HAPPINESS IN A HIGH TECH WORLD
David Foster Wallace was ahead of his time when he wrote Infinite Jest. The MacGuffin within the novel is a movie that is so captivating that viewers lose interest in anything else. The novel was released in 1996, but in 2024 we find an analogy in social media. 1
TO WATCH OR NOT TO WATCH
The deeper question is whether or not the technology in question is a “good” thing. Obviously, an absurd question. Unanswerable. But that won’t stop me.
If being on TikTok makes you feel better than not being on TikTok, is that a net benefit? Sounds like it on the surface. The complicated thing is that sometimes what makes us happy in the moment has the opposite impact in the longer term.
Foster was aware of this slippery slope, even in the less high-tech world of 1996. The thing is, as a species we very clearly tend to lack self-control to ingest video-based entertainment in small doses.
In a 1997 NPR interview Foseter Wallace said,
I don’t have a TV because if I have a TV I will watch it all the time. I don’t own a TV, but that is not TV’s fault. After an hour, I’m not even enjoying watching it because I’m feeling guilty at how non-productive I’m being. Except the feeling guilty then makes me anxious, which I want to soothe by distracting myself, so I watch TV even more. And it just gets depressing. My own relationship to TV depresses me.”
In that same interview Wallace talked about how he got to this realization. He was sick in bed and unable to do much else but make a list of all the books he thought he should have read but hadn’t. His thinking being; how could he watch TV if he hadn’t read these classics?2 Ultimately, Wallace decided he “has too much to read” to be able to own a TV. That’s not a sacrifice many make, though.
Some people don’t find their relationship to technology problematic. They are perfectly happy to sit at home and binge TV shows. Some, at seemingly every free moment, check their social media apps. I find myself more on the Foster Wallace end of things — these things make me anxious.
Ultimately this post isn’t about TikTok or an analogous technology. It’s also not about a right or wrong framework. It’s about finding your framework. And I believe the deeper, underlying question is — what is the point of life as we know it?
Woah. The meaning of life, really? Yes, this, of course, is an impossible question to answer. Or at least the answer differs from person-to-person.3
LIFE
When I was younger I could not understand the deeper meaning at play when someone expressed how they “feel lucky” to be born in fortunate circumstances. Sometimes I am not sure they knew what they meant either, but it was clear they knew their life is great and they are grateful for it. Looking back, that’s a great start. An example is the trope that we should feel lucky to be born in the United States in the twentieth century and not, say, in Carthage during the Punic Wars.
While that did not resonant with younger me, when I started reading about astrophysics I found a similar concept that did hit home.
Everything in our known universe is made up of the elements that are created from an exploding star billions of years ago. For me this is related to that “right place, right time” thing, but it is on a cosmic scale. The coming together of these seemingly random elements demonstrates that life as we know it is far more random and unexplainable than simply being born in the “right” country and at the “right” time. It seems to be much more magical than that.
DEATH
After life, comes death. But my death framework isn’t about an afterlife. That, as far as I know, is an impossible question to answer. This is more simple. It is based on the idea that life, in the form we know it, is finite.
This is an obvious concept. Or so I thought.
I saw a panel discussion with James Peyer, co-founder of Cambrian Biopharma, in which he says, “You have to have to go quite a long way in evolution before you find the first bonafide corpse.”
What? For around the first several billions of years of life, aging was not really a thing. Well, not as we know it today.
Aging is a consequence of the complexity of life as we know it today. Aging and a finite life is what we get in the package deal along with Love is Blind on television and memes on TikTok via the iPhone.
Our brains have evolved to be able to produce these technologies but, at the same time, we become physically susceptible to aging in a way that our non-TV-watching-linage from three billion years ago were not. It’s probably an important, if not fair, tradeoff.
Just like when thinking about the concept of life, I need to take death to the cosmic level.
Not only will my life end but the Earth, the solar system, and the Milky Way will all cease to exist. How? The sun, as it enters its phase as a “red giant” star, will eventually absorb the earth. Not only will our solar system be inhabitable but eventually our entire galaxy will collide with our neighbor. If that isn’t enough, the known universe will die a long, cold death, too.
Some find all this talk of inequitable circumstances, let alone death on an incomprehensible scale, somewhat depressing. I have learned to find it exhilarating.
EVERYTHING IS JUST FINE-ITE
Finiteness means that worshipping money and material things not only leads to a perpetual sense of insufficiency during our time on Earth, but that the universe will take those things in the end anyway. Literally, it means that thing you built at work; it won’t exist. It means the wealth you hand down to your kids’ kids; it will ultimately be vaporized during our impending collision with the sun.
Understanding the finite nature of things is a freeing framing for me. But it’s not easy. It requires work.
Sitting down for 30 minutes to stare at a wall is, in that moment, far more difficult on the human anxiety machine than it is to just continue to focus on the glow of the TV. Hitting the gym for 30 minutes is harder than continuing to scroll TikTok.
I believe there is something beautiful beyond the easy road.
A note reportedly found in Wallace’s belongings post-mortem explains it best:
Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.“
If TikTok gets you to this place, and as of today I believe it might be able to for some people, then it may be part of an effective happiness framework. For me, it’s not.
And it’s time for me to wrap this post. I have too many books left to read.