Indefinite Optimism

Decisions vs Commitments

The best line in the new Superman movie is spoken by the man of steel in a tender moment. “Maybe that’s the real punk rock.” It’s the philosophical center of the film. Remember I told you so. There’s a lot to say about the movie, and I think it’s the kind of film that will outlast the season because as much as you can tell it has been edited to smithereens, it gets a few key things right that I’m going to mention en passant.

There are two other influences on my conceptual munging machine this week now that I have mostly dispatched the question of Israel, but let me sweep the last few crumbs into the dustpan. I’m not sure that I have mentioned the distance and the difference between Fatah and HAMAS — between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I agree that the two state solution is dead and to borrow the words of Douglas Murray, the death cult is alive and well but lurking in the shadows of the Woke rearguard. The point is to recognize that the itchy denizens of the FAFO-Americans and their attempts at globalized social justice are wandering the desert trying to make a waterpark out of the drips of arguments they make for ‘the Palestinians’. They don’t seem to recognize that HAMAS is a minority within the minority of those people who call themselves Palestinians. They are the Arabs within Israel who want to be separate but equal. Good luck with that.

Zero To One
I have been working on what seems to be a lifelong ambition which is to realize parts of my Logos Project visions. My best advisor on this is making me believe that I’m biting off more than I can chew and I’m coming to realize that as I begin reading books about startups, starting with this notable one from Peter Theil. It is from this book that I get the concept of the following matrix.

The second cross-reference is an audiobook that I’ve been re-listening for the past week. It is HMS Surprise, book three of the Aubry-Maturin series of nautical dramas by Patrick O’Brian extraordinarily narrated by Patrick Tull. Tull’s voice is the English I wish I could speak, full of the terminology of the Age of Sail that lies just out of reach of our contemporary peasantry but lie deep within the Enlightenment. The commitment of each and every hand on every ship was of life and limb and within that context of integrity and discovery lies that thing we are sadly short of in WEIRD society: Definite Optimism.

This quadrant is a convenient way to think about the conflicts in our society and smartly identifies both optimistic periods I have lived through and through which we may be living again. At the end of the Space Age, we began our current trend in meta-investment both social and economic in the very idea of space exploration. Nothing matches the bold confidence of Kennedy’s pledge, or General Groves’ mega-project. So we have been hedging all of our bets with the Indefinite Optimism that defines the certainties of contemporary reality in America.

And it’s not just the electoral process—the very character of government has become indefinite, too. The government used to be able to coordinate complex solutions to problems like atomic weaponry and lunar exploration. But today, after 40 years of indefinite creep, the government mainly just provides insurance; our solutions to big problems are Medicare, Social Security, and a dizzying array of other transfer payment programs. It’s no surprise that entitlement spending has eclipsed discretionary spending every year since 1975. To increase discretionary spending we’d need definite plans to solve specific problems. But according to the indefinite logic of entitlement spending, we can make things better just by sending out more checks.

We don’t plan solutions for success, we identify a spectrum of contingencies that just might work out depending on how many people can be convinced through marketing.

I think this concept has truly deep resonances and it echoes philosophical principles as well, but we can do [Nozick & Rawls] vs [Hegel & Marx] another day. I can agree that Stoicism is an Indefinite Pessimism, but as an OODA Buddha, I believe I can navigate faster than the doom all around me. I should elaborate on that one day as well. In the meantime, I’m going to have to read Ezra Klien’s Abundance to see whether or not there are Definite Optimists (besides Taylor Cowen) on the world-changing probabilities of AI.

Punk Rock Superman
One of the rules I keep in hot cache is that trust is the basic currency of civilization. Wherever trust is lacking, chaos is just around the corner. While I don’t spend any time prepping for disaster, as I am not a definite pessimist, I do recognize the distance between those who question everything and those who do not. This is a core theme that the film gets right. A practical way of thinking about the difference between the Definite and the Indefinite is in determination if people are making decisions or commitments. A decision is easily gotten and easily rolled back. An indefinite stance cannot abide the commitment to philosophical principle.

What’s fascinating is that I have been comparing rebellious youth of today vs yesterday. When I was a young collegian, punk rockers were a part of a creative rebellion. Today’s rebels cannot seem to conform to slogans and what’s trending fast enough. Slogans, pronouns, demographic pigeonholes, Reebokism.. but I go deeper into it here:

Type 2 IDGAF

TLDR:
Today’s punk masquerades as mainstream. He is enabled by his shared assumption that the world is horrible and we’re all faking it until we make it. He is hungry for status, for acceptance, for a general purpose failsafe that excuses him and everyone else for every kind of responsibility. These are the postmodern punks of our society. They feed on hope and wishful thinking. The success and failure of hope and wishful thinking is the whole of their analytic reality. It is their only truth. For them, nothing is certain and everything is fair game to be bartered in their game. They are always trying to be clever, but only enough to get through whatever encounter is immediately ahead. They are happy to offer an apology for their misdeeds, but you know their sole bottom line is ‘whatever, just saying’.

They don’t give a fuck because they are trapped in unfathomable consequences that seem to be a function of passion. Like everyone who cares or tries or has any ambition, they fail. Having mustered all the passion they possess, failure is devastating. How can this be? How can God let me fail? Why should I try? Why should anyone? Nothing is fair for me! Why should I give a fuck? I understand this state of mind, because I accepted that COVID might kill me. So why give a fuck about anything?

This Superman cares. Whereas his [realized] girlfriend Lois Lane as a journalist has accepted the world of media skepticism and moral arbitrage, as she “questions everything”, Superman trusts everyone and believes that everyone is beautiful. It that, he is the opposite of Alan Moore’s Dr. Manhattan, who while even more immortal and powerful than Superman, is overcome by a kind of mercenary cynicism. There’s interesting things afoot if that particular DC character is realized again and meets Superman. But this Superman has loving parents, and while not concretely aspiring to be one, takes that responsibility in a kind of borderline gawky way. He overcomes cynicism while dealing with the possibility, readily accepted by the Indefinite Optimism of instant media, that his mission is ultimately one of domination. He submits himself to arrest and to justice only to find it has been hijacked. Thus his commitment is confirmed.

This commitment, Superman’s recognition of the fallibility of and value of humans, is reasserted as he pulls his punches against all living creatures but instantly fries enemy robots in climbing back to his sense of purpose.

Where does he get all that? From being raised in Kansas by Ma and Pa, although I liked the original Kents better. Ones without weird Appalachian sounding accents, but I guess that’s what Flyover Country is supposed to sound like these days.

Now a little fun:

More Meta Superman
I’ve seen the film twice, two days in a row, one planned the other unplanned. It wasn’t until yesterday morning that the three-way resonance happened, but during the first viewing, I kept thinking about how the critical interwebz were going to spin it. It’s like I could smell the flavor of the political tangents but found I couldn’t take them seriously. I was glad of that. I can only say with confidence that the cringy aspects of ubiquitously influential and personal social media were nailed, as were the crowd scenes. Two more things. Chalk one up for baby and puppy love (mammalian intelligence), and DC just kind of killed Samuel L Jackson with Mr Terrific. If you’d like to engage any of those, the comments are open.