Insights from The Portal Episode 31, with Eric Weinstein and Ryan Holiday
Today we’re going to talk about abundance, agency, the victim narrative, family and some other takeaways from a great conversation between Eric Weinstein and Ryan Holiday on The Portal podcast.
It’s a smart, friendly and wide-ranging interview, and I highly recommend listening to the whole thing, which you can find here: The Portal Episode 31: Ryan Holiday – Conspiracy, Manipulation & other Pastimes
Note: Weinstein gives context around the discussion — which was recorded earlier this year before the quarantine mandates rolled out — at the 12-minute mark, and the uninterrupted interview with Holiday starts at 17:10.
In this post I highlight a handful of particularly profound excerpts from the interview, which I edited lightly for clarity. I also connect the dots to show how they’re especially relevant to our current COVID-19 climate.
Taylor Swift, agency, and “a weird force of our time”
If you jump ahead in the episode to 1:08:36, you’ll find Weinstein and Holiday in the middle of a conversation about Miss Americana, the Taylor Swift documentary. They’re talking about the “prevailing mood” of the film, and comparing it to Madonna’s narrative from the 80s.
To Holiday, the Taylor Swift film reflected “a weird force of our time”:
RH: Madonna’s narrative is fundamentally of empowerment, and of her agency. And the prevailing mood of this [Miss Americana], and I think of our time to go back to your original, original question, it was that she’s [Taylor Swift is] a low agency person. Do you know what I mean? That, like, you think she’s x but actually she’s just like everyone else. Which is that we are not in control of our destiny, and that we are victims, and that this is hard, and we’re helpless. I think that is a weird force of our time. That like, even though we actually have more opportunities, more resources, more freedom than literally ever before, everyone wants you to know how powerless they are, and how much of a victim they are of systemic…
“They’ve got a family sized hole in their souls.”
The conversation continues, and at 1:11:05, Weinstein asks Holiday:
EW: What do you think the biggest distortions that we’re wrestling with in our minds are where there is a resolution that immediately catapults us to a different metacognitive level of understanding of our environment. In other words, what is it that you see is most off in people’s understanding where there is a fix and you can say, now that I see that I understand why I’m behaving this way, why I don’t feel right about my family relations, I’m not comfortable with the media, or our political process.
RH: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know. I get a sense from a lot of my peers that there’s this kind of feeling of unrootedness and being untethered. And it’s like they’re looking for it everywhere. They’re looking for peace and meaning in psychedelics, in polyamorous relationships, in you know, traveling, and you know, influence.
EW: That’s the exact same list that I would have come up with…
RH: OK, interesting. And to me the solution of 90 percent of the problems…I think this would be the solution to the elite angst and anxiety as well as the alt right anger and fear, it’s like: get married, have kids, live within your means, find work that’s purposeful and fulfilling to you.
Weinstein then shares an anecdote about a question he recently posed to a group of attendees at an event at “one of these intentional communities”:
EW: Everybody was talking about we have a loss of spirituality, we have a need for community like never before, our lives have to be meaningful. And then all this stuff about nutrition. I always pick on Tulum, because people are always going to Tulum. Psychedelics. All these kind of intentional getaways. And I raised my hand, and I said how many of you have children? And like one hand goes up in a very crowded room. And I said, have you ever considered that what it is that you’re looking for is family, and maybe even belonging to your local mosque, church or synagogue, whether or not you believe. And I don’t think it even occurs to them. They’ve got a family sized hole in their souls.
RH: Yeah. That’s a weird thing Silicon Valley — Silicon Valley, but I mean more like the larger system of media, and questions — it’s like they’ve kicked out the legs of all the stools, all the legs of the stool. Family’s kicked out. Showing up at an office is kicked out. Even if you show up at an office having your own space inside the office is kicked…Like all the things that used to make us feel normal, and comfortable, and safe, and rooted. It’s not normal to go to WeWork and bring your stuff to a large community table everyday. You should have a desk with pictures of your kids on it.
Then a bit later, at 1:14:50, they talk about different aspects, and additional benefits, from having a family:
EW: …You start to think, oh, well this is what my body is programmed for, is to take this incredible interest in a tiny number of people. Now, I don’t mean to say, and I’m positive that you won’t mean to say, that every single person needs to go have a child…Most people, on average, and I’m not even talking about having a great family, like, have a challenged difficult family like everyone else.
RH: Right, you need that. I do think you need that. Also, I think it has all these weird unintended benefits. Even just like, oh, it puts you on a schedule. Because the kids wake up at a certain time, and go to bed at a certain time, they need a bath at a certain time. And like, they go to the same place most days of the week. You know like, it roots you in life in a way that when you have unlimited options and unlimited choice, you are paralyzed.
Common thread, COVID-19, and responsible survivors
Those thoughts on narrative, agency, family, and community really resonated with me, and I see an overarching theme that connects the discussion above to the where we are today in the COVID-19 crisis.
The big theme I see from say the past 10 years is that we’re prisoners of abundance.
We have too much food, too many networks, too much square footage, too many choices, too much media, too many cars, too many distractions, too many narratives, the list goes on.
In the face of this flood we feel trapped, anxious and threatened.
Our fight or flight instincts kick in, so we try to either rebel and burn it all down, or escape (in various ways) to safer more comfortable ground.
When fighting and fleeing don’t solve the problem, the only other response is to freeze. So we give up, stop caring, and stop building.
The victim narrative takes hold.
Then the SARS-CoV-2 virus hits and COVID-19 turns pandemic, up-ending all of our lives. Now, since we’re all in a sense victims of the virus, the victim narrative is more real — or perhaps, more easily applicable — than ever.
But instead of victims of comfort and abundance, we now face a threat of uncertainty and scarcity.
It’s exactly what we needed.
The crisis requires us to quarantine, scale back, and focus on the few things that matter most: family, health, and following the right narrative: you’re a responsible survivor, not a hopeless victim.
It’s showing us where to find what we were missing in the first place: at home.