Cashing in my knowledge chips

There's a Bjork song that goes:

I've seen what I was 
And I know what I'll be
I've seen it all
There is no more to see

As a teenager I owned that album and listened to this song quite a bit, but those lyrics never really resonated with me on a personal level. I was the exact opposite: driven by a bottomless curiosity, a hunger to learn and experience as much of life as I possibly could. That hunger has played a massive role in the path my life has taken. I’ve wandered and roamed. I’ve gotten more than my share of education. I’ve worked all sorts of jobs, from warehouses, to research labs, to the corporate world, to a bona-fide prison. And I’ve been trying to make sense of it all, the whole way through.

Lately that song’s been on my mind again. But something has shifted in me. I’ve started to feel more of a connection to its chorus (there is no more to see) than I ever expected.

Maybe it’s because the world feels like it’s becoming a darker place, filled with an ugliness I have no interest in. Maybe it’s seeing people I’ve known my whole life fall head-first into that insanity. Maybe it’s the health issues I’ve been navigating. Maybe it’s because technology is making us all more antisocial. Maybe it’s just because I’m getting older. Whatever the reason, I’ve started to lose some of that hunger for new experiences. In some ways, it feels like I've started to become the opposite of who I had always been.

The Stoics have a mantra: amor fati, which means: falling in love with your fate. Whatever happens, no matter how difficult, if you can find a way to not only accept it but celebrate it, you’ll be better off. That’s what I’ve been trying to do with all these piled-on, intersecting challenges, and the resulting decline in my curiosity.

And I think I’ve found a silver lining: It’s that I was too curious before.

Looking back, I've been guilty of using curiosity as an excuse to avoid taking action at several points in my life. It's easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking, “I can't decide until I’ve gathered as much information as I possibly can.” I’ll always view curiosity as a virtue. But when it's overindulged, and becomes a crutch keeping you from moving forward, it can also undermine your confidence.

And right now it feels like our culture is being overrun by those with too much confidence and too little curiosity. In order to turn the tide, what's needed is for the curious to step up and take action — to demonstrate a better way, even if it requires getting a little uncurious in the process. When the world changes, you’ve got to change with it. You can either rise to the occasion, or let the occasion overwhelm you. But you always have a choice.

I know I haven’t seen it all. I’ll never completely identify with those Bjork lyrics or the character whose voice they’re written in. But I’ve seen enough — enough to start creating. And that’s my goal here: creation in the form of writing that is thoughtful and cuts through the noise.

“Cashing in my knowledge chips” is another way I’ve been thinking about this. It’s time to take all I’ve learned and turn it into something more worthwhile. Specifically, some of the things I want to write about are:

• Personal reflections like this post

• Insights from traditions like Buddhism and Stoicism that have helped me make sense of the world

• Ideas from psychology that have done the same

• Connecting dots across these different schools of thought (science and philosophy, etc.)

• Daydreams — and pipe dreams — about the community I long for

I know that's a broad and eclectic list, but the world is a big, eclectic place. And I think a big factor in our current political and cultural chaos is that disconnection and incoherence have unwittingly become favored by our modern digital media. So if I can make things feel more coherent for myself and anyone who reads this, it can be an act of resistance against the tide of destructive noise.

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As for what the title, The Actualists, means, I’ll dig into that more in the future. This might be where I lose some of you, but it’s a label I've started using to describe my own worldview. I've been dissatisfied in one way or another with every label and community I've come across so far. So this is me giving up and saying, “Screw it, I guess I'll have to do it myself.” I like the term Actualism because it has many layers, most of which resonate with my deepest values — in particular, centering the truth and reality above all else.

It’s also a word that’s uncommon enough to be ripe for redefinition. And if you ask me, that is where the real fun is at.

Another quick note: I care about quality more than quantity. So to start out, my goal is to publish around one post a month. (Erik Davis’ Burning Shore Substack is one inspiration there.) I wouldn’t mind eventually getting into a groove of more regular posting, but only if it’s possible without sacrificing depth or originality.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll stick around. Feel free to subscribe if this resonates with you, or leave a comment about which of the topics above spark your interest the most.