Well, hello there. Hasn’t it been a while? I took an unannounced break from the Kable, but it was mostly a series of, “I’m not in the space for the newsletter this week, I’ll send it out next time” repeated over a month and a half. I’m glad-ish to be back. I’ve been in a sort of mental limbo state for a few months now, especially when it comes to reading things. I’ve felt less open to new things and less curious too, which is clearly not conducive to running a weekly roundup of longform journalism. There is also a sense of burnout when it comes to work and my PhD research.
I have missed it, though–the lovely ebb and flow and routine of finding things to read, reading them, and finally putting it together here. And so here I am, but I’ve got to say that this issue has been rather painstakingly compiled. Curating the newsletter is usually easy, it comes so naturally and it seems like my fingers fly over the keyboard once I’ve made the list of articles to share. It hasn’t been so lately.
All of that is to say, thanks for sticking around, I appreciate you being here as a reader and for putting up with my on-and-off nature this year. As always, feel free to write back. I’d love to hear from you. That’s all from me here, now on to this week’s list.
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1. We Can Protect the Economy From Pandemics. Why Didn’t We? - Wired (soft paywall)
This is kinda wild. The first interesting thing (for me) is that it’s about a pandemic insurance company started by a man called Nathan Wolfe, whose book “The Viral Storm” I happened to read 10 years ago because I got a “not for sale” proof copy at a used book store in Chennai. The second (and more) interesting thing is that I learnt about the reinsurance industry: companies that insure insurers. The idea is that insurance payouts for some events could sink some insurance firms, so they get themselves insured by a reinsurer. Wolfe’s company, Metabiota, then used their expertise to come up with pandemic insurance, which they then took to Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance firm. Very interesting read.
But Munich Re had already proven it could cover its own life insurance risk in pandemics, and now it had a partner in Metabiota that specialized in seemingly unpredictable outbreaks. What if they could create and sell a business interruption insurance policy that covered epidemics, starting with acutely vulnerable industries like travel and hospitality? They could then pass on the payout risk from those policies to the same types of investors who had bought their life risk. “There is a bit of financial alchemy to the whole thing,” Wolfe told me later. “You really are creating something from nothing.”
2. Is Success the Enemy of Freedom? - Less Wrong
This was an interesting piece which also reminded me of the Paul Graham essay How to do what you love. The idea is that the people in our age who are most successful are also the ones who are busiest and forced to stick to a certain kind of narrow script.
We are not a species known for risk-taking, so human flourishing really depends on the explicit emphasis of exploration and openness to new experience. And yet it seems that the game is set up so that the most successful people are least incentivized to explore further. That all the trying new things and pushing boundaries and calling for revolution is likely to come from those with neither the power to get it done nor the competence to do it correctly.
But it’s not a hopeless case by any means. Many of the most successful people got there precisely by valuing freedom, creativity, and exploration, and still practice these values – so far as they can – within the confines of their walled gardens. We live in an information age where getting good at things is as easy as it’s ever been. And at very least we pay lip service to healthy adages like “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
3. Even Artichokes Have Doubts - Yale Daily News
I’m sharing this piece here because the previous one has this:
When I talked to my peers, however, I was constantly surprised at the overwhelming sameness of their ambitions. Four years later, twenty out of thirty-odd graduating seniors at our House planned to work in finance or consulting.
This particular essay by Mary Keegan is really nice. It’s something I wish I read when I was completing my undergrad. She talks about how students at Yale truly can consider the world to be their oyster, but despite having dreams about how they want to change the world, many of them turn to jobs in finance and consulting (which I personally consider quite boring).
Of course this is my own opinion, but to me there’s something sad about so many of us entering a line of work in which we’re not (for the most part) producing something, or helping someone, or engaging in something that we’re explicitly passionate about. Even if it’s just for two or three years. That’s a lot of years! And these aren’t just years. This is 23 and 24 and 25. If it were a smaller percentage of people, perhaps it wouldn’t bother me so much. But it’s not.
[…]
What bothers me is this idea of validation, of rationalization. The notion that some of us (regardless of what we tell ourselves) are doing this because we’re not sure what else to do and it’s easy to apply to and it will pay us decently and it will make us feel like we’re still successful. I just haven’t met that many people who sound genuinely excited about these jobs. That’s super depressing! I don’t understand why no one is talking about it.
4. The Philosopher Redefining Equality - The New Yorker (soft paywall)
I found this article about Elizabeth Anderson on Twitter last month. While reading it, I felt a few minor lightbulbs in my head go off. It’s essentially about some sort of political philosophy of equality that lies between, “some people are better than others, so we should expect social hierarchy” and, “we should make every effort as a state/society to ensure that everyone is equal unconditionally”. Her idea, backed up by years of writing and research, is that true equality is what she calls “equality of freedoms”, which is kinda counterintuitive to me but also makes sense (somewhat) after reading this article. Anyway, I don’t have much of an opinion on this since I don’t quite understand it, but I found this to be an interesting read nonetheless.
5. Oliver Burkeman’s last column: the eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life - The Guardian
So I’ve never read any of Oliver Burkeman’s self-help columns in The Guardian before this one, mostly because I am immediately suspicious (and sometimes loathful) of self-help. But this one is quite nice. He details what he considers to be eight secrets to a fulfilled life. In particular, the first two: “There will always be too much to do – and this realisation is liberating.” (reminds me of a blog post I wrote a long time ago FOMO, or the fear of monotony) and “When stumped by a life choice, choose enlargement over happiness”.
6. The End of Aid? - Some Unpleasant (Substack newsletter)
I learnt a few things about foreign aid and its effectiveness (or lack of it) via this article.
7. The Life of Trees: Their ‘most simple and beautiful oneness.’ - Alan Jacobs’ blog
Alan Jacobs, in one of his recent newsletter issues, shared this old essay of his which I really enjoyed. It was written in 2008.
That trees strike us as human-like is an essential element of their fascination but is also part of the fear they can inspire. Their proportions resemble ours; their crowns are like heads, their branches arms — no wonder so many of the myths Ovid records in the Metamorphoses have people turned into them. They are the visually dominant figures of the plant kingdom, as we fancy ourselves the monarchs of the animal realm. Like us, they can in their solitude seem welcoming and friendly, though sometimes imposing; also like us, in mass they can terrify. Who has understood better than Tolkien the terrors and the companionable appeal of trees, and the way those traits are mixed imperceptibly together? In Fangorn Forest we see the first tempered by the second; in Treebeard and the other Ents the second tempered by the first. Yet in depicting these creatures of the woods Tolkien seems to many of us to have created nothing, but rather to have read our minds, and sometimes our nightmares.
8. Anne Helen Peterson: “What else is there but my ability to work?” - Guernica
Anne Helen Peterson’s writing on millennial burnout has been quite fascinating and instructive to read. I haven’t yet read her book though. This is a nice interview in Guernica’s “Miscellaneous Files” series.
You will also feel very seen. I read the book twice this year and both times felt a sense of rage at those who set us up for this, alternating with pity and empathy for my generational peers—some 100 of whom appear in Can’t Even. But the true strength of the book lies in the context and background it provides. Petersen outlines why “Our Burnt Out Parents” (as she memorably calls boomers) put us in this place; how they suffered their own instabilities and, in a frantic grab to hold on to middle class status, “pulled up the ladder” on the safeguards that had allowed Americans before them to get to places of comfort, not realizing it would destabilize the lives of their children.
9. One step beyond: the ascent of mountain runner Kílian Jornet - The Guardian
“He is the most outrageously talented mountain runner there has ever been, conquering peaks in dizzying new records. But what keeps driving Kílian Jornet ever upwards? And how does he cope with his new life as a social influencer?”
Jornet is to mountain running what Usain Bolt is to sprinting. I really liked this part:
Sometimes, it can seem as though Jornet is conflicted by his profession, as if it is ultimately pointless. “It’s a very stupid thing,” he says, “when you are running just for running. If you are running because a lion is chasing you, then it’s not pointless. Then it’s for survival. But just to run? Sports in general, it’s playing a game. It’s not like a teacher educating new generations, or a doctor who is saving lives. It’s putting one foot after the other. It’s fun. But it’s not important.” And yet, in Above the Clouds he writes, “I accept that, inwardly, running is everything.”
10. Poet of Loneliness - First Things
What a wonderful ode to Chekhov and his short stories. Referred to here as the “poet of loneliness”, Chekhov’s insights into human psyche are explored here by Gary Saul Morson as he reviews Fifty-Two Stories. I have only read one story by Chekhov, but now I want to read more and more of his work.
No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov. People long for understanding, and try to confide their feelings, but more often than not, others are too self-absorbed to care. In Chekhov’s plays, unlike those of his predecessors, characters speak past each other. Often enough, they talk in turn, but do not converse. […] Chekhov’s audience cannot help thinking: If only we would enter into the feelings of others, life would be so much better.
I also learnt about the Russian word toska via this review. Toska is an almost untranslatable-into-English word which is somewhere between longing, misery and anguish.
See you next time.-Kat.