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stormsewerI've been thinking about my outlook as a teenager. I've classed the main things that retrospectively annoy me about my adolescent outlook into three groups, though they are all related: The Privilege of Disinterest, Unearned Arrogance, and Knowing The Cost of Everything.
The Privilege of Disinterest
At age 18, I would have proudly told you that I was deeply interested in all topics of study except three: economics, political science, and law. I would have said that these disciplines are artificial, ephemeral human constructs, and I was only interested in timeless domains that transcended the petty rules of human bickering. I held businesspeople, politicians, and lawyers in something like contempt.
I roll my eyes remembering statements like this now. One reason is that I now understand the impact these topics have on our everyday lives and our ability to pursue our goals. It was only because I grew up in a safe, middle-class environment that I had the freedom to think those things didn't really matter, or weren't relevant to me.
Now I know that economics is the study of how people go about getting what they want (or think they want). That's as fascinating a topic as any, and what could be more important to understand if you want to get what you want? Or help others get what they need? Additionally, one thing that has always fascinated me is impossibly complex systems and the ways in which we can begin to understand them. The global economic system is certainly one of those, and understanding it well enough to, say, be a successful investor can be an absorbing game.
I will admit to continuing to tend towards thinking of politics and law as necessary evils, but I do find them interesting as studies in applied ethics. It's all well and good to philosophize about morality and the greatest good, but how do we go about actually implementing that at the societal level? That's the sticky business of government and law, and not much is more important.
I do still hold many politicians and businesspeople in contempt, but it's tempered by a knowledge that most of them aren't actually as horrible as is popularly assumed, and by a respect for those who aren't willing to just sit in bleachers but want to go out and make an impact, despite the risk, even certainty, of making mistakes, of being misinterpreted and maligned, of pissing off someone somewhere no matter what you do, of having to compromise, and of failing to achieve your utopian vision but still being willing keep pushing to make things just a little better than they were, a little better than yesterday, despite it all.
Unearned Arrogance
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was all the rage when I was a teenager. I remember feeling contempt, essentially, for people who felt like they needed such books. To my mind, if you had your act together (as of course I was certain I did), you had no need for such things, and if you felt like you did need them, you were probably never going to have your act together. I had a similar attitude towards, say, prep courses for the SAT.
Looking back I see a bit of fixed mindset there, rather than the growth mindset I've tried to adopt since. I also see that I assumed that since I always did well on tests and essays without much effort, that everything else in life would come easily, as well.
Well… No, as it turns out. Not everything in life was going to come easy, but I managed to put off that reckoning for a surprisingly long time. I don't think it was really until my second year of grad school, when I was 29 years old, classes were basically finished, and I had to go into the lab and Make Something Happen with essentially zero guidance (or lab experience), that I first experienced the terror of really being in over my head.
Still, it took a while for those lessons to really sink in. As recently as five years ago I can remember how on pretty much every flight I was on, there would be some middle-aged guy on it reading a book about management, and I would want to roll my eyes. Today I am that guy- gladly, unapologetically. The further I've advanced in my career, the more I've had to get serious about how to make myself and the people I work with as effective as possible. The critical importance of interpersonal skills, generally, is another thing I woefully underestimated as a teenager. I think I thought all of that would take care of itself if you were really good at the technical details of your work. (Spoiler alert: It won't [1].) I wish now I'd gotten serious sooner about managing myself and my relationships with others.
Knowing The Cost of Everything
I was a proud cynic as a teenager. My mother once remarked that Daria was the fictional character who most resembled me, and I thought that was pretty cool.
Now I see the cynic as the person who loves to point out all the problems but is uninterested and helpless when it comes to finding solutions. The cynic, all too often, is the one afraid to take the risk of getting out there and trying to make a difference. They're afraid they will fail, or they just know that perfection is unattainable and so they let that stop them from trying to instantiate something that is merely good. They think they're cool because they see through the propaganda and spin, but if they aren't willing to do anything about it, they're just another part of the problem.
And yet, of these three annoying teenagerisms, this is the one I view most charitably now. In some ways I see it as a necessary if aggravating phase in a healthy development. A robust BS detector is a critical tool to have in one's toolbox, especially now, and so the earlier a young person gets to work on theirs, the better. And what choice is there but cynicism for someone who can see all the problems of their society but is powerless to do anything about them? Teenagers aren't exactly a powerful demographic. Dostoyevsky once said that sarcasm is "the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded." That sounds like a pretty accurate description of adolescence to me.
The Magnetic Fields also put it pretty well:
So, it's okay to be cynical, Teenage Me. I understand. But since I know how much you liked quotes, here's another I would have liked for you to keep in mind, by Alice Walker: "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."
Notes
[1] That, in turn, reminds me of yet another old illusion, one whose passing I'm still mourning: that the world, or at least the United States, is a meritocracy. For example, I used to believe that it didn't really matter where you went to school; if you were really good, that would be recognized. But after spending some time at MIT and seeing how many opportunities are laid at your feet simply because you're there, I now understand the true power of the right brand. And I'm not very happy about it, because brands are shallow things, skin-deep at best.
The Privilege of Disinterest
At age 18, I would have proudly told you that I was deeply interested in all topics of study except three: economics, political science, and law. I would have said that these disciplines are artificial, ephemeral human constructs, and I was only interested in timeless domains that transcended the petty rules of human bickering. I held businesspeople, politicians, and lawyers in something like contempt.
I roll my eyes remembering statements like this now. One reason is that I now understand the impact these topics have on our everyday lives and our ability to pursue our goals. It was only because I grew up in a safe, middle-class environment that I had the freedom to think those things didn't really matter, or weren't relevant to me.
Now I know that economics is the study of how people go about getting what they want (or think they want). That's as fascinating a topic as any, and what could be more important to understand if you want to get what you want? Or help others get what they need? Additionally, one thing that has always fascinated me is impossibly complex systems and the ways in which we can begin to understand them. The global economic system is certainly one of those, and understanding it well enough to, say, be a successful investor can be an absorbing game.
I will admit to continuing to tend towards thinking of politics and law as necessary evils, but I do find them interesting as studies in applied ethics. It's all well and good to philosophize about morality and the greatest good, but how do we go about actually implementing that at the societal level? That's the sticky business of government and law, and not much is more important.
I do still hold many politicians and businesspeople in contempt, but it's tempered by a knowledge that most of them aren't actually as horrible as is popularly assumed, and by a respect for those who aren't willing to just sit in bleachers but want to go out and make an impact, despite the risk, even certainty, of making mistakes, of being misinterpreted and maligned, of pissing off someone somewhere no matter what you do, of having to compromise, and of failing to achieve your utopian vision but still being willing keep pushing to make things just a little better than they were, a little better than yesterday, despite it all.
Unearned Arrogance
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was all the rage when I was a teenager. I remember feeling contempt, essentially, for people who felt like they needed such books. To my mind, if you had your act together (as of course I was certain I did), you had no need for such things, and if you felt like you did need them, you were probably never going to have your act together. I had a similar attitude towards, say, prep courses for the SAT.
Looking back I see a bit of fixed mindset there, rather than the growth mindset I've tried to adopt since. I also see that I assumed that since I always did well on tests and essays without much effort, that everything else in life would come easily, as well.
Well… No, as it turns out. Not everything in life was going to come easy, but I managed to put off that reckoning for a surprisingly long time. I don't think it was really until my second year of grad school, when I was 29 years old, classes were basically finished, and I had to go into the lab and Make Something Happen with essentially zero guidance (or lab experience), that I first experienced the terror of really being in over my head.
Still, it took a while for those lessons to really sink in. As recently as five years ago I can remember how on pretty much every flight I was on, there would be some middle-aged guy on it reading a book about management, and I would want to roll my eyes. Today I am that guy- gladly, unapologetically. The further I've advanced in my career, the more I've had to get serious about how to make myself and the people I work with as effective as possible. The critical importance of interpersonal skills, generally, is another thing I woefully underestimated as a teenager. I think I thought all of that would take care of itself if you were really good at the technical details of your work. (Spoiler alert: It won't [1].) I wish now I'd gotten serious sooner about managing myself and my relationships with others.
Knowing The Cost of Everything
I was a proud cynic as a teenager. My mother once remarked that Daria was the fictional character who most resembled me, and I thought that was pretty cool.
Now I see the cynic as the person who loves to point out all the problems but is uninterested and helpless when it comes to finding solutions. The cynic, all too often, is the one afraid to take the risk of getting out there and trying to make a difference. They're afraid they will fail, or they just know that perfection is unattainable and so they let that stop them from trying to instantiate something that is merely good. They think they're cool because they see through the propaganda and spin, but if they aren't willing to do anything about it, they're just another part of the problem.
And yet, of these three annoying teenagerisms, this is the one I view most charitably now. In some ways I see it as a necessary if aggravating phase in a healthy development. A robust BS detector is a critical tool to have in one's toolbox, especially now, and so the earlier a young person gets to work on theirs, the better. And what choice is there but cynicism for someone who can see all the problems of their society but is powerless to do anything about them? Teenagers aren't exactly a powerful demographic. Dostoyevsky once said that sarcasm is "the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded." That sounds like a pretty accurate description of adolescence to me.
The Magnetic Fields also put it pretty well:
So, it's okay to be cynical, Teenage Me. I understand. But since I know how much you liked quotes, here's another I would have liked for you to keep in mind, by Alice Walker: "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."
Notes
[1] That, in turn, reminds me of yet another old illusion, one whose passing I'm still mourning: that the world, or at least the United States, is a meritocracy. For example, I used to believe that it didn't really matter where you went to school; if you were really good, that would be recognized. But after spending some time at MIT and seeing how many opportunities are laid at your feet simply because you're there, I now understand the true power of the right brand. And I'm not very happy about it, because brands are shallow things, skin-deep at best.
