Building the Middle
Thinking and acting openly and in good company
Let’s stipulate that “thinking” is a complex endeavor comprised of input — reading, watching, listening, exploring IRL (in real life) — reflecting, and expressing, maybe in writing. It’s short for a set of contributory activities that, when they merge effectively, make us better not only mentally, but as actors and as humans. If we can think well, when we finally get around to acting — for those of us prone to posing and pondering first — it will be better action.
Thoughtful action makes for better humans.
We can aspire to be better thinkers for the sake of being better actors.
That sounds lovely. But it also sounds lonely. Seldom do we do our best thinking or our best acting all by ourselves. Collaborative effort, openness, working in good company, indubitably helps.
One of my frustrations writing here on Substack is that so many ostensibly good thinkers and writers are here creating and creating, publishing and publishing, performing and performing, to gather a following, a subscriber base, a paid subscriber base — with nary a thought to thinking or acting better. Writing better? Possibly. But not purposefully thinking better or moving from thought into action in the world. Writers write. Readers read. Likes, restacks, and dollars glue them together.1
Substack, in its own words, wants to be known for:
Building a new economic engine for culture
We started Substack because we believe that what you read matters and that good writing is valuable – and as the platform has evolved, we've come to expand that view to include all forms of cultural work. On Substack, writers and creators can publish their work and make money from paid subscriptions while readers can directly support the work that they deeply value.
Source: Substack’s About page
Production, consumption, with an economic engine between. Culture is value-ized, marketized, capitalized, or as Polanyi would say: commoditized. What exactly is this “deep value” Substack aims to support? Is there improved thinking, improved acting, less loneliness, more openness, more good company? Perhaps, in a few places. The incentives tend rather toward pure exchange: more, and more, and more of it.
Content keeps pouring out of this platform — I cannot keep up! — regardless of whether anyone is actually listening, or turning reading into thought, or thought into thoughtful response, making an impact. Nevertheless, Substackers’ hopes remain high, and a rare few are making millions. For the most part, though, it’s a vast crowd crushed into a small room, everyone shouting at once, with disproportionate gatherings of groupies fawning over a few celebrities. Are there real conversations going on? Is there thinking, discussing, constructive pushback, provocation to create together, motivation or movement toward action, whether in agreement and in tandem — or more challengingly, in tension and in compromise?
Prolific writers, producers, feeds. Passive readers, swallowers, consumers. The two are connected to each other on a platform as gears in an “economic engine,” serving a marketplace with unequal exchange.
Surely there is something more that should be going on in this middle.
A related problem for thinking and acting is the role of the specialist expert. Many people seem to think that when the expert speaks, all the non-experts should shut up and listen. The crowds, the masses, are ignorant; they must defer. Governments that require citizens to acquiesce to “the science” (scientists) are particularly prone.
This is not to say specialist experts don’t have useful contributions to make. But however expert and informed they are, however many posts they write on Substack or however many government or business reports, or books, scientists, journalists, pundits, and policy experts don’t have any more wisdom. Political leanings, policy preferences, and a whole range of preconceived notions are set out and determined even before truly scientific endeavor begins. And that is how it should be! Scientists, the scientifically minded in any field, inevitably work from “priors.” (It’s a term from Bayesian statistics.) In its ideal form, scientific method starts with a hypothesis. It’s a conjecture the scientist actually seeks to disprove — and if she can’t disprove it, it gains empirical support.
Science thus operates, ideally, through double-negatives: I cannot disprove this, so my hypothesis gains support. (Science never positively proves anything.) On the other hand, if the data, the evidence, goes in the opposite direction, or shows only weak support, the prior hypothesis is discarded or revised with the goal of finding a better “fit.” Science is not discovery of truth; it’s a process of perpetual alignment.
Iterative process is how science remains open and how humans can come together, in collaborative effort, to learn and improve no matter what their starting priors. This is why science — including technological, economic, and political experimentation and innovation — is the modern genius of humanity.
The role of the wise non-expert is to respect and understand this process and not only listen to and learn from it, but guide it as well, from both a humanistic perspective and — to the extent humans can represent — a planetary or MOTH (More Than Human) perspective. Ever-listening, ever-learning, ever in process, non-experts are wise precisely when they are as equally open. Wise non-experts make the best citizens and citizen leaders because they have the wider view. Next level modern genius takes a further step of deferring to wise non-experts.
Wise non-experts can even afford to be cautiously dogmatic. For the sake of continuity and stability, holding on to some dogmas helps move forward — not backward. Wise dogmas prevent chaos and provide guideposts and direction. They provide a different sort of platform. If wise non-experts hold to religious or political or humanistic or planetary dogmas, those dogmas should be chosen for their genuine insight, for internal openness, for keeping the peace, for promoting coordination, and above all for the value-ization of continued learning and growth — in other words, for the processual nature of accumulating wisdom.
I would like to see Substack writers and readers — and the rest of the internet with its penchant for producing vast quantities of content and its propensity for addicting passive consumers to the algorithmic scroll — seek a new sort of engaged middle, an active middle, a world-building middle with common tables to sit around. Where are there diverse and discursive arenas for thoughtful civic and political debate and decision-making?
I would like to see specialist experts hone their craft by adopting fewer fixed or partisan priors and more dynamic and open hypothesis-testing, while deferring to wise non-experts for wider perspective.
I would like to see more wise non-experts, who by definition are committed to openness and process, working from cautious choices amongst workable dogmas, to provide that perspective and guidance.
I would like to see unwise non-experts — anyone, basically, who is not continuously seeking and learning, who thinks they already have all the “wisdom” (incautious dogmatism) they need — aspire to wiser non-expertise through a commitment to lifelong learning, open engagement, and collaboration in the new middle.
Less loneliness, more openness, more collaboration, more good company in thinking and writing, eventually more good human action could replace marketplace-driven incentives to produce and produce and passively to consume and consume and never fully digest. There could be diminished competition for likes and subscribes, a slower pace, taking time to read, learn, discuss, debate, interact, cooperate.
Substack is incredibly prolific. But is it conducive to thoughtful action? Deeply educative? Harmonious or even tensely collaborative? Not so much.
Let me know if you’d like to join a collaborative effort to build a middle adjacent to Substack, aimed at something like what’s called for above.
Recommended read for today:
I will say that I have reconnected with at least one person and am slowly getting to know a handful of other writers, virtually of course. A dozen or so family and friends have generously signed up to read. I look forward to more of this, but Substack is not the ideal place to build working relationships.
Once, great thinkers communicated and collaborated primarily through writing - through correspondence. Their formalized works - books, essays - often arose from this process and in conversation with their peers' works. So, Adler's Great Conversation. I think Substack can be used in such a way, but of course, it requires the intention to do so.
The problem with a "platform" is that, like its physical namesake, it invokes the idea that one (or perhaps a few) can stand atop it and shout down at everyone else (and that, in some way, they have the right to do so). The mass below can of course cheer and boo and occasionally take up a pitchfork, but it seems an unequal exchange. If you can call it an exchange at all! However, there are other things that happen on platforms - debates and panel discussions. These sorts of things do not, of course, mean everyone can participate willy nilly, but it does widen the playing field, so to speak. And I do believe there is something nice about being on a platform for a debate - it makes it public, observable. Perhaps this is what your middle should be about.