The Ken Burns Effect

https://mattlira.substack.com/p/the-ken-burns-effect

Millions of Americans now inhabit information ecosystems that barely overlap. Most public figures avoid crossing these boundaries; some out of fear of unfriendly audiences, others because they worry that stepping outside their own silo will provoke a backlash from their closest allies. Burns’ latest tour defies that trend, as one of our nation’s great storytellers has moved effortlessly from The Today Show to Theo Von’s podcast, from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to Joe Rogan’s studio. What stands out is not merely the breadth of platforms he visits, striking as that is, but the authenticity with which he delivers his message. Burns shares the American story with a consistent sense of moral seriousness and intellectual credibility without condescension or pandering, addressing the best versions of his hosts and their audiences.

Mercy Otis Warren: "Look Over the Theatre of Human Action"

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/mercy-otis-warren-look-over-theatre-human-action

The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of man, that pants for distinction. This principle operates in every bosom, and when kept under the control of reason, and the influence of humanity, it produces the most benevolent effects. But when the checks of conscious are thrown aside, or the moral sense weakened by the sudden acquisition of wealth or power, humanity is obscured

How to be more agentic

https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/how-to-be-more-agentic

Learn to love the moat of low status

The moat of low status is one of my favorite concepts, courtesy of my husband Sasha. The idea is that making changes in your life, especially when learning new skill sets, requires you to cross a moat of low status, a period of time where you are actually bad at the thing or fail to know things that are obvious to other people.

It’s called a moat both because you can’t just leap to the other side and because it gives anyone who can cross it a real advantage. It’s possible to cross the moat quietly, by not asking questions and not collaborating, but those tradeoffs really nerf learning. “Learn by doing” is standard advice, but you can’t do that unless you splash around in the moat for a bit.

Maybe you’re not Actually Trying

https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/maybe-youre-not-actually-trying

People are not just high-agency or low-agency in a global sense, across their entire lives. Instead, people are selectively agentic.

Let’s say that life is divided up into three theaters: work, relationships with others (all kinds) and relationship to self (physical health, introspection, emotional development, all of it). I think it’s the rule, rather than the exception, that people are stuck at an earlier stage of development in at least one area. There is one theater of life where they’re not Actually Trying — where they’re approaching serious problems with the resourcefulness of a teenager, though they are now capable adults.

In my particular corner of the world, there are tons of high-achievers in work. These are ingenious people shaping the world through innovations in science, technology, and policy. But many of them haven’t applied the same ingenuity to their interior experience or relationships. These are people who could successfully launch a product in a foreign country with little instruction, but who complain that there aren’t any fun people to meet on the dating apps.

It seems like, by default, you are stuck with whatever level of resourcefulness you brought to a problem the first time you encountered it and failed to fix it.