#127 Reading Substack's "Humanists"
Substack's platform has plenty of a "humanists" (thanks to the technologists.)
For the next several weeks, I will be focusing on some of my favorite Substacks. The writers are are mostly “humanists.” They study history, philosophy, art, literature and culture.
As a student I studied the humanities. In my professional life, I worked with technologists. Humanists spend the majority of their time thinking about human beings. Technologists spend the majority of their time thinking about machines.
These are two different ways of looking at the world . We need both to function. But we need them both to function in a mutually constructive way.
In this series, I will start with a humanist. His name is Ted Gioia.
Gioia writes The Honest Broker and describes himself here.
He has more than 227,000 subscribers, which means I am not the only person who finds him interesting. He promises to be, “a knowledgeable and trustworthy guide in matters of music and culture.”
My introduction to music came in elementary school. In fourth grade, I started playing the trumpet and continued through my first year in college. I never played that well. But twelve years of trying gave me at least a grounding in “music appreciation” which continues to this day.
Ted Gioia has been writing about music for decades. He writes about musicians; about the business of making and selling recordings; about the fragmentation of the music industry via streaming services like Spotify; and mostly about the challenges of making a living as a musician today.
Gioia’s description of popular culture is pessimistic. And it is not just the music business that he finds rapidly in decline. He refers to the trends below in his chart called, “The Rise of Dopamine Culture.”
In his own writing, he pushes back against these trends. Reading his Substack is an antidote to the “dopamine culture.”
His top posts are here. One of them is a set of suggestions on how to break free of “dopamine culture.”
My own suggestion for overcoming dopamine culture would be to ensure that every elementary school in the country has an instrumental music program. I do my fair share of scrolling on my phone, but at least I can remember when there were alternatives. That is what we are missing today.
I will be traveling out to California to visit some friends. We will sit, eat good food, drink wine, and talk. In person. Face to face. (shocking, I know).
Like you, I do plenty of scrolling. But living life on Chat, TikTok, Shorts, etc is a lot like eating junk food all day. Sometimes you just need to break out of the world the big corporations designed for us and consume what nature has spent billions of years making.
I'm not one who longs for the "simpler life" of the past like some do. I remember worrying if my older brothers were going to be drafted into Vietnam. I remember hiding under school desks during the cold war in case the bombs fell. The past was no picnic either.
We got our dopamine fixes back then too - but we did so throwing rocks into a stream, playing "chicken" on our bikes, wandering through the forest looking for "blasting caps" the TV warned us were everywhere (we never found any). We did things because they were fun - not because some corporation wanted our attention to sell us something (though there was that too - Saturday morning cartoons were there for a reason - to sell us toys).
Humans haven't evolved a gene that wards us away from "instant gratification" yet. The dream was that with enough information the logical side of our brains would override the animalistic side. That dream seems to have faded.
Thanks so much for your Substack, Bruce! I have enjoyed reading your thoughts on your winery (hope that Lisa and I can visit before too long), the wine industry generally, your father, your creek stabilization project, our mutual friends Glen and Masae, and now Ted Gioia. I have just touched the surface of his writings in The Honest Broker, but I now have a paid subscription and look forward to delving into his archives.
As someone who broadly loves and appreciates technology (chemistry PhD, former career in academic science and more recent career in patent law), and also as someone who lives in Silicon Valley and is therefore surrounded by the people and companies that create all this cool stuff, I find myself disappointed at where this is all going. I agree with you that we would all be better off if our kids spent more time in art and music classes (and free-ranging around their neighborhoods) and less time in pre-programmed activities and scrolling Tiktok videos on their phones.
All I can say is let's continue to support smart and creative folks like Ted Gioia, other independent content-creators on Substack, local journalists, local public radio stations, independent bookstores, local farmers (and wine makers!), and anyone else who keeps us connected to the things that really matter in this world.
Thanks again for your writing, and keep up the good work!
My best,
Dave Roise
P.S. Just getting ready to queue up John Coltrane's Love Supreme on my smart speakers. Gioia wrote a brilliant tribute to this album on the 60th anniversary of its release.