Brenden Matthews

There’s a trope in New York City that you can identify tourists from their propensity to walk around staring up at the tall buildings. This isn’t necessarily meant to be interpreted literally, but rather it’s more about the fact that the tourists are taken aback by everything to look at, much of which is in the upward direction depending on where you are in the city.

When someone asks me, “s’whattaya do?”, I have a difficult time providing a straight answer. These days, I suppose any of these would be acceptable answers: Software Artisan Philosopher Amateur Blogger Author Investor Entrepreneur Human With Two Dogs Computer Person Techie Nerd Former Lyft Driver Autodidact Potato Farmer Okay, okay, I will stop there.

Most people go through life within a reality distortion field, shaped by the cultural norms and expectations about what is right or good in the world, and the point where those expectations intersect with reality. While everyone likes to pretend they’re authentic, most people spend most of their lives lying to themselves, largely because society forces us to.

Humans have accomplished some remarkable things throughout our history. Today, however, despite all we’ve accomplished, it feels like we’re backsliding while the world burns. We face some enormous challenges, but there’s no evidence of progress aside from some political and corporate greenwashing and virtue-signaling campaigns to keep us all consuming (aka “business as usual”).

When it comes to humans, you can usually answer the “why?” question about behavioural observations by examining the incentives. This is especially true in economics, but also true of nearly everything in life, such as why politicians ignore their constituents or adopt unpopular policies. There’s a popular catchphrase to describe this kind of analysis: “follow the money”.