Fatherhood

`3:10:36`

That's a good question. I think the overall love that expands from humans that derive directly-... from your lineage-... is very difficult to communicate because I was actually not a particularly big kids person prior to the arrival of my own. And now they are the most interesting people in the world. A lot of the time. Not always. Sometimes they're also just assholes and so forth. But there's been such a focus on, "Oh, kids are the worst. Look at all the things I can't do. I can't go out and drink. I can't do this. I can't do that." Yeah, that's called sacrifice, and sacrifice is meaningful when you're doing it for something worthwhile. And what could be more worthwhile than literally the continuation of the human species? And that you having a stake in that. Now, there's also just the sheer joys of watching a human grow from a baby to a toddler to a teenager. My oldest has just become a teenager. And I often talk to Jamie, my wife, about this, where the regret I would have of having missed that opportunity on the last day would just be total, unlike anything else. So I do think it is far more satisfying even in the moment that is normally portrayed. Again, as I say, there's such a focus on all the ways they suck. "Oh, you don't get to sleep," or whatever. "They're annoying. They're ungrateful." Yeah, yeah, these things are all true, but the sense of meaning you get from it is unparalleled. And I'm excited about a lot of things.

I love building things, and I love hobbies, and I love all sorts of stuff. But creating life with another human that you love is literally the peak experience of being on the planet.

`3:13:10`

No. But there's been bigger transformations. I mean, imagine growing or being born in like 1880. Imagine seeing the First World War and the Second World War. Imagine seeing the airplane, the radio-... television. I mean, the transformation, and I think Peter Thiel makes this argument, that basically nothing has happened in the physical world in quite a long time. We've been stagnant. All the development has been in the digital realm. And as important as that is, it's actually not as consequential as we like to believe it is. Maybe AI will be that thing that is more consequential. It does seem to point that way. But there are other humans at other times who have lived through-... transitions that for them certainly would feel as momentous as what we're living through. And I think having that sense of history, that you're not that special in your sense of worries, in your anxieties. This was one of the great revelations of discovering the stoic writings. You have these guys 2,500 years ago dealing with very familiar dilemmas and challenges in their life, and recognizing that we're not so special in that regard, I think is a great liberation. Because then you think, "Okay, well, we have whatever, 200,000 years of human development before us, and they somehow made it through."

`3:14:51`

I read this book The Fourth Turning. You check that out. It talks about this notion of history working in cycles, and there are these, phases to history, and they name them and so forth. And the specific theory is not as important as just realizing that this is a... History is a circle, more so than just a straight line. And we are repeating many of the same patterns over and over again. They feel so unique to the moment. And whatever crisis we're dealing with right now feels so pressing and important until we zoom back a little bit in history and realize that the last one also felt so pressing and important to the people who lived through it.