Social death
#25
I don’t really like what I posted yesterday. Self-discipline, the value of suffering, these are big and complex areas, and I don’t think I addressed them with nearly enough nuance as they deserve. I was out most of the day yesterday with a friend (some photos at the end of this post!) and pretty tired when I got to writing, so I was feeling the 10pm time pressure of needing to post something. Since I posted it last night, I’ve been off and on thinking about how I kind of hate the post and considering deleting it, and doing a makeup 1k words at some other point. There were definitely other posts that I do not like, but I don’t recall feeling nearly as strongly about any of them. I suppose this topic is a more important one to me, as it’s both generally interesting & also quite relevant to parenting. I imagine I’ll come back to the topic eventually with a better treatment. For now I will keep the post as-is and remind myself of the name I chose for this blog.
Another facet of writing things so quickly that they’re almost guaranteed to be bad, and then posting them online, is wading in what Sasha Chapin describes as “the moat of low status”:
Around anything cool you want to pursue, you will find a Moat of Low Status. Each moat is different, but they are never pleasant to be in. They’re always scummy, cold, and terrifying.
…
Some only consist of your self-loathing. If you find a shack to practice the violin where nobody can hear you, congratulations. But you will still hear you. And your ability to notice that you suck is what will make you good. Or what will make you quit. You can generate a Moat all on your own. But then you have to cross it.
In late 2021, a couple friends were visiting Kathy and me in LA for Thanksgiving. We decided to go to a comedy show at Hollywood Improv that Friday night. The tickets were only $15 each and it was a fairly small venue – we weren’t expecting too much. I insisted we sit at one of the front tables to get the full experience. On top of that, the button-down shirt I was wearing was a mustard yellow, so we were pretty much guaranteed to get roasted. And boy did we get roasted. One of our friends got roasted pretty intensely a couple times, both by the opener and the main act. But I got destroyed throughout almost the entirety of the main act. The show would have been totally different if I wasn’t in the audience – the comedian was constantly asking me questions, making fun of my sexual abilities, and even when he was telling some unrelated story or joke setup, he would always address it to me.
Honestly it felt pretty shitty in the moment. Getting made fun of for like 30-45 minutes in front of a small crowd is not most people’s definition of a good time. As opposed to a Comedy Central-style roast, where at least the jokes are specific to you because they’re made by people you know, these jokes were fairly generic. It’s not something I would actively seek out (though I did make Claude roast me recently… maybe I have some masochism in me), but it was definitely a unique experience and feeling. I’m not sure how much is post-hoc rationalization, but I almost feel glad I got to feel that level of social embarrassment. From this podcast:
And, the great sociologist Brooke Harrington told me that, if there was an E=mc2 [energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light, Einstein’s Equation] of Social Science, it would be: the fear of social death is greater than the fear of physical death. And, if your reputation is on the line, if the ship is going down, you’ll put your reputation in the lifeboat and you’ll let your body go to the bottom of the ocean.
Feeling some mild form of social death at that comedy show was quite painful, arguably more painful than most physical pains I’ve felt. I have also felt some level of social death / identity loss in voluntarily entering the “moat of low status” by quitting my job & publishing my mediocre writing. Even before quitting, I would occasionally feel the desire to move to another country where I didn’t know the language, so I could reset the invisible status games that are always present and just be embarrassed on a more frequent basis. Ego death, from meditation, psychedelics, or a major life shift, has always interested me for some reason, even though I haven’t acted on it all that much until recently. Raising a child may be the ultimate form of ego death, so I am really looking forward to that. But in the meantime, I plan to savor being in the moat, though I can already feel it starting to become more comfortable, or at least like a known uncertainty rather than an unknown one. It’s probably time to up the ante somehow. Maybe I’ll start recording audio or videos of myself doing something I enjoy doing but know I am really bad at, and posting them online. Singing comes to mind.
Overall, I want to just try a ton of different things during this low-status time period of my life, and ideally do them consistently in public. Exposing myself repeatedly (100 days feels like a good time period) to mild levels of social death for things I at least somewhat enjoy doing. Ultimately I am looking for something where the pursuit of mastery itself is enjoyable, regardless of results. Getting to practice should be sufficient, performing is just a bonus.
From this post:
“You have to be willing to be nobody to have a chance to be who you want to be.”
I meant this on both macro and micro levels. You have to take risks. You have to be willing for “people” to think less of you, or at least be unsure what to think of you for a while. And for the people that are close to you, discuss it openly. You’ll likely get understanding and advice, making it less tempting to back out too. And in this process there’s a good chance you’ll find out who really is and isn’t so close to you too.
It’s only been 3 months since I quit, but I am very grateful for my friends. Sabbaticals are more normalized in tech than other careers, but I don’t think I have any friends that think less of me for leaving without any plan. It really helps affirm that you are not your job or career when your friends and family continue to love and support you when you don’t have that. Of course I know this intellectually, but it’s different to viscerally feel the unconditional nature of that love and support. Thank you.
Old Town Alexandria is so beautiful! Can’t believe I’ve never been there before.
