Alan Jacobs

I thought of calling this post, “You’re Exhausted Because You Don’t Have Enough to Do” – which, yeah, I know: a trolling, clickbaity headline if there ever was one. But bear with me: I have a point. And it’s not accusatory.

Let’s begin with a few things we all know – for instance, that everyone is exhausted. We know this because people keep telling us so. So. Tired. The universal declaration.

As Anna Katharina Schaffner shows in her 2016 book Exhaustion: A History, people have always been exhausted, though they have explained that experience in a wide variety of ways. And the different explanations often arise from legitimately different causes. For instance, there are very good reasons to believe that a common exhaustion of our time and place – of the social environment of, say, people who read the news online – arises largely from the ways that alway-on connectivity allows us no boundaries: emails from work can arrive at any time, and while we might try to tell ourselves that they can wait until the next time we are officially on the clock, in practice we often find it less stressful to get it off (a) and (b) our plate by answering immediately. Which results in a ping on our co-worker’s phone, which may promot her to think that she needs to get it off her mind and off her plate … and so the cycle continues.

It continues in another way also: seeking refuge from the stress, we turn to social media or streaming videos – that is, to the very same devices that have made us anxious in the first place. Devices that can still ping us … and so the cycle continues. An endless sequence of stimulus and response, as we are gradually transformed into mere servers.

Thus also – we’re still talking about things we know – the proliferation of articles and books and YouTube videos and podcasts on the inestimable blessing of disconnection. Silence, or at least quiet; Off rather than On. And there’s no doubt that for those who are able to manage it, such disconnection is a Good Thing. But maybe not the best thing.

The problem with the imperative to disconnect is that it operates still within the world of stimulus and response. Its only real point is to remove the stimulus in hopes that after a while we’ll stop twitching. And maybe that’s how it works, for some of us anyway. But eventually we have to turn our phones back on, and … well, once more, the cycle resumes. The cycle of being frayed by a certain set of stimuli and responding to the fraying by taking refuge in a different set of stimuli. But this does not relieve our exhaustion or restore our good health because constant stimulation is exhausting in itself – even when the stimulation comes from things we like, or think we like.

What’s necessary, I think, is breaking the circuit that keeps the cycle going. And the key to how to do that may be found, I think, in a single claim made by Ivan Illich in his 1973 book Tools for Conviviality. Here it is: “institutions are functional when they promote a delicate balance between what people can do for themselves and what tools at the service of anonymous institutions can do for them.” Let’s unpack this:

• Our “anonymous institutions” – especially the international and transnational media companies – are always telling us what they can do for us: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (Google, back in the day); “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” (Meta);
• But what they do for us always comes packaged in the stimulus/response model;
• And constant immersion in the stimulus/respons environment exhausts us;
• So the “delicate balance” Illich speaks of has not been achieved – we are constantly being pressured to forget what we can do for ourselves;
• Therefore our institutions are not functional, and neither are we.

This is what my title means: We’re exhausted because we don’t have enough to do. Instead of meaningful action, we have only responses to stimuli.

The first step in making ourselves and our institutions more functional is simply this: To try doing for ourselves what the anonymous media companies are always telling us they can do for us.

Think, then, of a social ill you want to see remedied; now, with that ill fixed firmly in your mind, imagine that there are no social media – no internet even. What do you do? Throw up your hands in despair? That wouldn’t be necessary. You write letters; you see if a local organization devoted to that cause needs volunteers; you attend city council or school board meetings; you change your own behavior in whatever ways might make a small difference. You have more time to do these things because you are no longer trapped in the stimulus/response cycle that is the only thing our media institutions have to offer us. You may well discover that while in one sense you’re doing more – you’re taking action rather than responding digitally to digital stimuli – you’re not as tired. In many circumstances – not all, to be sure, but many, especially in our part of the world – the world of atoms is less wearisome to us than the world of bits.

So, paradoxically but truly, the way out of our current exhaustion is not to do less but do other – or rather, genuinely to do rather than merely to react. And then when you do return to the media world, you’ll do so as someone who has helped to re-establish that “delicate balance” Illich speaks of. You’ll have taken a step towards healing yourself, and taken a step towards healing our institutions. What do you have to lose except your Pavlovian chains?

A year ago I wrote: “Wondering how to decide what to read? Here’s a simple but effective heuristic to cut down the choices significantly. Ask yourself one question: Does this writer make bank when we hate one another? And if the answer is yes, don’t read that writer.” The same rule applies to TV, radio, podcasts. If their clicks and ratings and ad revenues go up when we hate one another, flee them like the plague they are. 

Big the-Virgin-and-the-Dynamo vibe going on at the local Methodist church. From this angle anyway.

Rain everywhere … except in the little circle where I live. It’s like we have a force field keeping ALL rain away – and it’s been fully functional for two months.

I always quit Spelling Bee when I get to “Amazing,” because I think it would go to my head if I were called “Genius.”

This is extremely uncomfortable for me, but over at my Buy Me a Coffee page I decided to ask people what might enourage them to offer more support. I figure that if I’m gonna ask people for money I need to find out what they want.

The shot above is — in context — one of the most amazing things this amazing show has done.

If Rhea Seehorn doesn’t win an Emmy, there should be riots in the streets.

If Carol Burnett doesn’t win an Emmy, there should also be riots in the streets. Burnett, as famous as she is, has been an utter revelation as Marion.

Everything is unraveling fast, and it started unraveling when Francesca told Jimmy that Kim had called (in the aftermath of his disappearance at the end of Breaking Bad) to see if he was alive. That led him to call Kim, and that spectacularly disastrous decision led both of them to actions that will define the conclusion of the story they share.

Kim tells Jimmy that he should turn himself in, which infuriates him: he tells her that if she has a guilty conscience she should turn herself in — which she does. The chief effect Jimmy’s call has on Kim is to make her realize that all her attempts to finish the business of her life with Jimmy have proved unsuccessful — business remains, and that business is confession and atonement.

Meanwhile, in his rage Jimmy takes the opposite path: he resumes his downward spiral. He had dragged Jeff into a con because Jeff, a former resident of Albuquerque, had recognized him as Saul Goodman; once Jeff has committed a felony Jimmy can command his silence. He’s done with Jeff — until the phone call. Now — perhaps because he sees that he can never reconnect with Kim — he quickly becomes the worst version of himself, both unprecedentedly malicious and unprecedentedly careless. Once before he had unwisely gotten involved with “amateurs,” as Mike (in a flashback scene) calls Walt and Jesse, but then he was led by arrogance — he boasted that when he looked at Walt he saw 170 pounds of clay to sculpt; now he’s getting involved with amateurs again, but this time he’s driven by despair.

When Jeff recognized “Saul,” Jimmy called the Disappearer — but then, in mid-call, decided, “I’ll take care of this myself.” That may prove to be one of the unwisest decisions in a life full of unwise decisions. I don’t think he can make that call again. And I don’t think there’s a way out for him.

I’ll make two predictions for the finale. One, that everything will end, however it ends, for Jimmy and Kim alike, in Albuquerque; and second, that we’ll see one more flashback to Jimmy and Chuck — maybe in their childhood. Because Chuck understood his brother all along, understood him better than anyone. Several seasons back, he told Kim the necessary truth: “My brother is not a bad person. He has a good heart. It’s just … he can’t help himself. And everyone’s left picking up the pieces.” To her great misery, Kim found out just how right Chuck was. And she’s trying, one last time, to pick up those pieces.

Well, I’ve had more than enough of the heat, but this guy seems to like it.

The Greek word exousia (ἐξουσία) is one that develops in curious ways.

• In Plato its connotations are often (though not invariably) pejorative: for instance, in the famous story of the Ring of Gyges (Republic, Book II), the trait that Gyges exhibits in using the power of his ring so lavishly is exousia. It is a kind of license, a recklessness in exercising one’s own will without restraint.
• The Stoics, though, gave the word a positive spin. The great goal of the Stoic sage was freedom (eleutheria), and they actually defined freedom as a kind of exousia: “the authority of self-action” (exousia autopragias).
• In the New Testament the word has overwhelmingly positive connotations, and I am especially interested in its use to describe Jesus: “He spoke as one with authority” (ēn gar didaskōn autous hōs exousian echōn) — unlike the scribes and Pharisees. They have the institutional power, but he, this peripatetic sage and prophet, has the real authority. Also, the word often suggests speaking or acting in a way properly “authorized”: See Matthew 8:9 and especially Matthew 28:18: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Edothē moi pasa exousia en ouranō kai epi tēs gēs).

The more I think about this the more I see consistency rather than change in this history. Always, what exousia is depends on the character of the person exercising it. (A distinction we capture in English when we say authoritative or authoritarian.) Exousia in a selfish man, like Gyges, will produce vice; in a sage will produce freedom; in the Son of God will produce compelling teaching, a call to righteousness and intimacy with God. Exousia for Gyges yields self-gratification, while for the Stoic sage it yields self-fulfillment; but in Jesus it manifests itself in words of life for others.