridget Balajadia, a clinician in San Jose, characterizes the AI husband’s situation: “If you don’t respond to an email at midnight, you could wake up and not have a job.” It’s relentless. “In this industry, you’re reachable all the time. You’re thinking about it in the shower, when you’re having sex, it never leaves.” And when it never leaves, the relationship buckles. “It turns into this around-the-clock thing where neither partner is getting what they need. They’re both building walls of resentment.”
But then Balajadia tells me two surprising things. The first is that some sad wives of AI don’t want to talk to her about their husbands. Why? “I’ve already worked through this with my chat,” they say. By which they mean … ChatGPT. Yes. Not only is AI driving a wedge between couples. It’s also become a primary tool for attempting to salvage their marriage. Balajadia isn’t impressed. “They’re not having great outcomes,” she says. “It’s not going to challenge you. You end up being validated. Then both of you don’t move the needle in conflict.” […]
The question I ask everyone: Has any part of the AI boom made things better at home? Could it ever? The responses are generally uninspiring. Most of the time, the closest thing to a silver lining any sad wife can offer is that AI has given them something new to talk about at dinner.
4. On the Substack side of things, I found Alan Noble’s “I’m Free but Afraid” to be a fresh take on a familiar phenomenon. Noble, whose new book just hit shelves, hits on a peculiar irony of contemporary life: that the freedom to construct one’s identity/morality/cosmology from the ground up has ushered in a law far more crushing than the one it set out to dismantle. It’s a bit of a careful-what-you-wish-for situation, albeit on steroids. That is, if we truly insist on being our own gods, the mantle may turn out to be heavier than anticipated.
As another wise father/uncle figure once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Perhaps it’s no coincidence he was addressing a superhuman, hint hint. Here’s Alan:
Increasingly I am convinced that inhibition is a defining characteristic of contemporary culture. As a nation, we’re dating at lower rates, having less sex, young people are delaying getting their driver’s license, we’re in a loneliness epidemic, people are turning to AI companions for love and attention, we feel compelled to adopt AI, we feel controlled by our mental health diagnoses, we’re addicted to sports gambling and pornography and all sorts of substances — in other words, we seem to be helpless … We are subjects pushed around by massive forces: our biology, our environment, the government, corporations, social media, our passions, and so on.
And what’s so fascinating about this to me is that this inhibition comes at a time when we are promised and sold radical autonomy. We are told that we create our own lives. That we are masters of our own destinies. That we can and must make our lives meaningful and rich and exciting and purposeful. My theory is that it is precisely this promise of radical autonomy that has led to the widespread feelings of helplessness in contemporary society. To the degree that we have been told that we are responsible for our own individual sense of belonging, identity, meaning, value, and purpose, we freeze up, we feel helpless to act, and we allow others to choose for us. […]
In Alain Ehrenberg’s 2009 book, The Weariness of the Self, he argues that the contemporary experience of depression is marked by inhibition (12). Ehrenberg writes: “The individual, free from morality, creating herself by herself and aspiring to the superhuman, . . . is not our reality. But, instead of possessing the strength of the masters, she turns out to be fragile, lacking in being, weary of her sovereignty and full of complaints” (218–219).
In other words, we are weary of trying to be our own sovereign selves. We have radical freedom to remake our identities (think of social media’s powers of self-expression), but it has come at a great cost: “If moral constraints have grown lighter, psychic constraints have taken their place. Emancipation and action have stretched individual responsibility beyond all borders and have made us painfully aware that we are only ourselves” (226). Elsewhere he refers to this as the “illness of responsibility” (4). In other words, as we are burdened with responsibilities to “be ourselves”, we (ironically) grow less able to be ourselves in the sense of who God created us to be.
5. Thankfully this next one hints at the possibility of a lighter burden. Writing in the NY Times, David Epstein eulogizes Herbert Simon, AKA “The Nobel-Winning Psychologist Who Believed He Found the Secret to Happiness.” The secret is what Simon called “satisficing,” which is a mashup of satisfy and suffice. A satisficer makes their choices — from which socks to wear to which people to date — according to what is “good enough” as opposed to what is “best.”
A maximizer, on the other hand, makes decisions based on the best of all possible options. If you’ve ever spent hours on Google or Yelp looking for the single “right” place to have lunch, you understand the distinction — and the paralysis and regret it can produce. Simon’s insights have only been vindicated by tech:
Maximizers tend to be less satisfied with their decisions and their lives. They are typically less happy, more prone to regret and more likely to compare themselves endlessly with others. Satisficers don’t necessarily have low standards. Their standard is “good enough for me” rather than “the best out there,” and that makes it possible to feel satisfied with their choices, instead of haunted by the ones they didn’t make. […]
This is critical today because chronic maximizing has never been easier. In 2006 an economist calculated that the consumer options available to citizens of modern economies exceeded those of preindustrial societies roughly by a factor of 100 million. That is an almost incomprehensible multiplication of choice, and it extends well beyond consumer goods into questions of who to be, how to live, where to work and whom to love.
Social media has intensified the problem by functioning as an infinite comparison engine. When you can see a curated highlight reel of everyone else’s career, relationship, home and vacation, the very concept of “good enough” begins to feel like settling. The pull to keep searching for something better has poisoned even the most mundane moments. Research shows that giving viewers many videos to flip between makes them more bored than if they focus on just one. One way to interpret the findings is that the mere notion that something better might be out there spoils the moment.
See also: the beautiful reissue of our Law & Gospel book, which spells out the theological underpinnings of these insights. Namely, the command to love/behave/believe perfectly, no matter how laudable, does not produce harmony or peace — at least not where fallible men and women are concerned. Instead, those expectations produce anxiety, second-guessing, regret, and resentment. The proclamation that those standards have been satisfied by another — out of perfect love! — grants a person the space necessary to actually live and serve with abandon. Or so I’ve read.
6. Time to smile. The Australia-based Betoota Advocate is definitely my favorite recent humor discovery. It made me laugh/wince multiple times this week, a few highlights being:
- “Nerds Doing Lightsaber Choreography At Your Local Park Are Way Happier Than Miserable Doom Scrollers Like You”
- “Self Confessed ‘Bad Replier’ Pretty Good At Spending 6 Hours Scrolling Reels“
- “Local Woman Really Good At Sensing When A Guitar Is About To Come Out At A Party“
- “Taco Night For One Becomes Recently Single Man’s Lowest Point.”
Reductress got in on the action with a couple of hilarious headlines too: “Niece Now Old Enough to Hurt Your Feelings” and “English Teacher Sitting on Desk Again.” Oh and this guy’s beans-on-top-of-car prank keeps making me giggle. Genius. Can’t wait for this too:
7. We’ll give the final word this week to Charlie Ziemann, who took up “Thornton Wilder and The Problem of Death” as his subject in a piece for 1517, in the process referencing a brother figure of mine. You may know that Wilder, the author of Our Town (and Mbird hero), was born alongside a twin who died. Wilder would grapple with the question of why he lived and his brother died in his work, and nowhere more openly than in his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey. This story starts with a bridge in Peru collapsing, killing five, after which Wilder devotes much of the novel to exploring the lives of those who were affected by the tragedy.
Ziemann concludes the post by reflecting helpfully on the intersection of God’s providence and God’s revelation — how on Earth we are to interpret present pain (and future uncertainty) in light of eternity. The answer in the book, and the answer in the Bible, does not take the form of an argument or a prediction. It is Person-shaped:
Humanity, despite our best efforts, cannot answer the question as to why God allows evil to occur. However, that is not the end of the story, simply the first scene in the final chapter. The real answer comes in the two final interactions of the novel between a nun and two women who lost loved ones in the collapse of the bridge. In one of the exchanges, Doña Clara, who lost her mother in the accident, came with guilt and was given grace. In the other interaction Camila, who lost both a son and a close friend, converses with the same nun, Madre Maria del Pilar, while in Sister Juana’s garden, which I take to be a symbol of forgiveness and new life. While the specifics of the conversation are not noted in the novel, it ends with something that sounds quite similar to absolution: “And then the whole tide of Camila’s long despair, her lonely obstinate despair since her girlhood, found its rest on that dusty lap among Sister Juana’s fountains and roses.”
We will never be able to look into the events of this world and accurately see how God is at work. These events remain hidden to us; “That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.” We cannot look to God hidden in the events of our daily lives and determine whether God loves us. Rather, God has told us precisely what his will is, precisely what he thinks of us. This was so important that he died to give us this good news. You can find the will of God when God became incarnate to forgive and give eternal life. God’s answer to death is resurrection, and this answer is much more powerful than any explanation as to why God allows death to happen. God doesn’t answer tragedy with empty words of rationalization, but with a Word so strong and full that it bestows hope and life upon its hearers.
Strays
- The Daily podcast ran an episode this week exploring “Why More Americans Are Exploring Religion.” The findings felt like they’d been ripped out of the Seculosity playbook.
- Don’t know the man’s music but am seriously intrigued after reading the BBC profile on Noah Kahan, which doubles as a stirring testimony of works-righteousness despair. “I got too attached to this idea that my value came from what I created. So when you’re not creating, it feels like you have no value. And, along with the diagnosis of OCD, this obsession of being successful and talented and having everything be perfect became really, really impossible for me to contend with.”
- This one stings. “My Daughter Died at 32. My Devices Won’t Let Me Rest.” by Danielle Crittenden in the Wall Street Journal. “The irony of the unwanted notifications is that big tech adamantly blocks access to the data we do want.” Brave New World indeed.
- Some happier news would be that 1517 has launched a new podcast, Dad Rod Legacy, which distributes lectures from the beloved late theologian and Mbird fave. Highly recommended.
- The NY Times reports that a lost Larry David script has reemerged for a film that gets famously name-checked in an episode of Seinfeld. The premise is about as LD-esque as could possibly be: “‘Prognosis: Negative’ centers on a man named Leo Black, who finds it impossible to commit to women. But when he learns that an ex-girlfriend is dying, he reignites a relationship with her. After all, she’ll be gone soon.” Amazing.
- On that note, rest in peace, Clarence Carter. I swear by his first four records and put his recording of “Patches” up there with the best singles ever released:
