I responded to Mark Manson’s Crowdsourcing Project About Lessons Learned in 2020
I don’t really know what came over me. It was late and I was already winding down with my usual senseless watchlist YouTube videos when I opened Mark Manson’s weekly Mindfuck Monday newsletter.
Admittedly, I don’t read all of them but I decided to read this particular release — The wisdom of your inner crowd.
He was asking his readers to share the lessons they’ve learned this year. He also talked about how we give credit to specific people because our minds are set to understand concepts through characters and stories.
But I think what really resonated with me the most was his take on science and how it has always saved us from ourselves. That in the middle of all the petty bickering, self-aggrandizing, mind-numbing vapidness of a lot of people this year, science just keeps doing the work.
I realize that there’s a good chance he won’t read my response. So I thought I’d document it here for myself because the act of engaging with someone like him without overthinking and obsessing over the derivativeness of my thoughts were achievements for me.
Here’s what I wrote:
Dear Mark,
I hope you and your family are well.
From where I sit here in Manila, things are as good as they can be. As I type this response, I can hear a small group of people chanting merrily over what I assume is some sort of sport. Simultaneously, my phone is blowing up because one of my group chats is feverishly discussing yet another government-related issue in which I can’t bring myself to engage.
And I think this very moment encapsulates the lessons I’ve learned over the past ten months.
1. I never thought I’d miss being apathetic. Most things feel/felt intense this year, even though we’ve miscategorized some situations. Not all crises are created equal, but this year, most people made it a point to let you know that you have to care, otherwise, you suck.
Much like what you’ve already written in your book, I have become brutally aware of how very little I care about supposed crises, people’s opinions, hobbies, music…their kids. I do care about their pets but other than that, meh.
This also reaffirms what you also said that they don’t care about me equally and that’s fine. But I think taking mental note of this realization almost daily has made it easy for me to focus (and be quiet) about my bigger plans for myself now that I’ve seen the result of my pre-pandemic choices (i.e. my apartment, partner, the stuff inside my home, my job, etc.)
I just do my shit and keep my head down and that might seem like an obvious decision to make now that I’m writing it but this year highlighted all the plans I never even started.
I can even say that selective apathy has brought me to have the guts to respond to an email from you with a question that requires me to zone everything and everyone out. So, yey!
2. Chaos led me to stillness. I’ve reflected on this for days and I truly believe that had this pandemic not happened, I would have never bothered to sit and just let things unfold and pass.
The Stoics saved me along with books from Douglas Murray (The Madness of Crowds), Jonathan Haidt (Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion), Yuval Harari (Sapiens), as well as essays from umair haque and Ryan Holiday.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have my job, and since I’ve been working freelance for ten years, there’s been hardly any shifts that I had to make. But damn it was hard to find calm when my extremely liberal friends were firing shots from all corners about so many agendas that I couldn’t honestly keep up. As the months trudged on, it seemed like there was an addiction to being angry and letting everyone know you were angry.
You know those first few seconds after a screaming match? That lull? I don’t think a lot of people can sit with that because it’s awkward and weird and uncomfortable. So they fill it again with noise to get away from the discomfort. That’s how I see perpetually-outraged people.
I’m not saying that stillness is something I can instantly turn on. But now I know when to start feeling for the switch.
3. I know nothing but I want to understand. University has taught me a lot of the idealisms I held during my 20s. I identified with a lot of progressive views but as I turned 34 last November, I found myself becoming a centrist with the humbling fact that I absolutely know nothing.
There’s a reason why people are drawn to characters like Duterte or Trump. Nothing is by accident and claiming to know why things happened or what’s best for other people or who’s more right or wrong is ridiculous.
This year, science and nuanced thinking died and from its ashes rose self-righteousness.
When I take my weekly stroll to the market and pass by a homeless person or a struggling fruit vendor, I get so mad at how we think our side is the correct side and that our narrative is the truth. While we sit comfortably on the couch and angry-tweet about what the government is or isn’t doing, there are people with real struggles and viewpoints we don’t get to hear because they’re too busy surviving.
To indulge in paragraphs of rants and shouting out our opinions further accentuates our arrogance and empty-headedness, I think.
I only know what I know and its a pitifully small set of data. I can only aim to try and understand while accepting the truth that I will continue to know zilch.
Cheers, Mark.
