Creativity into Content
A Stream of Consciousness Rant
I am sitting in a Paris AirBnB, trying to write something 25 minutes before bedtime. I like Paris. It smells of stone, leather, sweet tobacco and flowers. Berlin had the fragrance of pee and concrete. I’m surprised so many hippies live there. Maybe it’s their charnel ground practice.
This post is turning out well. I’m intentionally writing something unfocused. That’s how I’m feeling right now. I want to write without having to turn myself into a product. This is doable but might be incompatible with having a lot of people reading. Best practice is to get focused, narrowing your “content” into a slim category. I don’t want to get focused. Do you want me to get focused? On what? Why are you even reading this?
People come up to me at events and tell me how much they enjoy reading stuff I write. This feels good. I like inspiring people to become better versions of themselves. People I do philosophical guidance with tend to be happy. Most send me money, about a fifth of the hourly wage I’d make working for one of the software platforms that transform creativity into content.
My current direction in life is not optimal, capital-wise. Good thing I’m rich enough to be able to optimize for social relations, well-being and having an impact. “Impact” is Effective Altruism-speak for improving something important in the world.
I have this idea of philosophically guiding EAs, which I think would be fun. I made a heroic attempt at outreach, and it flopped fabulously.
My current direction in life is most likely not optimal, impact-wise. I could get a fancy software job, earning 150k $/year, and donate a big percentage to prevent children dying from malaria. I don’t do that. Does this mean I don’t care about malaria deaths?1
It feels strange not to have a salary. I’m used to donating 10% to effective charities. I almost never told anyone.2 Should I have? It seems like people spin positive narratives around themselves for less reason. I am not very good at impression-management. I suck at optics. My signalling game is off.
Sometimes it feels like I’m doing the opposite of most people. It’s like they get that lots of power comes from social standing, and conform to a signalling-based society. This is the opposite of virtue. I want a virtue-based society, inside-out instead of outside-in. Maybe we can find a compromise—virtue-signalling? Doesn’t work.
I think it can work though. Or at least I hope. No! I will dream it into existence. I don’t want to push my life through a content pipeline, optimizing it to fit snugly within a category. I want to write in a sacred way.
Can SEO be sacred? I feel unclean touching it - but I need some feedback. A deal with the devil? Turning into a content-degenerate? Aversion is strong.
I think it’s partially about my arrogance. I have this idea that I should be able to succeed without even trying, just being naturally good at things. I usually am. But not signalling. And not a lot of other things. I am very uneven in my skill set.
Having more people read my writings is not something I can just wing, it seems. Or can I? Do I even want an audience? Why? Being famous sucks, you get cancelled and hated by random people.
“Jonathan is so arrogant! He writes about malaria like it’s his problem to solve! #whitesaviourism #colonialmindset #cancelhonestliving”
It would be an interesting challenge, to see how sturdy my inner fortress is. But no.
Signalling is not one of my strengths. I’m good at spotting patterns, figuring out how to change things in holistic ways, and relentlessly optimising. I know this because I interviewed 5 of my former coworkers.
Let’s try to reorient…
I might continue writing if I can make it pleasant and non-life-eatening.
Maybe I should learn how to signal better. I've managed to improve on harder things. How to do signalling in a virtuous way
I might pivot to philosophical guidance full-time if it starts taking off more. Maybe I should get some testimonials. I have been offered to by at least one client. I don’t enjoy optimizing this. Signalling, boo. But maybe I should suck it up and try to do Pareto-optimal signalling?
Maybe I should do something important, a Grand Mission for Special Me. If children get saved from malaria, it might be worth the potential criticism. Breaking free from envy-based constraints is worthwhile anyway.
Maybe I should work on my arrogance? Should I increase it? Decrease it? Live with it? Maybe it’s good for signalling? Should I embrace it and embody it, keeping it as a sincerely ironic ploy? Who knows?
Maybe I should continue as I do? Get some #grindset vibes going, hustle for subscribers, try to grow? I am close to 80 people. It’s about as many as most people get by sneezing. Maybe super-analytical pieces on the intersection of virtue ethics and sex parties isn’t a big market segment? Most Stoics on substack seem to be fairly right-wing, I wonder what they’d think about the polyamory, childlessness, godlessness, veganism, BDSM etc. Might be a bit of a culture clash. I’m sure we can all handle it in good calm and take care of our own value judgements. Or not.
Fuck this. I’m going to bed. Maybe I should enjoy the fragrance of Paris rather than torment myself. (I’m putting this post on scheduled delivery, let’s see if I think this is a good idea tomorrow.)
Please tell me what you think I should do with my life in the comments below:
I did pledge to donate 5k USD to whoever finally kills off the Anopheles mosquito using a gene drive. (note: the link says “significantly reduce”. That’s code for killing off the fuckers). More than 600k people die every year. For reference, here’s some other death tolls:
Ukraine war: 14.4k estimated. 2,4% of the YEARLY malaria death toll
Israel-Hamas war: 26k, 4,3% of the YEARLY malaria death toll
Sometimes when I tell people I’ve contributed to a bounty on the greatest human-killer ever, they go “But what if killing off the mosquito makes people angry? We need to think of the environment”. If we discuss the topic for 30 minutes, then roughly 34 people would have died from malaria during the conversation.
I did convince 2 friends to donate 10% to effective charity. Good on the children dying less from malaria.
I enjoyed being in confusion with you and something in your inner dialogue resonated with mine. I don’t have answers but I do tell myself frequently “you’re already doing the thing”. Good luck!