The Joy of Phoning It In
Pizza apostasies, Starbucks crimes, modern life as the imperative to hyperextend, et al.
Despite possible evidence to the contrary, I don’t really phone it in with this newsletter. Embarrassing but true!
That said, maybe it’s better to phone things in sometimes. I don’t know when or why phoning it in became shorthand for lazy or insufficient or just bad, but there have to be circumstances in which that’s not the case. For example, a phoned-in pizza is still infinitely better than no pizza at all. I know this because 1) I am a human being endowed with reason and 2) it accounts for Domino’s entire business model.
Consider the common case of putting in, or phoning in, a delivery pizza order that takes an obscene amount of time to arrive. When it finally does arrive, the pizza is cold or soggy or simply the wrong pizza. There’s about a ten percent chance it’s the wrong pizza. But what are you going to do? Not eat it? Which is the greater offense: the wrong pizza or the uneaten pizza?
And so while I am juggling a few more substantial posts as well as my actual life, this is an attempt at phoning it in.
You know when you’re driving back from vacation with your kids and you’re getting a little tired at the wheel and you see a sign for a Starbucks at the next interstate exit and you’re like Oh, thank God, so you pull off and it says the Starbucks is 1.25 miles down the road and you’re like the world as I find it is an abomination, then you drive 1.25 miles down the road until you figure that you’re about .75 miles outside the Gates of Hell, and you see the roadside sign for Starbucks and you pull into a shockingly large parking lot, and you realize the Starbucks is actually inside of a grocery store and you’re like my enemies have conspired against me, and I am lost, lost, withered away like dry grass in the sun?
You are seen. You are heard. We are legion.
Sheer Mag is a good band. Punk rock you can dance to. Their new album is good.
Very few of you ever click on the links I provide, and even fewer check out the music I recommend.
I get it. The moment I hear somebody start to say “Oh, you haven’t [consumed x piece of content]? You gotta [consume x piece of content],” I experience a visceral, overwhelming wave of exhaustion, as I’m sure many people do. The exhaustion isn’t from mere repetition — how many more times I am going to have this conversation? — but anxiety over meaningless repetition — how many more times I am going to have this conversation in which all parties tacitly understand that the purpose is not primarily to share with each other but to signal to each other.
To be clear, this is not some sweeping indictment of contemporary cultural discourse. If anything is more exhausting than our discourse, it’s discourse about the discourse. Most of these conversations are absolutely sincere, and this very newsletter, when not otherwise profoundly un-germane to everyday life, is at least adjacent to contemporary cultural discourse.
At the same time, the phenomenon I’m describing is common enough to suggest that something else is going on, and probably many other things. But here’s one thing everyone seems to agree on: there is too much stuff. Indeed there is too much stuff is another ubiquitous conversation piece. It sounds trite to say out loud, as if you were cribbing lines from Wordsworth while making the rounds at a garden party. But it’s true. There are more movies, shows, books, albums, articles, memes, podcasts, videos, and other cultural artifacts than anyone can reasonably consume, let alone digest. As Justin Smith-Ruiu recently pointed out:
In 2023, there were about 328.77 exabytes of data produced per day (the figure is surely much higher now, almost three months into 2024). One exabyte is equivalent to 1 million terabytes. At the average 2023 rate, this is the same as 13.69875 exabytes per hour, or 228.3125 petabytes per minute, where a petabyte is equivalent to 1000 terabytes. So, every minute in 2023 there were about 169,371 times more data produced than in the entire century that gave us, among other great achievements, the Encyclopédie [that is, the 18th century].1
These are impossible sums of data. But impossibility, it turns out, is a highly effective incentive. As soon as anyone finishes a show, the assumption — the imperative — is that one advances to the next show, or moves on to the podcast about the show, or purchases the book the show was based on. (There are, thankfully, no expectations that one needs to finish the book.) So when we’re recommending x piece of content, we’re reasonable enough to know that we’re not truly sharing, because we’re not truly expecting others to take part in what we’re sharing. We’re just expecting others to take part in the idea of sharing.
Again, I don’t think this situation is categorically bad. It’s good that people want to share. But it’s hard to share when everyone’s plate is already full. At a certain point sharing becomes, in a way, obsolete. Instead, all people can do is signal: try the okra, try the oysters, try the Tofurky tetrazzini. We signal to let everyone know what we like, because what we like is who we are. We signal because, well, what else is there to do? To not signal would be a vaguely suspicious, curiously antisocial. After all, the table is set, the feast is prepared!
But even as everyone encourages everyone else to try this and try that, a quiet consensus emerges around the table. We begin to wonder whether anyone is really eating at all. If they are, they’re eating with their mouths full.
Here’s a pretentious thought experiment that may demonstrate the problem:
We inhabit a world of theoretical infinitude, in which everything is available but nothing is accomplishable. Everything is available because of the expansive nature of technology, but nothing is accomplishable because of the restricted nature of humans.
Three factors are worth considering about this argument:
The premise of the argument is wrong.2 We inhabit a world of limit.
The reasoning of the argument is misleading. Technology may be expansive, but technology is also limited. It can even contract.
The first and second points don’t matter. We might think they’re true, but we don’t act like they’re true. And if we don’t act like they’re true, from the pragmatist’s perspective, they’re not true.
So if for all intents and purposes the original hypothesis is correct, here’s another way to frame it:
What happens when a finite creature encounters an infinite reality? Well, probably fear and trembling: the infinite is more than we can handle. But also longing: the infinite is desirable. But also nothing: the finite cannot make contact with the infinite — only the reverse. So long as the infinite is over and against the finite, nothing is accomplishable.
Camus compared the human condition to the myth of Sisyphus, but Tantalus is another useful analogy (and, I think, a worse form of torture). Everything we want is directly in front of us, and out of reach.
I don’t know if Tolkien understood this problem better than anyone else, but I do think he articulated it better than most. Certainly better than me.
From the opening chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring (italics mine):
“I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed!” he snorted. “Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.”
Perhaps Bilbo’s symptoms resonate. The risk with any technology is that the user becomes the used; the subject risks becoming the object. The question, then, isn’t what the tool is but who the tool is. Bilbo is clueless about the ring’s actual character and capability, but he does seem to know that something strange is happening to him, and that the ring might have something to do with it.
One of the story’s most crucial scenes takes place after Bilbo’s birthday party disappearing act. He is packing up to leave the Shire for good when Gandalf kindly reminds him to leave the ring behind for Frodo, as promised.
‘Well, if you want my ring yourself, say so!’ cried Bilbo. ‘But you won’t get it. I won’t give my Precious away, I tell you.’ His hand strayed to the hilt of his small sword.
Peter Jackson’s adaptation skips the detail about the sword, probably because it is so jarring. But otherwise the film handles this scene very well, quickly communicating two key facts: the ring inspires violence, and antecedently, the ring wills violence. The ring has a will of its own. It is an active agent in the drama.
After Bilbo and Gandalf’s argument appears to have been settled, Bilbo turns to leave. But the ring is still in Bilbo’s pocket. He still hasn’t given it up!
What is going on here? Bilbo chalks it up as an honest mistake, and maybe it is: Bilbo is old, in a hurry, and a bit of an airhead. But Jackson wants to underscore a more sinister element at work and gives the moment extraordinary heft. The camera gazes up at Bilbo as he prepares to let go of the ring, then we see a close-up of the ring in Bilbo’s hand. As Bilbo slowly turns his palm over, the ring seems to cling to him, as reluctant to depart from Bilbo as he is to give it away. Then it’s over. The ring falls to the floor with a resounding thud.
Again, this precious heirloom is neither an ordinary non-magical ring, nor a semi-ordinary magical ring, of which Gandalf says there are many varieties, including “mere trifles.” No, this is the One Ring. A tool — a gift, as Boromir claims later — which promises an almost infinite power.
The problem is that the ring can’t be used. In fact it is un-usable, because the ring is always over and against its user. Not only does it corrupt, it dominates and imprisons. For anyone not named Sauron, the ring is, at best, a burden to be borne. It will extend the life of its wearer, but only in the sense that Bilbo describes: until one is stretched thin and wasted — and eventually becomes Gollum. According to any meaningful definition of life, then, the ring is a death sentence.
Even for Sauron! Sauron fears his creation as much as anyone else. He is happy for a lowly hobbit, or better still a man, to carry it around for the time being, but if a character like Gandalf took the ring for his own, Sauron would be defeated.
As it happens, Frodo proposes this exact scenario.
“No!” cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. “With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.” His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. “Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength.”
The ring cannot be used for good, ergo, the ring cannot be used. Its internal logic is destroy or be destroyed.
So that is why the One Ring must be destroyed. Just as a reminder.
Anyway, this phone-in has not gone according to plan. All I really meant to say was that it’s ok that y’all don’t click the links. Feel free to click the links, but no pressure. Thanks for reading.
He follows this by saying: “Do you understand what this means? I am, right now, pissing into the ocean.” Good for him. Pissing in the ocean is great. I am pissing into a black hole.
Or if not wrong, uselessly theoretical.