Your Brain is Wired to Keep You Unhappy. But Why?

The good life appears to be straightforward: acquire enough money, find your dream girl/guy, be the boss, get the fancy car and the big house. Then, we tell ourselves, will we be satisfied. Then we can relax.

There is a slight problem, however: there isn’t a trace of evidence suggesting that higher earnings or more material goods will translate into joy or fulfillment. In fact, it’s often the opposite (especially for lottery winners). With each acquisition, the threat looms that our prized possession will be taken away. We become tense and grasp for more.

This makes sense from natural selection’s standpoint. Humans evolved to react in ways that would constantly make life easier or more comfortable. I imagine this trait would come in handy when seeking shelter or food on the Sahara. Today, however, technology has managed to outpace that primal instinct. The result is that we are still scanning our environment for things to be uncomfortable, unhappy, or unsatisfied with, even though this is the safest and easiest time to have ever lived on Earth.

Our minds are hardwired to trick us. We salivate at the thought of a diamond engagement ring or the latest shoe release, but the feeling that occurs when we actually get them never seems to live up to our expectations. After the initial dopamine rush, the pleasure dissipates. We become bored, or worse, resentful that we thought this thing could actually make us happy. So our brain tells us to go get more.

The saddest part is that our conscious mind is fully aware of this cycle, but we can’t resist the urge to consume. Many people, from Socrates to Jesus to modern psychologists, have warned us about the futility of self-indulgence. Unfortunately, we haven’t caught on.

“The idea that just one more dollar, one more rung on the ladder will leave us feeling sated reflects a misunderstanding about human nature,” says the author and scholar Robert Wright. “We are designed to feel that the next great goal will bring bliss, [but] the bliss is designed to evaporate shortly after we get there. Natural selection has a malicious sense of humor; it leads us along with a series of promises and then keeps saying ‘Just kidding.’”

The process that created us is the same one that, paradoxically, torments us. It places us in a vicious, frustrating, emotional cycle of desire, consumption, and confusion. And it seems as though the only way to escape it might be to simply acknowledge that it exists.

Dominic’s articles, essays, interviews, and book recommendations are sent in his monthly newsletter. All subscribers receive the PDF “11 Immutable Writing Lessons from Legendary Authors.”

Our $900 Pacifiers

In one famous Middle Eastern folktale, a notorious king vows to take a new bride each day, only to have her executed the following morning. But one woman, Shahrazad, manages to escape her fate by telling the king dramatic stories each night which can only be completed the following day. She ends each story with a cliffhanger, and when one story finishes she immediately starts up another. She does this for 1,001 nights until the king finally decides to spare her life.

It would be easy to interpret this fable literally, to have a few chuckles at expense of the gullible king and move on with our lives. But to do so misses the point entirely. At it’s core, the story sheds light on two weaknesses of the human condition: our obsession with novelty and our diminished willpower in the face of anticipation.

Each one of us, like the king, is easily seduced by the promise of something new, something to free us from our own thoughts. Such has been the case for hundreds of thousands of years. Today, however, our novelty comes not from a fictional woman named Shahrazad, but from our phones. And it looks as if they will have our attention for more than just 1,001 nights.

It’s difficult to imagine our phones suddenly revoking their promise of unlimited entertainment and gratification. Their allure would die. But phones do not know limits. They are machines, like Shahrazad on steroids. And we are under their control for as long as we permit ourselves to be.

In the words of media critic Nicholas Carr, “[The phone] is so much our servant that it would seem churlish to notice that it is also our master.”

“Our phones are designed to deliver positive reinforcements which encourage the repetition of the same actions,” Carr goes on to say. Each news alert, Google search, Instagram like, and text message “turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.”

We turn to our phones to dilute our insecurities, confusion, stress, discomfort, and loneliness. We convince ourselves that phones offer relaxation and escape, but in reality they leave us in a worse mood. They stifle our ability to think deeply or creatively and leave us with nothing but a despondent feeling and a craving for the next flurry of notifications. The promises of comfort and security are seductive, but nevertheless empty.

The saddest part is that we know this to be true, but still refuse to put them down. When researchers ask participants to best fit the description “I should have been doing something else,” wasting time on the Internet or watching TV are often the most popular answers. We could instead have deep, personal conversations, reach out to sick relatives, or even sit down in silence for five minutes. The problem, of course, is that these activities can be difficult. Our toys never reject us.

“Our tendency to become more intimate with our phones and computers, to experience our lives through the filter of a screen or series of flickering pixels, poses a significant threat to our humanity,” said the late MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum. “To sacrifice self-awareness, deep thought, and literacy is to sacrifice the very qualities that separate us from machines.”

Still yet, we cling to the pathetic counter-argument that instant and limitless access to information has produced the most informed society in history. But this blind, utopian ideology is as Marshall McLuhan said, “the numb stance of the technological idiot.”

In truth, we’ve regressed to a sort of bizarre functional illiteracy. We spend, on average, ten hours per day in front of a screen that demands nothing of us. We’ve become so entranced by shows, apps, games, and social media to the point that it’s painful to process a paragraph of text, much less a book. Our tools are so individualized that they are anti-individual. An iPhone speaks to an 80-year-old and an 8-year-old in the same language. It does not “know” us. We worship its simplicity, but its simplicity makes complexity impossible to fathom.

Our phones command our attention with far greater intensity than any other activity. Observe yourself and others, oblivious to what’s right in front of us. But the biggest threat is not becoming numb to our immediate surroundings, it is becoming numb to slow, less tangible cultural transformations. The great tragedy of a technologically-sedated society is the belief that if we are happy, if we are entertained and satisfied, the rest of the world will take care of itself. We scroll and click, blind to the suffering and decay around us. We sit, with our $900 dollar pacifiers, as the planet rots, families bankrupt themselves trying to pay their children’s medical expenses, and 13 million children go to bed hungry every day in our own cities.

Such tragedies happen on time scales that defy our phone’s now-ness. They don’t change minute to minute, or even day to day. Something that happens constantly and everywhere cannot be comprehended in a 280-character tweet, a push notification, or on Fox and Friends. You need to sit down and contemplate it. The tug at our hearts from horrific images of human suffering on Facebook or the flare of resent that arises after seeing one of Donald Trump’s tweets cannot replace the capacity for self reflection that we’ve sacrificed in the name of convenience.

The more distracted we become, the less able we are to experience what makes us human: empathy and compassion. We have forgotten who we are and who we were meant to be. Our moral decision-making about other people’s social and psychological well being cannot flourish when we subsist on factoids and celebrity gossip. To be fully human requires adequate time and reflection.

We live in a state of deep ignorance where information is conflated with wisdom and entertainment supplants understanding. We are urged to choose everything at the cost of understanding nothing. But, as the Stoic philosopher Seneca noted nearly 2,000 years ago, “To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”

You don’t need your phone to understand this.

Dominic’s personal articles, essays, interviews, and book recommendations are sent in his monthly newsletter. All subscribers get the PDF “11 Immutable Writing Lessons from Legendary Authors.”

If You Email Potential Employers Like This, Get Cozy in the Unemployment Line

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine mentioned he was looking for an internship in web design/computer programming. While I know next to nothing about computers or how they work, I do happen to know a woman who’s a senior project director in that field, so I said I’d happily refer him. Long story short, I gave him the woman’s email address and notified her ahead of time that he’d be reaching out.

He did indeed reach out. But his note was so thoughtless and unprofessional that it warranted an email to me from the woman insisting that I coach him on self-presentation and think twice about referring him in the future.

This is what he sent (with names and details removed):

Hey [name]!

Let me introduce myself, I am a computer science student at [college name]. I have worked for [company X, company Y, and company Z], all as summer internships. I have also been involved with the computer science club at [college] and at [high school]. I was also part of the Robotics team my 4 years at high school and we made it to world once.

I am actively looking for a internship where I would get more experience with working in a job that can further develop my skills as a computer scientist. I have worked a few other internships and have a bit of experience already. I am interested in front end web, but also any kind of database and backed programming as well. If the position fits what I am looking for I would love to hear back from you!

Thanks,

[name]

If you thought that was fine, chances are you need a primer on social intelligence. (This, this, or this is a good place to start). Ignore the heinous grammatical errors and 5^th grade writing quality. It’s the blatant selfishness and lack of empathy that warranted a swift stroke of the “delete” key.

Notice how he focuses entirely on himself and how a potential internship could benefit him. There is no inquiry into what this woman’s work entails or how he could add value to her team. It doesn’t take much effort to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and realize he or she doesn’t want to hear your life story. They need to know how you can benefit them. Robert Green sums it up well in this excerpt:

“The art of asking people for help depends on your ability to understand the person you are dealing with, and to not confuse your needs with theirs. Know that even the most powerful person is locked inside needs of his own, and that if you make no appeal to his self-interest, he merely sees you as desperate or, at best, a waste of time.”

I could ramble about how written communication is a lost art or how employers are mad because they can’t find skilled writers. But that’s another article in itself. In short, here’s what must be kept in mind when reaching out to a potential employer, regardless of the field:

Don’t focus exclusively on the past, but instead use it to demonstrate how you will add value in the future
Don’t get trapped in your own wants or desires
Don’t confuse your needs with theirs
Show, don’t tell: testimonials and work samples are always better than “here’s what I’ve done”

I would say sending a shitty email is better than not sending one at all, but I’m not entirely convinced that’s true. After all, professionals who work in the same network share lots of information with each other. Information about the 19-year-old who told the project director that he wanted to hear back “if the position fit what he was looking for.”

Don’t be that person.

Dominic’s personal articles, essays, interviews, and book recommendations are sent in his monthly newsletter. All subscribers get the “11 Immutable Writing Lessons from Legendary Authors” PDF.

My Pilgrimage to Whole Foods: America’s Most Pretentious Grocery Store

I am not one of the regulars at Whole Foods Market. I am an alien, an outsider. But I am curious as to how a grocery store became so polarizing. Faithful Whole Foods shoppers refuse to buy food from any other store while it’s objectors denounce it as a temple of pseudoscience. Either way, I am making a pilgrimage to explore the Mecca of socially-conscious foodstuffs in hopes that I can obtain a glimpse into this exclusive society. What follows is my eyewitness account.

As I shuffle cautiously into my local Whole Foods Market, I am not entering a grocery store. I am being cast into the midst of an obnoxious fall festival. The neatly arranged cornucopias, pumpkins, hay bales, and containers of eight-dollar organic caramel dip remind me that I am not, in fact, here to shop for groceries. I am here for a quasi-religious experience.

Beyond the seasonal section is the produce section. Here, a young woman in black Lululemon leggings carefully inspects a container of seven-dollar carrot sticks. I am tempted to ask her how she rationalizes a 250% price increase for a root vegetable, but I manage to restrain myself. I’ve only been here a minute or two – I can’t agitate the natives yet.

As I round the corner into the cereal aisle, I notice a display for “craft” granola. Eight dollars. I stand there, dumbfounded, as I try to grasp the difference between craft and non-craft granola in my mind’s eye. I consider putting the nearby employee on the spot to explain, but I decide to show him mercy. I proceed toward the cereals despite my confusion. For a brief moment I reminisce on the cereal cartoon characters that defined my childhood: the Trix Rabbit, Cap’n Crunch, Tony the Tiger. At Whole Foods, these characters have been replaced by professional photographs of green pastures and stone-ground oats. A mother is deciding between two sugarless bran cereals. I lock eyes with her toddler and wonder if she will ever know there’s another way.

Further down the aisle are bottles of nineteen-dollar pancake syrup. But do I dare call them “bottles?” If, God forbid, I drop a Jackson on the sap that comes from a tree, maybe it deserves to be held in something more artisanal: perhaps a carafe of syrup, a decanter of syrup. Even then, this isn’t just any pancake syrup, it’s grade-A organic maple syrup. A carafe of grade-A organic maple syrup. And we wonder why America has ego problems. I leave this aisle wondering what grade my Aunt Jemima syrup is.

The smell of coffee wafts over to me, so I take a detour to the aisle of its origins. As I pretend to read the labels on the absurd variety of organic coffees, I listen intently as a thin bearded man yammers about grinding his beans at home. Whole Foods reminds me that I may want to do the same, so as not to transfer any non-organic coffee dust into my morning brew. After all, Whole Foods’ grinders process conventional coffee, too. I stoop down to check out a coffee brewer that “blends art and science to create the ultimate coffee experience.” I wonder if my mom’s Mr. Coffee has, unbeknownst to her, been spoiling her coffee experience all these years. Maybe I should buy her this for Christmas.

I make my way toward the household products aisle, which I’m confident will be somewhat straightforward. But to my astonishment, Whole Foods has managed to put a veneer of snobbery over the most fundamental kitchen commodity: paper towels. Forget Bounty, forget generic store brands. Here, I can purchase “sustainably strong paper towels.” Twenty dollars. As I contemplate how my choice of material used to wipe excess ketchup off my face affects the global ecosystem, I end up next to a display of various branded waters: vapor-distilled water, artesian water, pH-balanced water, water with electrolytes, water without electrolytes, and water in a box. By now I’ve lost all sense of direction, so I decide that I’ll follow one specific shopper. I figure shadowing someone else will add some structure to my haphazard wandering.

I choose a woman nearby who looks to be in her sixties. Everything in her cart is green. Her long, tangled, gray hair is tied in a loose ponytail and she wears a lengthy, earth-tone garment. I imagine she would walk around barefoot if it were socially acceptable. She is “organic” and “sustainable” personified. I keep a safe distance as she creeps around the perimeter of the store, occasionally adding to her collection of homeopathic produce. I can’t help but think she’d save money by simply growing her own vegetables and eating them out of the soil. Be that as it may, my tour guide begins to bore me, so I peel off into the restroom.

I am expecting a rustic lavatory. Perhaps some fine woodwork, maybe even a bathroom attendant to offer me a towel to dry my hands. But alas, I’m underwhelmed by a standard tile floor and white urinals. As I go to dry my hands, I wonder why there are no sustainably strong paper towels in the dispenser. Practice what you preach, I think to myself. Maybe I’ll tell the manager.

Just when I think my brain can’t withstand being beaten over the head with any more pretentious health suggestions, I encounter the supplement and herbal remedies aisle. There are plant sterols to lower my cholesterol and valerian root extract to help me fall asleep. There’s St. John’s Wort which treats everything from mood swings to inflammation to cancer. I can buy a meld of rich goji berries and ashwagandha root to strengthen my immune system and bottles of chlorophyll concentrate to build better blood. Now I can’t muster the patience to read the labels. Bee pollen, cinnamon bark, lecithin, fenugreek seed, echinacea, and goldenseal.

This is all a bit overwhelming. But not to worry, the good folks at Whole Foods have placed a “Discover Your Remedy” station at the end of the aisle. Here, an overweight man wearing slacks and a pinstriped Oxford shirt gazes sternly into the digital touchscreen monitor that, based on an algorithm, tells him what supplement will best combat his ailment. Out of respect for his privacy, I don’t look at the screen. It looks as if he won’t finish any time soon, so I slip past him. But wait – I can’t forget the eight-dollar environmentally-friendly jug in which I can mix my concoction of oils, extracts, and powders.

By now, the workers are catching on to me. I have nothing in my hands. I’m not carrying a basket nor am I pushing one of their black carts that I admit look sturdier than your run-of-the-mill gray shopping cart. An enthusiastic young man with a beanie and unkempt facial hair asks me if I’m finding everything okay. The employees of America’s healthiest grocery store do not wear uniforms, just aprons. I assure him that I am, in fact, finding everything I need and tell him to have a great weekend.

I have seen many things at Whole Foods, some impressive, some laughable. But as I proceed to the sliding double doors which mark the end of my expedition, my mind shifts to what I have not seen: whining kids, the occasional misplaced product, a mother rushing frantically through the aisles. No, the people here are in the midst of a transcendent experience, not a chore. They are the regulars. They are the insiders. But I am not one of them.

Dominic Vaiana studies writing and media strategy at Xavier University. You can get the PDF “11 Immutable Writing Lessons from Legendary Authors” along with his personal articles, essays, interviews, and book recommendations by joining his monthly newsletter.

You’re Not Being ‘Slept On’ – Your Ego Is Just Too Big

Whether you’re a mediocre high school basketball player or Kanye West, no amount of hype or admiration ever seems to suffice. For whatever reason, people can’t fathom the talent or brilliance that subsists within your imagination. Some day they’ll all bow down to you. But until then you justify it by telling yourself (and others) that you’re being “slept on.” (Urban Dictionary defines slept on as: “Ignored or overlooked, not paid respect when an effort is made by a person or group of persons.”)

The slept-on culture is a byproduct of a tidal wave of self-published content that anybody with an Internet connection can make: SoundCloud mixtapes, Hudl highlights, Instagram fitness accounts, whatever. These people are never unskilled or lackluster. They’re just “slept on.” Below are six out of thousands of tweets that result from searching the term “sleeping on me” on Twitter:

“I’m glad everybody sleeping on me [100 emoji] They going wake up sooner or later” – Random high school football player

“People gonna stop sleeping on me one day” – Music producer

“Those sleeping on me. Stay sleep [praying hands emoji]” – Film maker

“Some y’all be sleeping on me [snoozing emoji]” – Recent college grad

“They stay sleeping on me but y’all about to get WOKE” – Makeup, fashion, and lifestyle vlogger

“Y’all sleeping on me but that’s just pushing me to go harder [100 emoji] Ima Remain humble” – Another random high school football player

These self-righteous claims, which are almost universally undeserved, are the symptoms of an inflated ego. The same voice that says “I’m slept on” is the same voice that says “I have it all figured out; I deserve the spotlight; I can do no wrong.”

Maybe you are the diamond in the rough. But even so, it’s doubtful that people purposefully shut you out. They just don’t have time to put their lives on hold to watch your highlight reel or listen to your mixtape. So instead of taking the time to bitch about how people are ignoring you, why not channel that energy into becoming so good that people can’t ignore you?

It’s incredibly easy to blame others for our lack of fame, recognition, or success. It’s tempting to hold them to the fire instead of holding ourselves to the fire and asking: What am I not doing to separate myself from the clutter?

With a few exceptions, I don’t care about anybody who reads this. I don’t write so I can have random people affirm me. I care more about myself and my personal progress than I care about retweets and how many newsletter subscribers I have. My potential, the best version of myself, is the standard I measure myself against. Not my level of public recognition.

“Winning is not enough,” says Ryan Holiday in Ego is the Enemy. “People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.”

This raises an interesting question:

If you were to maintain the same level of talent, but suddenly racked up thousands of followers and got featured in The New York Times, would you be satisfied? For most of us, the answer is yes. That’s because we’re obsessed with attention and validation when we should be obsessed with progress and humility.

Whenever we’re seduced into thinking we’re “slept on,” we must remember to distance ourselves from the clamor of others’ opinions, to persevere with no regard for admiration.

“What the superior man seeks is in himself,” said Confucius. “What the small man seeks is in others.”

The Cure for Distractions is to Stop Doing Work You Hate

The majority of men devote themselves to silencing [their] vocation and refusing to hear it. They manage to make a noise within themselves to distract their own attention in order not to hear it; and they defraud themselves by substituting for their genuine selves a false course of life.”

– Jose Ortega y Gasset

Why am I distracted?

That’s usually the last question you ask yourself when you’re trying to get shit done. The big project is due tomorrow morning, but with each passing minute it becomes harder to focus. So you fight the resistance. You check Snapchat again, you drink more coffee, you put it off until tomorrow when you’ll “have more time.”

You’ll do anything except question why you’re distracted in the first place. In other words, you treat your symptoms, not the disease. And the disease is doing work that’s meaningless, boring, and not aligned with your talents.

As children, we experience primal inclinations – we’re drawn to activities that captivate our attention and ignite our curiosity. We enjoy them not because of their perceived value, but because we develop an emotional connection to them. We all remember spending hours on end fully immersed in our favorite activities: drawing, writing, acting, building, designing, and so on. It wasn’t hard to focus; in fact, we often had to be dragged away because we were missing out on what we were “supposed to be doing.”

Fast forward to college and the situation is reversed: students’ attention spans are shriveled. Phones are in hand, TVs glare in the background, and complaints are abundant. Anything that provides an escape from work, even momentarily, is joyfully welcomed.

So what’s the disconnect? And why does it occur?

If we are to determine why campuses are littered with distracted 20-somethings, we have to look beyond the “millennials are lazy/undisciplined/entitled” stereotype. That’s the cop-out answer. The problem isn’t a lack of work ethic or endless distractions. The problem is choosing work that isn’t engaging enough to make distractions irrelevant.

“Once you choose a career [or a major] that doesn’t suit you, your desire and interest slowly wane and your work suffers for it,” notes Robert Greene, author of Mastery. “You come to see pleasure and fulfillment as something that comes from outside your work.”

Greene goes on to say that it’s our subconscious desire to conform to our parents’ expectations, money, and social norms that pulls us away from our primal inclinations and inevitably separates us from our truest selves.

While this observation seems bleak, it provides insight into how we can nullify the distractions that hinder us: We must partake in work that is both stimulating and fulfilling – work that kindles our deepest inspiration and ignites the eagerness we possessed as children.

In order to rediscover this inclination, the first step must be inward. Set aside the noise and look for patterns throughout your life: What do you think about in the shower? What do you do for free? What makes time stand still? Whatever that is, it’s your ticket to freedom.

All masters, from Socrates to Einstein to Michael Jordan, followed their inner voice. They were able to focus not through sheer willpower, but because they cherished their work. You and I are no different in that we learn faster and deeper when we’re emotionally invested in our work. There is a sense of urgency that manifests itself when striving towards something you care deeply about. Psychologists refer to this as being “in the flow” – a state in which, to some degree, one becomes immune to distractions.

Jason Fried, the founder of Basecamp, says that distractions can serve a purpose: “They tell us that our work is not well-defined, our work is menial, or the project as a whole is useless.”

Granted, not every project will flow effortlessly from our fingertips. There will be classes we hate. There will be grunt work. Those are all part of the process. But instead of beating ourselves up for being distracted, is it time instead to reevaluate what we’re doing and determine why we can’t seem to pay attention in the first place?

8 Books That Will Make You Want to Put Your F****** Phone Down For Once

The average American spends 10 hours per day in front of a screen. This amounts to over 3,800 hours per year, and ultimately means that an American can expect to die having spent a total of 34 years in front of a screen. We watch what we want, when we want, and we usually watch alone. A screen does not demand engagement or deliberation. It exists primarily to amuse us with easily-digestible sound bites and images. It either captures your attention or it doesn’t, which raises the uncomfortable question: Can a culture have any meaningful discussion, pursue truth, or elect a president when our standard of value is whether or not something can entertain us?

Our increasingly bizarre political landscape has led to frequent reference of George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopian novel about government suppression and public manipulation. But the late social critic Neil Postman would argue that it’s actually Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – a novel about technological sedation – that we should concern ourselves with. Postman wrote:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.

This isn’t an enjoyable topic to discuss, but an important one nonetheless. Anyway, here are eight books that can help us understand the media-saturated chaos we’re living in.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman

I was forced to read several excerpts from this book for a class a while back, but it wasn’t until I re-read the whole thing on my own time that I realized why this book is an Amazon bestseller even though Amazon didn’t even exist when it was published. Written in 1985, Neil Postman expresses his concern for a culture saturated with television. But the parallels between his predictions for television and today’s Internet culture are eerily similar. Postman noticed the seeds of a revolution taking place: that all experience, from politics to religion to news, was taking the form of entertainment and impairing our ability to think critically. He notes that we now expect everything we consume to be pre-packaged, simplified, and dramatized. This trend, according to Postman, leaves no room for rational discussion, debate, or complexity. The result? The only things that reach us are those deemed “amusing.” Never mind if they are helpful or true. This book is just as relevant now as it was over 30 years ago, and well worth the quick read (163 pages) if you want to take a step back from a tech-filled life.

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle

The argument that technology, particularly social media, has brought us closer together is a seductive one. But Turkle’s research here suggests that technology has isolated us more than anything. How often do we confuse Instagram likes with companionship or texting with intimate conversation? Based on 15 years of research and hundreds of interviews, Alone Together explores the human consequences of allowing technology into the aspects of our lives where it doesn’t belong, namely interpersonal relationships. “Relentless connection leads to a new solitude,” says Turkle. “We turn to new technology to fill the void, but as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down.” The book is alarmingly critical, but ultimately encouraging as it asserts that we, as distinct human beings, deserve better than tweets, artificial intelligence, and text messages.

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo Events in America by Daniel Boorstin

Arguably the most influential book on media culture ever written, Daniel Boorstin holds up a metaphorical mirror to American society and raises concerns regarding our ability to distinguish illusion from reality. Boorstin theorizes that pseudo events, the manufactured junk we watch on our screens 24/7 which exist solely for the purpose of being talked about, have seduced and corrupted us to the point that we no longer want to experience real life. When The Image was published in the 1960s, Boorstin was mostly concerned about TV pundits and manufactured gossip. And while these are still prevalent today, the basic theme of the pseudo event is in direct line with today’s social media and pop culture: we concern ourselves with appearance and non-reality so much that we foster unrealistic expectations for ourselves. Boorstin’s insights shine a bright light on the question of why we’re so dissatisfied with life. A thoughtful yet hard-hitting book, The Image should be read by anyone wishing to get back in touch with reality.

And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture by Bill Wasik

Every day a new trend or hashtag seems to beg for our attention online: a political scandal, a celebrity breakup, if you want a story you can find it. But how many of them actually last longer than a day or two? The problem is that there’s so many of these “nano-stories” that our brain’s attention span literally can’t process all of it. We become impotent when we try to have an in-depth conversation about a complex topic because we’ve been acclimated to the tweet, the soundbite, the Vine, the Snapchat, and other types of fragmented information. Bill Wasik offers a well-researched but humorous tour of our hollowed-out media environment, citing the dramatic rise and fall of pop bands and political blogs to illustrate how and why anybody with Internet access can snatch our attention and essentially create something out of nothing. Wasik isn’t calling for us to become completely tech-free or go back to snail mail. But by dissecting this new form of information dissemination, he is calling us to reflect on our habits and to seek more sustainable methods of information consumption.

Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality by Neal Gabler

We have a tendency to consider entertainment as a separate entity from “serious” things, but Gabler observes that the ever-widening reach of TV and other media have turned such serious things like politics, literature, religion, and even our own lives, into one vast fantasyland. We can see the evidence for this claim everywhere we look; the determining factor for whether something is important is not its truthfulness, value, or quality, but its ability to entertain or amuse us. I guarantee this book will make you do a double-take and contemplate on what Gabler says is our “bottomless appetite for novelty, gossip, and melodrama.” Like many of the books on this list, Life: The Movie is prophetic in that Gabler’s observations have proved to be equally if not more relevant today as they were when he wrote the book in 2000.

Within the Context of No Context by George W.S. Trow

Originally published in a 1981 issue of The New Yorker, George W.S. Trow repurposed his classic work in 1997 with a new foreword in book form. Here, Trow offers a scathing critique of what he saw as the failings of an American culture that placed television as its center of attention. Trow’s work has been described as “half brilliant, half insane.” Nevertheless, I found his insights to be shockingly reflective of what happens when an entire generation grows up on game shows, trivia, and sitcoms, all of which provide no real basis or structure for learning – hence, no context. It’s sometimes difficult to read books that paint such a bleak picture, but I think it’s impossible to navigate our 21^st century media nightmare without understanding how we got here in the first place.

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman

I was captured enough by Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death that I picked up this book by him as well. Although everything he writes tends to have a sobering effect on the reader, it’s still somehow pleasurable to read. In this case it’s his call to reevaluate an American culture that fetishizes technology and values such technologies over our own human progress. “We tell ourselves that [technology] will lead to a better life…we proceed under the the assumption that information is our friend” writes Postman. “But it is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms.” Many of us, myself included, are blind to how our daily lives are colored by the technologies we passively allow into our lives. Postman possessed a rare ability to identify these trends before their effects set in. I don’t think his intention was to scare us away from TV (or the Internet today), but rather to make us aware of how we are shaped by such things and what we can do about that.

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges

An unapologetic cultural critic, Hedges fearlessly exposes the dark consequences of allowing fantasy to overshadow reality in America. He argues that the celebrity gossip, trash-talk news, and mindless trivia that fill our lives are the product of a culture that is a-literate; that is, we are able to read, but choose not to. “We have traded the printed word for the gleaming image,” Hedges writes. “The culture of illusion reduces us to the level and dependency of children. It impoverishes language.” Written in 2009, Hedges predictions, namely predicting the rise of a Trump-like figure, are shockingly accurate. Although graphic at times, it’s a book that should be read often to bring us back down to Earth.

Please, for the Love of God, Stop Sharing Odyssey Articles

If you’re a college student not living under a rock, you probably see a link to an Odyssey article at least once per month. But here is a bit of context for those who’ve been blessed to not come across one of these literary train wrecks before: The Odyssey Online is a user-generated, blog-style website which prides itself on “democratizing content creation while personalizing discovery.” The main selling for the Odyssey is that it opens its doors to over 15,000 college-aged contributors with minimal restrictions or qualifications.

Which sounds like a cool idea until you realize that’s exactly where the problem lies.

I’d never visited The Odyssey’s website until I started research for this article, so when their homepage encouraged me to “Open up to new perspectives and ideas,” and “enrich my life,” I was optimistic. But after a few minutes of browsing, it quickly became apparent that articles like “15 Reasons Why Breakfast is the Best,” and “10 Qualities That Make Lip Gallagher Absolutely Irresistible” couldn’t remotely enrich anyone’s life, and as a matter of fact, do more harm than good for those who read them.

Aside from the trite nature of much of The Odyssey’s content, it’s riddled with grammatical errors despite (apparently) going through an editorial process which I can’t imagine is any more thorough than the average person’s skimming of Apple’s terms and conditions. But all joking aside, if The Odyssey is any indication of my generation’s potential, we should be seriously concerned. The problem is not that The Odyssey has a multitude of writers. The problem is that these writers perpetuate an online environment in which any serious discussion, serious work, serious anything really, is marginalized to make room for self-indulgent trash – and the “editors” are complicit in the process.

When questioned about The Odyssey’s frequent publishing of list articles (also known as “listicles”) in efforts to appeal to an illiterate generation, then-managing editor, Kate Waxler, defended the platform claiming that only “some” of the highest-trafficked articles are listicles.

“From the extreme depth of content we get every day,” said Waxler, “I can see that this generation is hungry and eager to be informed and engaged.”

This statement, coming from the managing editor of the publication which allowed the article that turned the dad-bod into an Internet sensation is, to say the least, rich.

The Odyssey’s purpose is not to inform, educate, or enlighten. Its purpose is to coddle its readers and confirm their biases while collecting pay-per-click ad revenue. It is the publication for readers whose only other sources of information are Snapchat’s Discover stories and Instagram’s Popular page. It’s like the gray sweatpants of online publications: something heinously unattractive, but comfortable and easy to use.

To be fair, it should be noted that The Odyssey is only a symptom of our intellectual decline, not the disease itself. It’s not the only culprit of spewing baby talk under the guise of journalism. Indeed, it is one of many. But one would think that an organization with the capability to democratize content supplemented by such a massive following would hold itself to higher standards that benefit the public. Sadly, it’s leaders are too easily seduced by money and page views.

“Your voice matters,” reads one banner on the website. “Be heard.”

Alright, I’ll be the one to blow the whistle: Should you really be heard when the extent of your research is aimless scrolling through trivia and celebrity gossip? Should you really be heard when the basis for your writing is your feelings about a Netflix show that you binge watch while eating ice cream? On one hand, I admire the courage it takes to expose one’s work to the public’s eye. But when a toddler draws a hideous picture, you don’t show it off to the whole neighborhood – you hang it on the fridge for a few days until the kid’s drawing skills improve.

The Odyssey states that its contributors write “long-form articles,” which have apparently been conflated with 400-word listicles such as the “6 Struggles Every Girl Faces When Trying to Purchase Kylie Jenner Lip Kits” and “Definite Proof That Minnesota Is Better Than Wisconsin.”

These are “the voices of the millennial generation…today’s leaders, visionaries, innovators and thought-provokers,” says The Odyssey. “What you see represents nothing other than authentic ideas that the community deems important.”

But even if there are some gems amidst this landfill of content – which I’m sure there are – the stigma of The Odyssey inevitably taints them. It’s like broadcasting the State of the Union address on Spike TV. The medium overrides the message. The result is that nothing of significance ever arises out of these articles besides a quick hit of instant gratification. No lasting discussion, no reflection, no critical thought. Just a flash in the pan only to be replaced by next week’s trend.

The Odyssey’s 15,000-plus contributors may delude themselves into thinking they’re enriching the lives of readers. But once we see through their thin veil of pseudo-journalism and set aside the empty encouragement of their peers which fuels them, all that remains is a curation of glorified Facebook rants.

The Odyssey exists to make money, not to help us “connect and learn with ideas from around the world.” Spokespeople for The Odyssey boast of expanding their contributor network and growing their revenue, though they decline to provide specific revenue figures.

Sites such as Bleacher Report and The Huffington Post, both of which started as user-generated content platforms similar to The Odyssey, soon lost credibility due to shoddy writing by amateurs and were forced to employ legitimate reporters to sustain their businesses. The Odyssey will also fail soon enough if it maintains its current model. Its editors will lose control of the barrage of content needed to generate sufficient ad revenue to pay its employees. The quantity-over-quality model will cannibalize itself.

It’s also possible that readers will grow sick and tired of meaningless content. In this case, The Odyssey would cease to generate sufficient per-click ad revenue and be forced to downsize. In other words, if you don’t want to see Odyssey links of your timeline, the responsibility lies in your hands: No clicking means no money.

Just something to think about next time you want to dive into “The 14 Phases of Registering for Classes, As Told by ‘High School Musical.’”

Most People Don’t Care That Much About You, and That’s Fine

Your life is center stage. You are being watched. Despite the other 7 billion people in the world, the spotlight is on you, putting your every failure, imperfection, and blemish on display for all of us to analyze. This is a tough belief to hold in your head every day.

But it’s completely bogus.

This belief that everyone is watching us or that our lives are the focal point of others was first observed by the psychologist David Elkind in 1967. He called it the ‘imaginary audience,’ and noticed that this tendency was common, even normal among adolescents. We all experience the phase of fearing the disapproval of our family, peers, or strangers, and Elkind believed it was necessary to outgrow this phase in order to become more grounded in reality. But today it seems that it’s not only awkward tweens, but adults who struggle to shed this unwarranted performance anxiety that’s supposed to reside as we mature.

The case can be made that social media has exaggerated the effects of our own imaginary audiences. Our Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter feeds certainly blur the line between our perception of what others think about us and what people actually think. But that’s beside the point. For thousands of years, we’ve been trying to figure out how we can care less about what others think of us, or for that matter remind ourselves that people rarely even think of us at all.

In the first century AD, the Greek slave-turned-philosopher Epictetus discussed the hypothetical case of a musician who feels no anxiety while he practices by himself; but when he goes on stage he succumbs to pressure and can’t perform, even though he has the most talent. “For what he wishes is not only to sing well,” says Epictetus, “but likewise to gain applause. But this is not in his own power.”

How often do act the same way? With every completed task we flail and grasp for approval and admiration. We place less value on the merits of our work than the applause that follows it. And if that applause doesn’t come, we pout, make an excuse, or blame someone else.

Schopenhauer proposed a question nearly 1,700 years after Epictetus died which I refer to often: “Would a musician feel flattered by the applause of his audience if it were known to him that it consisted entirely of deaf people?”

Your metaphorical “audience” today might as well be entirely deaf because 99.9 percent of people don’t care what you’re doing. Behind the likes and retweets is a desert of apathy and carelessness. They don’t care about your Snapchat story. They don’t care how your hair looks. They don’t care that you graduated or won a trophy. But we insist that the spotlight is shining brightly upon us in both good and bad times. We insist that the tribe really does care.

Steven Pressfield sums this up well in his book Turning Pro:

“The amateur dreads becoming who she really is because she fears that this new person will be judged by others as ‘different.’ The tribe will declare us ‘weird’ or ‘queer’ or ‘crazy.’ The tribe will reject us. Here’s the truth: the tribe doesn’t give a shit. There is no tribe. That gang or posse is, in fact, a conglomeration of individuals who are just as fucked up as we are and just as terrified.

Each individual is so caught up in his own bullshit that he doesn’t have two seconds to worry about yours or mine, or to reject or diminish us because of it. When we truly understand that the tribe doesn’t give a damn, we’re free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us.”

‘Inspiration is for Amateurs,’ Says One Mesmerizing Artist. I Agree.

Chuck Close, a 76-year-old master of photorealist painting, suffers from dyslexia, temporary paralysis, and a condition known as prosopagnosia which disables his capacity to recognize faces. One would imagine that he needs a great deal of inspiration to continually produce great work. But the opposite is true – Chuck Close despises inspiration.

“Inspiration is for amateurs,” he says. “The rest of us just show up and get to work.”

In spite of his grim health condition, Chuck Close has produced some of the most mesmerizing and sought-after art of this century, all seemingly without any sort of extrinsic motivation. This begs the question: Do we have it all wrong when we assume inspiration is a requisite for great achievements?

Tacking a motivational quote on our wall or setting it as our phone wallpaper seems like a great idea at first. It might get us excited for a day or two. But that feeling always seems to fade as quickly as it appears. All of the inspirational speeches, songs, movies, and so on spike our dopamine levels; as Close recognized though, the inspiration that arises out of that thrill has nothing to do with action. It has everything to do with getting us in the mood for action, even if we don’t end up taking it. Many would use this theory as evidence as to why self-help authors and speakers never run out of business: if inspiration worked, the demand for it would no longer exist.

There is something hardwired into people like Chuck Close that allows them to get things done without having to feel thrilled about it. Instead of having an on/off switch that creates spurts of motivation and slumps of procrastination, they maintain a steady flame of productivity. Oliver Burkeman explains this more clearly than I can:

“The daily rituals and working routines of prolific authors and artists – people who really do get a lot done – very rarely include techniques for ‘getting motivated’ or ‘feeling inspired.’ Quite the opposite: they tend to emphasize the mechanics of the working process, focusing not on generating the right mood, but on but accomplishing certain actions, regardless of mood.”

Michael Jordan didn’t have to feel inspired to score 55 points in a playoff game. Steve Jobs didn’t have to listen to Ted Talks to convince himself to develop a the iPhone. They just did it. Their drive came from repetition and discipline, not validation. They understood that feeling like acting and taking action are two separate entities.

The problem with seeking out inspiration is that it adds another barrier between ourselves and the goal: in order to achieve X, I’ll motivate myself, then get to work. Why not just do the work instead? I’ll take 500 sloppy words, a less-than-perfect workout, or a troubling study session over ‘feeling inspired’ any day.

I hope this didn’t inspire you to be uninspired.