Not Very Deep Thoughts

Freelance writing and waiting tables

The secret to waiting tables is that you have to be just present enough to accomplish whatever you’re doing at the moment (like taking an order), while simultaneously mentally prepping for the next one or two or three things you have to do (like dropping the check off at table 51, restocking the ketchup, and grabbing that extra sour cream for table 52).

If you get into the weeds (this is restaurant parlance for having more to do than you can handle at one time), it’s easiest to get yourself out by asking for help. But it is frequently possible, in my experience, to get out without help. You just have to speed everything up, and not drop anything, and all the cards have to fall just right (i.e., if the lady at 53 wants her burger recooked, you’re screwed).

The hardest thing about applying these principles to freelance writing isn’t that you don’t have a bunch of coworkers around to help. It’s that you have way more distractions than you would while waiting tables. When you’re waiting table, there are no internet or cats who want to be played with or clients who need some tweaks made to a job you turned in two months ago. (You also don’t have to take breaks to exercise, if you work at a busy enough place.) It is much easier to remain focused when you’re waiting tables, and when your shift ends, you don’t have any more work to worry about till next time.

Basically, the same fundamental techniques apply, but the difference in environment has a huge impact on how the same brain pursues tasks, and the timing of everything is way different. It’s a much more complicated dance. And a more frustrating one, sometimes, but overall more interesting, and I suppose that is the direction life is generally supposed to move in. Maybe more not-so-deep thoughts along these lines later, when I’m out of the weeds.

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Not Very Deep Thoughts

Why the invisible hand doesn’t work (perfectly)

I was going to post this in the comments over at io9, in a response to this one. But the Gawker Media redesign has not, thank goodness, made the underlying technology any less capricious. (You would think Nick Denton would want his tech people to get “posting of comments” nailed down as something visitors can do on his social media sites, but then again, that little glitch has never impeded revenue growth before now. So.) Anyway, here’s my comment:

You know, I think the big problem with the invisible hand theory — and I think this is just fairly recently becoming truly apparent — is that it relies on an assumption that most people are going to have access to reasonably accurate information. And once you become a fairly prominent player in the economic community (any decent-size corporation), it behooves you to obstruct the release of a lot of that information.

And that doesn’t even get into the next issue, which is the assumption that people who do have access to reasonably accurate information will use it in their own best interest. Or that the concept of “one’s own best interest” can be pinned down enough to be useful.

I mean, I call myself a capitalist; I think the free market has proven better than the other options human beings have tried so far. But even though the hand in question is “invisible,” it is not actually magic.

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Not Very Deep Thoughts

Fighting the good fight

This just showed up on Twitter (via), followed shortly by this, and it seems to me that though their pairing was coincidental, the two ought to be read in combination.

The great tragedy of the rise of electric technology/postmodernism was the corresponding washing-away of certainty; in the current age, no genuinely thoughtful person can maintain that their perspective, on just about anything, is the only valid one. And that, it seems to me, is at the root of the much-written-about “liberal weakness” that plagues American society.* How do you fight homophobia? Or tougher still, how do you explain that, sure, there might be problems with a government-run universal health-care system, but there are problems with the private system, too, which in the long run could be a lot more detrimental to our country’s well-being? At least with the homophobia argument, a thoughtful, intellectually honest person can comfortably say to the other side, “Your arguments make not a whit of goddamn sense,” and at this point can even go so far as to add, “And while I understand that they’re based in deep-seated religious beliefs, I cannot and do not want to empathize.” With something as complex as health-care, though, it is pretty hard not to appreciate an opponent’s reservations.

And so the opponent gets yet another advantage: Not only does he think health-care (or whatever) is a bad idea, but even the person pushing for health-care must acknowledge that, sure, it’s not perfect. A rational person would say, “Well, the question is, which option is closer to perfect?” But we’re not rational, at least in terms of how we conduct political arguments over mass media. Nuance just doesn’t translate well, so the side that wins is that side that doesn’t acknowledge nuance. And since the grasping of nuance is largely what defines a rational, intellectually honest person, the side that ignores it must be by definition irrational and intellectually dishonest. (I think the snake just swallowed its own tail there.)

I dunno. It seems like those of us in favor of social justice and a stronger lower and middle class need to find a way to argue civilly but forcibly against those simply in favor of the strong getting stronger. We need to pick a simple message—like “x is wrong”—and bolster it with all the rhetorical devices we can, and foment some moral outrage (a sense of which is perfectly called-for, these days) without letting it boil over into hysteria. We need to pick a perspective and stick with it.

Maybe we’re already doing that. It just sure feels like we aren’t.

*That, and the fact that a lot of thoughtful white liberals have it pretty good, materially speaking; there’s just not that much incentive for them to upend the status quo.

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