You want to write more. Well, I want to read more, so I want you to write more. In fact, I want you to want to write more. Perhaps the following methodology will move the needle, perhaps not. Yet, as someone pursuant of the writing life, the very chance of perhaps should be enough to continue.

In any case, the purpose of this essay was to serve as a call to action, not a call to further deliberation. So, I will end this preamble here.

The Evil Method

1. Desk, paper, pen.

2. Set the clock for thirty minutes.

3. Write.

That is the behavioral mantra of many successful writers; the method to their madness, which I have (strictly for the purposes of this essay) christened “evil.” The minutes may vary; some writers prefer twenty minutes, some writers prefer forty-five. At the end of the day, however—however evilly—the method works. 

Ernst Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot… Need I go on?

It worked for someone yesterday. It’s working for someone else today. It’ll work for someone new tomorrow. It does not work for everyone, however. 

Me, for example.

Write down whatever floats through your stream of consciousness, so goes the philosophy, the postmortem will reveal some wheat amidst the chaff. For me, however, the thought of writing nonstop for thirty minutes, let alone the thought of writing chaff for twenty-five of those minutes, always seemed a little wasteful, a little ungraceful.

“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting,” wrote Edmund Burke. Why should writing be any different?

If this strikes a chord, you and I are not alone. For despite the many disciples, the evil method has a number of notable defectors—legendary comedian Jerry Seinfeld amongst them.

Which brings us to:

The Lesser of Two Evils Method

1. Desk, pen, paper.

2. Set the clock for thirty minutes.

3. Write or do nothing.

By adding (quite literally) nothing, Seinfeld enlisted a powerful new ally in the war on white paper. No longer reliant on the pull factor of creativity alone, Seinfeld could lean on the push factor of boredom to do some of the heavy lifting. Hunger is the best sauce; boredom, the best spur.

The genius behind the lesser of two evils method stems from a contradiction that sits at the heart of human nature: the relativity of satisfaction. No one likes being told what to do, even if one wants to do it. 

Even if we have no intention of choosing Option B: Nothing, we prefer to have Option B. In fact, when Option B is there, our preference for Option A: Writing grows even greater. 

It is rather like the flipside of FOMO: for one is not fearful of missing out on something better, but grateful to be getting out of something worse. All of which got me to thinking… What would happen if one added an Option C?

At which point, we arrive at:

The Lesser of Three Evils Method

1. Desk, pen, paper, book.

2. Set the clock for thirty minutes.

3. Write or do nothing or finally read the fucking thing.

In our attention(-deficit) economy, one of the few things harder than writing something decent is reading something dense. There are books we do not want to read, but know we should; books we do want to read, but never get around to. Indeed, War and Peace jokes are as old as Tolstoy himself.

Sidelining Option B: Nothing, for reasons of human nature, two net positive scenarios remain.

Worst case scenario (Option C: Reading): after thirty minutes, you come away having read something you were not sure you would.

 Best case scenario (Option A: Writing): after thirty minutes, you come away having written something you were not sure you could. 

It is not the author nor the title, but the presence of the book that matters; an extra stick to sweeten the carrot. And on those days when the words are unforthcoming, and I feel myself in danger of abandoning my post, whether for a meaningless walk or another needless espresso, I have found that a book by my right hand is often enough to keep at the desk.

Invariably, the moment I give myself permission to read, I feel the urge to pick up the pen. Human nature strikes again. 

It’s striking right now.

In 1895, Gustave Le Bon noted a change in the winds of power:

“The divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings.”

He was right. Today, however, the winds of power are changing once again. It is the turn of the masses to fear replacement.

Enter: the divine right of data.

Last year, McKinsey predicted that algorithms will replace 800 million jobs by 2030.

Many were sceptical.

Last quarter, however, the digital world was shaken by a sudden explosion of content-creating AI: Google's LaMDA, OpenAI's GPT-3 and DALL·E, Stability AI's Stable Diffusion, et al.

Many were shocked.

It was an explosion of automation that did not merely further destabilize to the professional futures of truckdrivers and cashiers, however, but destabilized the future of professions full stop. For as Nick Bilton wrote:

...new advancements in A.I. have made it clear that writers, illustrators, photographers, journalists, and novelists could soon be driven from the workforce and replaced by high-tech player pianos.

There was one profession, however, one unpaid position, which escaped the coverage of Nick Bilton and his colleagues: namely, the citizen.

If the future of the learned author is unsafe, can the future of the informed citizen be much safer?

Data has opened ‘the public’ to the people: a raising of the floodgates that has forced the gatekeepers—journalists, politicians, institutions—to sink or swim with the rest of us. Information has never been freer; the vox populi, never louder.

Yet, data is a double-edged sword.

Every two years, at our current rate, we are doubling the total amount of data in the world: a dataflood, within which we—the people, the citizens, the masses—are struggling to swim.

Moreover, we are not entirely to blame.

Chatbots. Deepfakes. Click farms. Algorithmic astroturfing. As content-creating AI eats the world, to paraphrase entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, the values of the Enlightenment are becoming replaced by the volume and velocity of Big Data.

It is not only quality of content-creating AI that citizens need to be wary of, moreover, but the quantity. In supporting “no-code platforms,” GPT-3 is Ctrl-Alt-Deleting the barrier to entry to the digital world: a deletion that not only heralds a new generation of bots, but bot-makers.

In the eyes of Martin Gurri, the biblical nature of our twenty-first-century dataflood is tearing through society like a crack through concrete:

The digital revolution has shattered that mirror, and now the public inhabits those broken pieces of glass. So, the public isn’t one thing; it’s highly fragmented.

Flooded with information—to say nothing of mis- and disinformation—shared realities are disintegrating; common ground, disappearing.

In June of 2021, echoing the fears of Martin Gurri, Stephen Marche noted the newfound risks that next-generation content-creating AI pose to the public good:

When OpenAI released GPT-3, they specifically insisted that users of the beta refrain from using it for political speech. They fear GPT-3 as a tool of mass manipulation, and they are right to fear it.

It was very month that Washington Post journalist Nitasha Tiku would report on the claim made by whistleblower Blake Lemoine: a Google employee, who had gone to the press with the news that GPT-3 had achieved sentience.

The Singularity had arrived.

At least, so he thought. Fooled by the lifelikeness of the groundbreaking AI, Lemoine had mistaken correlation for causation—data for divinity. In the days that followed, Google denied the claim, and promptly fired their whistleblowing employee. This is not the end of such claims, however. It is barely the beginning. It is a story that, moreover, when reflected upon more deeply, raises a number of uncomfortable questions.

If experts are beginning to be fooled, what hope have the laymen?

What hope have the masses, informed and uninformed alike?

To a Gutenberg degree, Big Data has not only given rise to a new technology, but a new phenomenology; new ways of seeing. Yet, unlike the printing press, which largely broadened the horizon of humanity, Big Data has—so far—cast as much shadow as light. Hidden behind the mountains or “the cloud” of Big Data, the physical and philosophical cornerstones of politics all but disappear.

A decade ago, Theo van Dijk saw the writing on the wall:

Numbers matter. Popularity is a coded and quantified concept and as such it is manipulable.

For many people, political popularity is no longer gleaned from neighbourly chats or workplace chatter, but from lines of code whose inputs and outputs run untraceably through the blackboxes of Big Data. In this way, democracy is reduced to numbers on a screen—a matter of faith.

So, I hear you ask…

How do we secure the future of the informed citizen?

How do we save the masses from replacement?

Well, as tools emerged to canalize the linguistic flood of the Gutenberg Press—literary critique, peer review—so too will tools emerge for flood that is Big Data. New Noahs are necessary. Content-curating Arks are coming.

In the meantime, however, before you hop in the back of your next Internet bandwagon, double-check the front seat.

These days, you never who—or what—is driving.

Convenience decides everything. 

— Evan Williams, Twitter Founder (2013)

Much like desire lines, whose attractiveness as a well-worn path becomes a feedback loop over time, convenience has an intrinsic momentum.

It is a momentum, however, whose direction is less the product of a good or bad decision than the lack of decision-making altogether.

In a sense, convenience decides for us. There are great upsides to this feature of modernity, of course—saving time, simplifying choice, et cetera—but there are downsides too. In the famous words of economist Thomas Sowell:

There are no solutions.

There are only trade-offs.

As a motivator of human behaviour, convenience lacks the depth of a Freudian or Machiavellian theory of action. It is precisely this lack, however, which accounts for its universality as a feature of the human condition—and human conditioning.

In the essay that gave rise to the phrase, “The Tyranny of Convenience,” legal scholar Tim Wu argues that while society struggled under the weightlessness of the first wave of digitalization, a second wave of digital technologies: namely, those downstream Web 2.0 (social media, smart devices, et cetera).

Society is becoming so fast, so automatic, the self is struggling to keep up. Such is the pace, Wu fears, the self may eventually give up altogether.

Convenience is not only rewriting how society works, Wu contends, but rewiring how the self works (or ceases to do so). To quote the words of novelist Richard Powers:

Once you’ve bought a novel in your pyjamas, there’s no turning back.

As an motivator of behaviour, ‘convenience’ lacks the depth of a Freudian or Machiavellian theory of action. It is precisely this lack, however, which accounts for its universality as a feature of the human condition—and human conditioning.

For the likes of Amazon, convenience has proved an effective means of eliminating the obstacles to desire fulfilment. With such convenient technologies as Alexa and 1-Click, Amazon has streamlined a variety of traditionally high-touchpoint procedures.

“Shopping feels distinctly like… not shopping,”

writes journalist Molly McHugh.

The subtle and systemic removal of pain points has come at a cost, however: namely, the simultaneous removal of choice points from the decision-making process.

With the launch of Amazon Go, a chain of cashierless convenience stores, the self-proclaimed “most convenient company on earth”  has put the mindlessness of frictionlessness on full display. Indeed, to quote Gianna Puerini, chief architect of Amazon Go:

…we want the customer to have to learn as little as possible.

For centuries, the evolutionary arms-race between the shopper and shopkeeper was relatively neck-and-neck; the map and the territory, relatively symmetrical.

In order to “nudge” the browsing and purchase histories of future customers, choice architects were confined to such logistical ploys as situating the bakery near the entrance, so as to get the “saliva glands working.,” as Paco Underhill notes in Why We Buy.

In the era of Amazon Go, however, asymmetries abound.

No longer awaiting the results from the occasional experiment with digital trackers and shopping carts, Amazon Go is an experiment: a laboratory, with cameras in the ceiling, scales in the shelves and carts, and algorithms in the air, whose results—fastest routes, dearest routes, product abandonment, failures of willpower—are released and reabsorbed in real-time. It is a reimagining of shopping whose downstream effects do not end with the brick-and-mortar of retail, however, for as Erik Hoel writes:

What had previously been accomplished for food through the distribution of supermarkets has now been done with experience itself.

Convenience is not only changing the way we act, but the way we think (or fail to do so).

By clearing a path of least resistance between desire and its fulfilment, Amazon has laid the groundwork for a form of soft tyranny or smart power, the general characteristics of which philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes in Psychopolitics:

Power that is smart and friendly does not operate frontally—i.e., against the will of those who are subject to it. Instead, it guides their will to its own benefit. It says ‘yes’ more often than ‘no.’

With the removal of inconvenience, physical and psychological, Amazon has collapsed the distance between desire and decision—an e-commercialization of one of the most fundamental laws of geometry: the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. 

“I didn’t really realize just how easy and fast the process would be. Amazon Go felt a lot like shopping online,”

writes journalist Shara Tibken.

“The whole process was so quick and seamless, I almost forgot the items weren’t free.” 

In a world of impulse buying, artificial demand, attentional deficits, fast fashion, fast food, et cetera, one is left to wonder if, perhaps—perhaps—the shopping experience is convenient enough already.

After all, as Glenn C. Loury once wrote:

It is not the iron fist of repression, but the velvet glove of seduction that is the real problem.

Living is nothing more or less than doing one thing instead of another.

— José Ortega y Gasset, The Mission of the University (1944)

This web of time—the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries—embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not.

— Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths (1948)

As you can probably tell from the long preamble,

I’m always reluctant to speak about myself. If given the option between a one-minute introduction about ‘me’ and a one-hour presentation on ‘X,’ more often than not, I will bite your hand off for the latter. Even typing ‘I’ makes me cringe a bit. But that’s not your problem.

I’m always reluctant to speak about myself, not because I don’t want to tell the truth, but because I don’t want to lie, however whitely. The truth about oneself—one’s true feelings in the present, intentions, one’s true feelings about the future—is often too deep a subject for the shallows of casual conversation, idle banter, or the often brutal back-and-forth with friends.

Unfortunately, a lot of the time, life’s too short for longform.

So, we install heuristics: interpersonal shorthands of things we say or don’t say, do or don’t do. Each of us has a unique bunch of these heuristics, which help us determine the level of our intimacy or honesty. There are pathways of conversation open to Friend X, which are very much closed to Neighbour Y.

Moreover, these heuristics are not evergreen. With each passing day, pathways that were once closed begin to open; pathways that were once open begin to close. Friends become old neighbours; neighbours, new friends.

Right now, as I sit at my desk, I am cognitively mapping the paths that are opening and closing before me, as well as the paths that ‘I’ want to open, the paths that ‘I’ need to close.

It’s not something I’m used to doing.

When hit with a What do you want to do with your life? or any of the other Big questions, I’ve often found myself spiralling for a split-second, before regaining my composure and—with formulae flashing across my eyes, like that Zach Galifianakis meme—reaching for the nearest, easiest answer to hand.

Anything to cul-de-sac that avenue of conversation.

In my life, however, I have rarely had to answer such questions. The Big questions have largely passed me by. As lawyers, engineers, accountants, et cetera, my circle of friends are all pretty set on their paths. Thus, questions about the future rarely arise.

That is, until there’s some form of drinking, partying, or general debauchery to be done. Which brings us to the titular question.

Why not?

The toughest questions which I am most commonly forced to contend with (or cul-de-sac) are not any of the Big ones, but variations on the theme of this small one.

“You can’t hang out and watch [insert sporting event here] today? Why not?”

“You can’t come out and do [insert banned substance here] tonight? Why not?”

In theory, the answer to such questions if often quite straightforward: generally some combination of “I haven’t hit my book quota this week,” or “I need to stay home so I can finish this piece by tonight,” or This piece is taking longer than I thought, I can’t afford to be hungover tomorrow.” In practice, however, straightforwardness is often trickier than it looks.

From what I can gather after a few minutes of page-staring, the why behind my reluctance to answer straightforwardly is twofold. Firstly, aside from loving my friends, I respect them. I admire their ability to live in the moment; to embody the philosophy of mañana, as the Spanish say. I refuse to be the one to cast the first stone of existential angst, or sow any seeds of self-doubt, or dampen the mood or spirit of the moment in any way. 

Secondly, for reasons more selfish than selfless, I really enjoy being with them. Our paths are divergent, and diverging, but I’m in no hurry to accelerate the process. To this day, whenever I sacrifice some short-term escapade in the name of some long-term, loosely-defined purpose, I still find myself sitting at my desk, staring down the barrel of existential FOMO.

Why not?

It’s at this point that the question turns back on me. Why don’t I slam the book, slam the laptop, put on a shirt and jump in the car? In the past, I’ve enjoyed it. In the present, I’m drawn to it. Is the abstract possibility of being a writer more important than the concrete reality of being a friend? After all, I have very little to show for it: progress is slow, money is nonexistent. Am I simply doing the equivalent of scratching lottery tickets at home?

On my deathbed, am I really going to remember the extra day at the desk?

That’s the interesting thing about Why not?

It’s a Janus question (or auto-antonym or contronym): a word or phrase that means one thing and its opposite. It can function as the follow-up question to a declined invitation, “You can’t go out? Why not?” or the fired-up answer to the invitation itself, “Fuck it. Why not!”

When I was an 18-year-old, explaining that I was staying home to read Montaigne (or practice writing like him) was difficult. Now that I’m a 26-year-old, however, answering straightforwardly—living straightforwardly—is easier, though still not easy.  I still dodge and deflect every now and again, but I am beginning to get a handle on my Why nots.

Who knows,

perhaps I’ll soon even begin to get a handle on my Whys.