### glass beads I wrote, albeit briefly, in [[2024]] about the urban monoculture. Let me say a few more things about that. A lot of my life seems to mirror this global urban elitist purview. I eat bowl-ish things for most of my meals, I lift weights, I run or walk on an incline for cardio, I listen to electronic music, I wear lululemon and Arcteryx,[^2] and any unique, distinguishing factors like the weird interests I take in backpacks, socks, or [[books pt.2|books]] seem to be neutered, standardised forms of those interests; just as cosmopolitan restaurants all have the same lowercase font formatting, just as the Spotify algorithm injects just enough variety. I think the frustrating thing is the feeling that the various progress bars that constitute my life are not deliberately selected, but instead assigned. And even goals we can take pride in being distinct — a wellness lifestyle, etc — are often subsets of urban monoculture in sufficiently major cities.[^1] Or in some cases, just the urban monocultures of other major cities, in which case, it's only a matter of time before they spread to other major cities (for instance, rock climbing was interesting and different, but then it took over San Francisco, and now bouldering gyms dot New York as well.) Maybe I'm just a bot. ~ I was eating a BLT with a really clever guy. We were talking about gratitude for the Morehead. He went to Stanford GSB[^3] (he was clever beforehand, to be clear) and mentioned that a major effect of business school at Stanford was that it allowed people to delay their soul-searching/purpose-seeking/directionality even further, but the road seemed to generally run out after that; and given he had taken the Morehead, much of that reflection was front-loaded, meaning he could hit the ground running. I remember nodding. And the fact that the BLT was really good. ~ I've been thinking a lot about metas.[^4] Even in Morehead (mono)culture, where the idea is to challenge yourself on your own path, with your own extracurriculars, international trips, and Professional Experiences, there are an ironic number of "meta" self-discovery paths. I first noticed this with the number of seniors who went to Peru last year. A non-exhaustive list: - Taking a gap year and doing any of the following:[^5] - Climbing [[kilimanjaro]] - [[bangkok, thailand|Thailand]] - Backpacking in [[travel logs|Western Europe]] - Some kind of [[serengeti|safari]] - South Africa - [[osaka, japan|Japan]] - Riding horses in Central Asia (less meta now) - Earning your scuba diving/yoga certification - Spanish immersion in X Spanish speaking country (always been meta) - Banking, consulting - Asian-American connecting with their heritage by backpacking Asia But I hear you! This is definitely an unfair criticism, to take a tediously, unfairly long list of activities that a gap year/scholarship program are well suited for, and then subtly diss anyone (i.e. me) who has done any of them. **The observation certain things are "meta" is not a negative slight.** Things can be meta for good reason! Dani put it as "standing on what other people have done" I just think it's interesting that even the unconventional things in society can become conventional amongst a subgroup.[^6] And, of course, this logic can be extended — wealth, status, internationalism are good examples of forces that change what is "normal" amongst a group"[^7] ~ Maybe one response is that I do some unconventional mixing: I wear my grad ring, read a bunch of Substacks, go to events that Scale hosts, check out books from the library, own a Whoop. But I think this is an egotistical attempt to protect myself from the reality that a lot of (my) taste is mimetic. --- ### sun and steel I've been thinking a bit about masculinity. I audited[^8] a class called Men and Women (fittingly) and the night before, I had dinner where the conversation amongst some students and a mother of two sons (one boys-only school, one not) was about masculinity. Early in the semester, I read the (somewhat infamous?) [Dating in the Bay Area](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-dating-men-in-the-bay). Side note: I sent it to a friend, who replied this way: ![[Pasted image 20251105111717.png]] *(she did not read it after)* What I generally want to say on masculinity is that there are some men I vaguely think of as someone I know others look up to, etc. and then there are men I *really* look up to. And the men in the second category are almost entirely men I know, who are not famous, and form much more (a) realistic (b) healthy and (c) complete pictures of masculinity. In high school, I mostly had male teachers[^9] (I took seven classes, and five of them — English, History, French, Economics, "Theory of Knowledge" — were taught by men.) Oddly — fortunately — enough, looking back, they were all great role models of masculinity, despite none of them perfectly fitting societal gender expectations. Only two of them were really fit[^10] [^11] and none of them were balling in Lamborghinis, which is seemingly what Instagram portrays young masculinity as. But I learned an immense, intangible amount, which seems to indicate to me that societal gender expectations are an imprecise account of what masculinity actually means. I think what I learned boils down to two concepts: responsibility and purpose. **These are not exclusively male traits!** Nor am I arguing they are. I have, however, anecdotally noticed they are more central considerations for the men in my life. On responsibility: my teachers often emphasised, and embodied, taking responsibility for yourself and the people around you — which entails embracing challenges, and increasing the amount of relative effort you put in. I was looking back at high school emails to write this post, and I came across an email from my English teacher (we were reading Cormac McCarthy at the time): ![[Pasted image 20251107110411.png]] Something about this really encapsulated my time. No one on Instagram or Pinterest or TikTok makes edits of a high school teacher cooking cactus and beans for a final, impromptu, celebratory meal. Chances are, the meal made no change in our grades or how well we understood the book. Our teacher took on the responsibility to create and organise this beautiful thing; even if it was somewhat superfluous, and even if no one remembered, and even if it took time away from "[getting] down to business with the orals." I recounted this narrative to a friend of a friend at a party, who then dismissively said "why are we celebrating men doing the bare minimum?" It's definitely true that I had female teachers who did similarly high-effort, beautiful things. But I do firmly believe that seeing male teachers take on responsibility for themselves and their students taught me more — they had a lifetime of navigating a similar set of expectations that I will. ~ On purpose: I think teachers are actually a fairly good group to see this in, because they're people who have selected a profession in service to others. My history teacher always seemed like a guy who was confident in his purpose to teach history to students. I say this because he started most classes with some beautiful statement of the value of history, and some lyrical waxing of various life lessons I have come to appreciate more and more after graduating.[^12] I realised recently most of the [[books pt.2|books]] I've been reading have male protagonists. About half have a strong sense of purpose, and the other half are ones trying to find one. I'm obviously in the latter category. Every unhappy protagonist is also in the latter category. What I really wish to say is that the men who had strong senses of responsibility and purpose developed this *magnetism* around them. I respected them, I took them seriously, and I wanted to learn from them. I was lucky enough to always feel respected and taken seriously by them. I feel as though I learned a lot. What gender or sex have to do with it, I can't conclusively resolve, but I think the need for responsibility and purpose are core to my identity, as is true for my teachers as well. --- ### meditations This semester has been more quiet. I spend a *lot* more time reading. I'm in better shape than I was before. At a macro level, I think a lot of life will be somewhat inconsequential in comparison to my life later — the weight of my responsibilities, the demands on my time, the depth of my interests. There is plenty of pressure nowadays to specialise, focus, and work early. I do believe in these things. It feels weird, and perhaps even wrong, to be in the state of relaxed exploration I'm in. I think I can get away with it. But only time will tell. Some other things: the [[count of monte cristo]] is one of the best books I've ever read; life really seems to be an eternal cycle of figuring it out; music was probably better fifty years ago; long books > substacks; substacks > scrolling; the math major is treating me well but man does it encourage you to skip class; and so it goes. And so it has been going. [^1]: For instance, rather than [drink inventive cocktails](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aMmhj9z8cqayddKd6), maybe you like to go to the sauna. And then you get [Othership]([https://www.othership.us]). [^2]: By the way, I agonised for a bit about whether to add the apostrophe. I conclude either way would invite judgement from some group. The question of how large/significant each group would be was unclear to me. [^3]: Kind of hilarious this is the acronym placed next to the acronym of BLT. There has to be another person who finds this positioning funny, right? [^4]: The first thing I'll say (credits to Sufian, who did this in high school) is some things that I've noticed are increasingly meta amongst the people around me: sobriety, cigarettes, running, eating outside, Clash Royale, Scale & Coin, and so on. [^5]: Dude I'm actually a bot. [^6]: I think (around) 40% of people took the gap year option, more than 20x the national average. [^7]: Flighty. [^8]: Is this the right word? With Dr. John Rose, it feels more like, I don't know, going home for Thanksgiving, or hanging out at your friend's house technically uninvited but implicitly understood as okay. [^9]: This might be surprising, or unsurprising, given the boys-only nature of the school. [^10]: One could probably outrun a bear, the other would be able to wrestle it. [^11]: The greatest workout routine I've ever heard, though, came from a third who was in very good shape. Every morning, comrades. [^12]: Of these: one [[baby! baby! crab rangoon!|espresso]] in the morning, same time, every time, and another before lunch. Routine, comrades, routine!