The things we fear
Also: why do The Youths like Bernie? Plus: things I've found interesting
What's your biggest, deepest fear?
I paused for a beat; that beat became two, three. I breathed in deeply, then said:
“My biggest, deepest fear is being unloved, and relatedly, that I'm unloveable.”
When I was four years old, my biological father abandoned my mom, my sister, and I in a barren house in Tampa, FL. I think this happened right before the holidays, but honestly, I don't remember. You can clearly see the demarcation in my childhood pictures - at first, I'm a normal, giggly boy; afterwards, I'm quieter, sadder.
I don't remember him, really. We shared a first name - Rafael. I know we met very briefly after my mom remarried, and our family moved to the U.S. mainland. I dimly recall a park bench; a sad, pathetic man, making sad, banal excuses for why he left, and making promises about staying in touch he never meant to keep. He's dead, now -- unmourned, alone, leaving nothing behind but a trail of broken families, one after the other.
All that to say: when your father discards you like so much litter at four years old, that leaves a mark. When your step-father treats you like a problem to be solved, rather than a son, that leaves a mark. This is not to blame them; blame solves nothing. It is not a complaint, or a question: I know that people love me. It is merely to note why that is my deepest fear. It is to note why I worry so much about what others might think of me; why I tell others that I love them. It's why I've spent so much of my life trying to fix the world, whether it's through working in politics or technology. Because at the end of the day, what I'm trying to fix isn't so much the world, but whatever flaws I possess that made my father leave me in an empty house in Florida.
This is an extremely heavy way to begin things, but: Hi. My name's Raf, and you're reading The Miscellanies, a biweekly newsletter talking about life, love, the world and everything in between. If this is your first time here: welcome! I'm glad someone shared this with you. You can sign up by clicking the button below.
On to a different subject: this was literally the first week this year that I felt remotely healthy. I spent the weekend just walking around Manhattan and Queens, finally able to do things and not feel utterly spent afterwards. On Monday and Tuesday, I attended two different political events: one, a mass meeting, the other a book talk with Charlotte Alter, discussing her new book, The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For. The book is interesting, and worth reading; the question-and-answer session after the talk had its moments, especially when an Elizabeth Warren supporter asked why so many young people were supporting Bernie Sanders over Warren.
Alter's answers were okay, as well as the moderator's, but I think they both missed the obvious, most simple answer: student loan debt.
Blake's Twitter thread (linked above) breaks it down, and you should read it. Suffice it to say, though, that essentially two generations of adults are suffocating in debt. I'm one of those adults: I owe over $60,000 in loans, despite spending eight years in the Army and using the Post-9/11 GI Bill to pay for part of my tuition. I have no expectation that I'll ever pay them off, absent some kind of mass loan forgiveness. This debt, combined with the fact that I am not great at financial management (though better than I was), colors nearly every aspect of my life. It makes me a less desirable prospective partner; it means that I won't be able to own property, or set aside any kind of retirement savings. It means that I will likely work until I cannot anymore.
It's things like this that compel people to support a candidate like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (who'd engage in mass forgiveness through executive action on the first day of her administration). I suspect, though, that the reason many folks pick Bernie over Elizabeth is that Bernie's questioning the very system that makes this student loan debt crisis possible. Elizabeth treats that same system as inherently good, and just needing to be fixed.
The thing is, it's extremely difficult to treat a system as "inherently good" when it condemns people to ration medicine and medical care, and drowns you in an ocean of debt for doing what everyone advised you to do (take loans out and go to college). When you see your friends and your siblings die from diabetic ketoacidosis because they don't have enough money to pay for insulin, how can we assume the system governing all this is good? When you see your friends with graduate school degrees working three jobs a day, barely making enough to live, how can we assume the system is above question?
No one - least of all me - questions Warren’s ability to fix the system. But maybe the problem isn’t that the system is broken; maybe the problem is that the system is breaking us. And if that’s the case, then simply fixing the system doesn’t solve the problem.
Speaking of the system breaking us: it turns out that the automation crisis Andrew Yang (among others) warned about is already here. It’s just that robots aren’t taking over American workers’ jobs, they’re instead managing them and grinding them into the ground with literally inhuman scheduling and pacing. (The Verge)
This is the story of how sport photographer Scott Jones took this astonishing picture. (Photo.GP)
Buzzfeed’s Ruby Cramer does a simply magisterial job of profiling Bernie Sanders here. You owe it to yourself to read this, even if — and I’d say, especially, if you’re a Sanders skeptic. An excerpt: “He is trying to change the way people interact with private hardship in this country, which is to say, silently and with self-loathing. He is trying, in as literal a sense as you could imagine, to excise “shame” and “guilt” from the American people.” (Buzzfeed)
Jason Kottke’s retelling of his trip to Vietnam, Singapore, and Qatar is lovely and brilliant, and if you’re feeling glum and blue, it’s worth reading to take your mind off things.
If you think you understand the “prisoner’s dilemma”, Tim Harford says: think again. He fluidly describes what we think we know about the most famous problem in game theory, and how we misunderstand it. (his site).
As someone who works with early stage startups right now, I found this profile of the Long Term Stock Exchange fascinating. In effect: Silicon Valley is creating its own stock exchange and potentially taking on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Full disclosure — an acquaintance of mine works there. (Medium).
I started out heavy, so it’s fitting I close out lightly. I’m incredibly grateful to be here, in this moment, sharing my one wild and precious life with you. I don’t know what measure of time I might have left to myself, and I am glad I can share it with you. I love you; I think you’re awesome, and you have got this. We have made it to the end of another week; a new month (March, already?) beckons. Let’s rest up this weekend, and hold each other in love, kindness, and compassion.