Good culture is, in part, about recognizing and celebrating beauty. You can choose to see it, and, if you do, then you get to live a better life—a good life. This isn’t to deny that there is suffering, but it makes it so that the suffering can be in service of beauty, instead of collapsed into despair.
What if the cultural systems we build, including the technology we use for sharing stories, can be tuned to grow beauty? Are the ones we have now working in that way? What would have to be true to have a world like that?
The best systems reward community-mindedness. People can grow by helping each other grow. People can win by building trust. People can support those who share beauty. There is still pain and suffering in such places, but the greater drive is to be in community with each other, to find communion, to transcend the commonplace, to search for the good, to try to live better lives.
I turned 43 yesterday. I am discovering the challenges of middle age and sometimes wondering how I can get through them. It can be easy to get too deep on such problems. It can be easy to take your eyes off beauty. But it’s always there. My two sons holding hands. A family picnic in the Presidio. My parents looking at the fog on the Golden Gate Bridge. I just have to choose to see it. When I do, I’m always happier, and then I can be better for those around me.
So many of the stories that we’re surrounded with today emphasize distress and loss. The systems we have built around those stories don’t discourage that focus and maybe even reward it. Those systems can stoke envy, magnify our differences, and pressure us to conform with in-group thinking. They’re not all bad, and they do create some wonders, but they’re more about laughing at each other than with each other. Raygun. Couches. Boom goes the dynamite.
One great thing about being a 43-year-old father is that I am now in prime position to support others. I hope that my contribution to this life will come from building structures and systems that help others grow beauty. We live on a planet that spins in space: a glowing, thinking, magical orb in a vast nothing. How amazing that we get to live on that, together. How vital it is that our stories show that truth.
Hello Hamish,
This wonderful post extolling creativity and beauty seems to be in sharp contrast to a recent email from Substack regarding 'how we might get paid'. It suggested a possible linkage to Apple, presumably to the App Store and all things Apple.
Many comments came from Substack authors regarding the higher costs for authors and the possibility of a corporation exerting its various forms of censorship on authors.
As the co-founder of Substack, you have created an amazing community of creative authors. Yes, some write about the difficulties in the world, but others offer us poetry, fiction, recipes and simple reflections on their lives. Many of us manage to eek out a meager income from this work, but it feels like honest work and we have a moderate amount of control over our creative lives.
I hope that the comments of authors at Substack made it clear to you that we deeply appreciate the environment that exists for us at Substack. Despite any increase in audience exposure, there seemed little interest in jumping into a mass commercialization venue.
Please keep Substack free of big corporations. Please protect us from that fate.
Hamish, Happy Birthday to you! Thanks for all you do, giving writers, artists, photographers and creatives a space here on the internet that is like no other. I appreciate being able to share beauty here everyday with my "Words and Pictures"!