Patrick E. McLean

Josh is a brilliant technologist and independent thinker. We’ve also done some consulting together. I thought he would be a great guy to talk to about the ideas that drive How to Succeed in Evil. He totally is, but he’s also been sounding the social media alarm for longer than anybody I know of.

He asks this great question about the use of satire at the very end of the episode. We didn’t have time to get into it, but I’m going to a whole essay on it.

Enjoy.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

The closest I can come to a definition of humility is something like ‘the proper understanding of your relationship to the Cosmos.’

This is a tall order because the Cosmos is vast none of us know very much about any part of it. 

That’s not false humility, that’s just a fact. The world we see is very complicated. Hideously complicated, in fact, and I think we have developed cultural and psychological mechanisms to hide this fact from ourselves so that we don’t go insane. We view things in the lowest level of resolution that will allow us to operate them to get what we want. 

And you know this because, every once in a while, that thing you thought you understood, stops working and blows up into a snarl of unexpected complexity. But it’s not that it blows, up, really. The complexity was there all along. You just didn’t notice because it wasn’t causing you any problems. 

It’s like this when your car fails to pass inspection because the check engine light is on. It’s a pretty simple matter, you just need to get the little light turned off. But behind that light lurks mechanical problems, finding and negotiating with a mechanic, proprietary auto parts, distribution networks, emissions and motor vehicle regulations, and all the other problems that come with not having a car while it’s being fixed. Maybe your marriage isn’t in a great place and asking for a ride to the mechanic’s is the thing that precipitates the fight that lands you in divorce court. 

Now the check engine light hasn’t just revealed a problem with your car, but a problem with your life. And yet all that complexity was seemingly hidden from you by a dashboard lights.

Compared to the complexity of the world, you’re not that smart, you don’t live that long, and, when you look at yourself in a global fashion, almost no one knows or cares who you are. You are insignificant. 

Except that you’re not. NOT AT ALL. You are the most important thing in the world, in fact, you are the world, as far as you’re concerned – and certainly of utmost importance to your family and those who love you. The business of living is only frivolous when viewed from the outside.

Objectively, you’re a worm. Subjectively, you are the center of the universe. And for me, having humility means that you can reconcile this paradox in a more or less graceful fashion. 

It’s knowing that I cannot fly under my own power but if I struggle to make something of my life, maybe, just maybe I could invent a plane. Or I could uncover some bit of knowledge that would enable someone to invent a plane. 

When Richard Feynman got a letter from a student in which the student disparaged his work and complained of being a ‘nameless man’ Feynman, responded with a letter that included this: 

No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself – it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are.

Of course, the problems you can do something about do not have to be technical problems. And, in some sense, I think the problems of the hard sciences are easy. You can know when they have been solved. And the people working on them usually know when progress has been made. 

Moral problems – the problems that exist between people are more complicated than quantum theory. This is true technically. Our relatively stable societies, rest on millennia of evolution and trial and error. The smartest people doing the best they could to figure out how we could best live together and co-operate to make progress towards shared goals. 

No one person can create the richness of language. The labor is massive. No one person can create the common law. These things have taken generations. We are all worms – except that we’re not. 

Because we can choose to make a small dent. 

To say that Einstein and Newton were brilliant and you are not – to throw your hands up in despair, saying “what can I possibly do,”" is a lack of proper humility. 

Genius is a fact. Stupendously brilliant people come along every once in a while. And they make bigger leaps than the rest of us. But how smart are they compared to the complexity of the world, and how much are those leaps within their control? 

Because here’s the thing, if you’re a genius in the sciences, you not only have to be brilliant, but you also have to be born at the right time – there has to be a fundamental problem left unsolved, and it has to be ripe for the solving. The groundwork, mathematically, observationally, experimentally has to have been done so that you can solve the problem. 

Galileo wasn’t the first person to argue that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe. He was the first person to PROVE it. That’s why, among other things, he’s known as the father of Observational Astronomy. But without the telescope – invented by a Dutchman, he wouldn’t have gotten there. And the invention of the telescope wouldn’t have been possible without Nicolas of Cusa inventing eyeglasses in 1421 AND THEN nearly 200 years of craftsmanship and improvement in the art of lens making. 

Properly understood – all of those people helped to solve that problem. 

I think that, if you look at it correctly, you see that when compared to the total complexity of the world, geniuses are effectively just morons just like you and me. 

Consider it from God’s perspective. Imagine that you are all-knowing, and you look down upon humanity and consider three people. A polymathic genius, like Newton, me, and someone with a sub 80 IQ. Say Down’s syndrome. And while I’m busy secretly holding the person with Down’s syndrome in contempt because I’m so much smarter than that poor b*****d, the genius is thinking the same thing about me. The three of us, all perfectly stacked in a foolish hierarchy of arrogance. 

Because how to does it appear to an omnipotent being with infinite IQ? Or let’s say a mere million IQ – Our polymath has an IQ of, say, 200. There’s a very smart person’s’ worth of intelligence – 120 IQ points between the polymath and the person with Down’s Syndrome.

But from a million IQ perspective, that’s .012% difference. If God wasn’t omnipotent, he wouldn’t even be able to notice the difference. From a higher perspective, we’re all morons. 

I’ve seen a lot of these foolish hierarchies of arrogance. Authors can be very bad about this. There’s an imaginary pecking order in Sci-Fi and Fantasy Authors – and perhaps literary authors as well. And I’ve seen many of the people in these hierarchies that are so terrifically ego-compromised that their lives are hell. Every little thing bridles them. They expend a tremendous amount of energy on status signaling and petty feuds. 

When, from a higher view, they all suck anyway. Statistically speaking, none of these jackasses are going to be read after they are dead. I don’t certainly don’t exempt myself from this, almost no one reads me now. But, perhaps, because I’ve cultivated a bit of humility, I can face this distressing fact and not run screaming from it. 

Well, some days at least.

BUT IT GETS WORSE. Consider that things like IQ and “talent” aren’t enough – for anything. I mean, you don’t want to leave home without them if you can avoid it. But geniuses or even mere experts, are astoundingly ignorant outside their domain of expertise. 

And without hard work – we might call that the virtue of industry? – nothing happens. 

Thinking this way, is, I think, a key part of humility – and not just because intelligence is utterly unrelated to a person’s moral worth, but because it’s incredibly useful. 

Because humility makes you more effective. It helps you work harder. When you really understand …

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

In the United States, the richest country in the world, every measure of mental health is plummeting. And have been before the pandemic. In a recent survey CDC entitled, "Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation During the COVID-19 Pandemic" a full 10 percent of the U.S. population had seriously considered suicide in the month of June. For 18-24 year olds that number was 25. And 69.9% of 18-24 reported suffering from depressive or anxiety disorders.

So, I'm going to talk about hope. And I'm going to talk about it in a hard-headed practical kind of way. Hope as a tool. Hope as, a crowbar of a kind. A great big unbreakable steel b*****d of a prybar. A lever long enough. 25 lbs of cold-forged Hope as a verb. As a thing that happens to other things and leaves them forever changed.

Hope as a four-letter word. An explosive utterance that barks forth from a person in pain or in battle and gives them the strength they need to go on.

Hope

I believe that anything that makes you want to abandon hope is a lie. Abandoning Hope is literally the gateway to hell. That's why when Dante wrote the Inferno he made the sign above the gate read, "Abandon all hope ye who enter here." Maybe, just maybe, that inscription means not that there is no hope for the damned, but that, if you give up hope you are damned.

But maybe that's not right, exactly. After all hope springs eternal. No, that's not right either. The closest I can get to it is what Emily Dickinson wrote,

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all."

We can't stop the bird from singing. Nor can we get rid of the bird, like a bird that flew into an airport terminal during construction, there just seems to be no good way to chase the damn thing out. All we have a is a choice, will we listen to the bird singing or will we listen to something else. Or deny the bird's existence altogether?

Hope man, Hope. Hope Goddamn it! Grab a man by his jacket lapels, shake him vigorously and slap him full across the mouth, then shout it in his face, “Hope goddamn it!”

The modern lie goes something like this. The world is just too big and too complicated and too corrupt and too out of control. There's nothing that I can do. The only way is for leaders to change it from the top-down, and all are leaders are just s**t. Just look at all of this awful news I keep doomscrolling by. The world's going to hell, there's no point, no change, no hope.

Yet that bird is still singing.

And there's great reason for hope. Go to ourworldindata.com. See how bad things used to be. See that we're at the pinnacle of human progress. Sure we have problems, but if all you see is the last 5, 10 or 20 years. If all you see is is the three feet of sidewalk in front of you don't see what a remarkable thing we really are. You don't see how far we've come. And how much farther yet we will go. As Ray Bradbury said:

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.

Look at us across 5,000 years. Consider the sacrifices that got us here. Look at child mortality since 1950.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality-around-the-world

Global population living in extreme poverty since 1977.

https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

Take the U.S.

Everyone who lives in the U.S. is in the wealthiest 1% of people on Earth. Everyone in the United States has daily use of technologies to make their life better than the rich and powerful of 100 years ago could not even have imagined.

Every single one of us is, in a material sense, is better off than the most powerful conquerer in the history of the world.

Then why does everything feel so hopeless?

Lack of context, sure. But I think it's more than that. Learned helplessness. Addictions of all shapes and sizes. Addictions to devices, to substances, to food, to comfort, to distraction to stress hormones, to the news. I do not stand aloof in judgment here. I live in the world. I wrestle with all of these things.

I have been given great talents -- which I have taken some pains to develop, but a lot of the time they feel to me like unmerited gifts of grace. And what have I done with them? Ah, there they are. All the things I haven't written. The books I haven't read. The time I have squandered. All that I could have been and am not.

And now, the voice whispers, you are getting old. You are passing through the gates now, it's not your fault, abandon all hope, ye who enter unto here.

In my soul, the thing with feathers is still singing, but now she seems so far away, for how but how can I deny the rationality of the case brought against me?

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,And in short, I was afraid.

(I am) not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven,

And, really, when we cut through all the b******t and poetry, how much earth have I shoveled, and how much heaven have I managed to weave on the loom of my life? Not much.

But still, the bird is singing.

There's this true story about an early mail pilot recounted in Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine Du St. Exupery - the man who wrote The Little Prince. This pilot is carrying mail across the Andes and his plane crashes. He survives, but his leg is broken and it's cold and its snowing. He knows that he's going to die. But he's worried about his pension, because if his body isn't found -- then his wife and child will have to wait 5 years for his pension -- basically for his life insurance to pay out.

So he sees this outcropping of rock a little further down the mountain, and says, well, that place might not be covered by snow -- it's a little bit better, so he hobbles down to that rock and sits down to die.

But while he's sitting there, he sees another rock, a little further down the mountain and since he doesn't have anything else to do -- he hobbles on.

And he repeats this process until he saves himself by walking out of the Andes.

We are all the pilot. And the world is always the plane crash and the wounds and the mountain and the snow. We are all dying and leaving our loved ones behind. And hope, properly understood is not the hope of rescue or being reunited with your family or that everything will work out or be perfect. Hope, hope as a verb, hope as that big son-of-b***h of a prybar that you can use to can change the world, is as simple crawling to the next outcropping of rock you can see.

You know this, because there's a thing with feathers singing in your soul. You can think of something that you could be doing that could make your situation better that you're not doing. Not a big thing, but a small thing. A think you could do or say right now. Hope is the doing of it even when you don’t fully understand how it will work. Even, and especially when, it feels silly.

It's just one step at a time, a little better and a little better and a little better. And every time I've done this, in my life, I've gotten out of the mountains. Sure, there's no guarantee that you don't fall off a cliff along the way, or get caught in an avalanche. But, and this is the point, if the plane crash hasn't killed you, this approach gives you the greatest chance of success.

As I said, I'm writing about all of this today, because of the suicide numbers in that CDC survey.

Now, I have seriously considered suicide, both in the abstract and the concrete on more than one occasion. I think the examined life pretty much requires it. Most recently in 2013. My son was a year old. It was a Friday night. My wife and I had gotten in a horrible fight -- we were both exhausted. And there was alcohol involved. In the aftermath, I was thinking about divorce and how it would wreck me and be horrible and what it might do to my child and generally how just awful it would be. A…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is my pep talk. This is my half-time speech. I know the truth of this deep in my bones and so do you.

Everything happens 5 minutes at a time.

In fact, most important things happen in even smaller intervals. Disagree? Go out and time a few marriage proposals, car accidents or heart attacks.

Big change is a myth.

The idea that you have to devote your whole life to do something great (or 10,000 hours) is a lie. If you look closely at big changes you can see that they are good PR (or whopping lies) constructed around a collection of very small changes. You know what a mountain is? It’s a bunch of spoonfuls of dirt.

We focus on the mountains because they are big and sexy. But we don’t think much about the spoonfuls: those little packages of time in which the real work gets done.

Like training for a marathon. You know what the hardest part is? The marathon? Hell no. That’s easy. You’re amped up. People are cheering you on. And, if you’re not a complete idiot, you’re well-prepared. But the preparation? You know what’s hard? Early morning training runs. Especially when you’re cold and lonely and you just want to stay in bed.

In fact, it’s the five minutes it takes you get out of bed and pull your shoes on. That’s the five minutes that count. That’s the five minutes in which heroes are made.

### For writing, the first five minutes when you sit down to write is what counts.

Those minutes when you clear everything else out of your head and soak in the suck. These are the five minutes of the blank page, the blinking cursor, of feeling hopelessly inadequate to the task at hand. It’s the five, focused, uninterrupted minutes it takes for your brain to catch up with your intention. What separates the writers who finish from the writers who don’t? You got it. Five uncomfortable minutes.

If you can take feeling like a hack for five minutes, then the words and the ideas will come. Sure, the next time you sit down to write you might think they suck. And they may suck. But the only way to get to the words that don’t suck is by going through the first five minutes again and again.

That feeling like there’s no hope? That’s there’s nothing you can do to make your pile of words better? Everybody has that feeling. And it’s only strong for five minutes.

The first five minutes always suck.

Tolstoy wrote War and Peace five minutes at a time. J.K. Rowling wrote all those gigantic Harry Potter books five minutes at a time. And the first five minutes always suck. As the man said, “Writing isn’t hard, it’s the sitting down to write that kills ya.”

Normal people, civilians, the kind of people who stay in bed and away from keyboards, they cheer for the end, the last five minutes, the victory. Sure, victory is nice. But me? I cheer for the first five minutes. Because those are the minutes that count. The five minutes in which the game of writing is won and lost. The five minutes that always suck.

Sure, writing is a complicated skill. But all of the choices you can make and the skills you can employ bottleneck at the first five minutes. It’s just this simple: if you make it through the first five minutes you’re a writer. If you don’t, try again.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com