Brian Lam’s Happiness takes (a little) magic is a great read (step 1: go read it!). He touches on this thread throughout the piece but I wanted to push a little further on the idea that all of the internet ratrace (or more appropriately, the “omg cute animals!” race) is intertwingled with that archetypal economic imperative. To reject the Skinner Box (which is difficult enough given the societal pressures normalizing it) you also have to reject the entire American Dream, which is perhaps even more laden with social pressure to ever increase your income/wealth as the quickest heuristic to compete for a good mate, remove the stress of being in debt and/or living paycheck to paycheck, and theoretically achieve this magical level of happiness — it’s very difficult to cut through that lifetime of bs to realize that happiness might far more simply and effectively be found by heading in the exact opposite direction.

For those of us working on the web in content production, short of having enough Murdoch-level personal wealth to fund experiments like The Daily, we feel trapped in the Skinner Box of ad revenue. It’s painful because we know in our hearts we’re not always directly serving our audience and our entire career is a bizarre b2b game in which we’re not-so-secretly courting brand dollars so the business of editorial can survive and we can all keep the fun, crazy, unorthodox jobs we love. We all desperately desire to spend more time honing our craft and writing truly profound and meaningful works, but in our version of the game, desiring world-changing editorial is sort of like desiring peace. We all want it, but in the words of Gil Scott-Heron, “you can’t make no money from it” (unless you’re already insanely established… and even then…).

Thanks to Brian for being a proponent of the radically unorthodox idea that one can discover happiness and life’s meaning in completely counterintuitive ways. I’m inspired to get me one of those “spontaneous Joshua Tree” busses!