Ep26 -- Get Outta the Water

 You may have noticed one of the recurring themes of this podcast, which was inspired by the famous David Foster Wallace graduation speech that came to be known as "This is Water." 

Specifically, it was the funny little joke that sets up the big takeaway message of Wallace's speech. 

"There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods and them and says, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?'  And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the hell is water?'"

So for we humans, our water is the invisible reality that we exist in all day, every day.  In a physical sense. It's the oxygen we breathe, the gravity that acts upon us, and which we completely take for granted.  But in a more metaphysical sense, it's all the intentionally constructed things in our culture that are so ubiquitous and that we've grown so accustomed to, that not only do they feel absolutely normal, but we often treat them as if they're governed by the same natural laws as the chemistry behind oxygen and the physics behind gravity. 

And it's our uncritical acceptance of those constructed elements of our culture that are such fertile grounds for gaslighters.  Gaslighters tend to hold positions of power within the culture, and the last thing that they want is for people to realize that our culture was intentionally constructed by people like them, for the benefit of people like them, and at the expense of pretty much everyone else.  So the more people believe that our culture is immutable, is just the way things have always been and will always be,  and the less we critically examine our culture and really ask ourselves why things are the way they are,  the less likely it is that the current power dynamics will ever be challenged. 

So this week I want to do just that. I want to critically examine our culture in one particular way, a way that looks at the water we fish are swimming around in and asks, what is our water made up of? How was it created in the first place? And can we filter it or change its composition so that it will better nourish and sustain all of us, not just the big fish?

Stay tuned.

I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about the ways we've all been conned into accepting a human culture that's out of sync with human nature and how we can fight back and put the kind back into humankind. 

But first, a word about a sponsor. 

This week's episode of The Great Ungaslighting is not sponsored by, and it kind of pains me to say this, but this week, it's Adobe.  I mean, I've been using Photoshop for decades, ever since I was splicing, Bill Simmons head onto David Hasselhoff's body for the Boston Sports Guy column.  But as anyone who has used Photoshop in the past decade or so, or any other app in the Adobe cloud suite has realized,  there've been some significant changes to Adobe's business model that are, say, less than overwhelmingly customer-focused. 

About a dozen years ago, Adobe switched from a software sales model to a subscription model. So we used to buy a version of Photoshop and use it for a good long time until the software had improved so much that it justified investing in a newer version.  But then Adobe moved the software into the cloud and charged a subscription fee to access it, which you have to plan on paying forever regardless of whether or not the software ever improves. Spoiler alert: it doesn't improve much.  But this was a brilliant move from Adobe as their total revenue grew from about $4 billion in 2012 to almost $20 billion last year.  And their subscription revenue increased 16 times over during that period.  And it's safe to say that as their revenue skyrocketed, their user and customer experience did not follow suit.  So much so that this week, the FTC sued Adobe for deceiving customers and pretty much forcing them into "year-long subscriptions through hidden early termination fees and numerous cancellation hurdles."  Essentially Adobe has become, as a surprise to exactly nobody who has ever tried to cancel their Adobe subscription, "too big to fail," in the words of historically impactful FTC chair Lina Khan.  Now Adobe screwing over its customers as their revenues quintupled isn't actually the douchiest move they've made over the years. No, Adobe has earned our ire here at Ungaslighting HQ because they seem to have almost gone out of their way to screw over the exact people who have been their primary and most dedicated customers over the years, that is creative folks in general and photographers in particular.  Now there's some debate as to just how much Adobe screwed over their content creators as they trained their new AI system. They at least appear to have responded to creators' concerns on that.

But what's objectively dickish is just how much Adobe's recent PR comments and marketing campaigns seem intent on throwing photographers under the bus.

Recently, an Adobe executive referred to their AI as quote, "the new digital cameras." Not great news for people who make a living using actual digital cameras.  Plus a recent ad campaign touting Adobe's "Generate Background" tool encouraged users to quote, "skip the photo shoot and just use Generate Background instead."  Again, Adobe seems to be going out of their way to show just how little they care about their longest term and most dedicated customers.  And for the cherry on top of Adobe's douche Sunday, when customers felt like they were getting screwed on cancellation fees, or that they weren't being compensated for their work being used to train Adobe's AI, if they called Adobe to complain they'd often find themselves stymied by Adobe's new customer service system, which, guess what, utilizes the latest AI customer service technology.  So next time you hear how much AI is going to transform the world, remember that first and foremost, any new technology serves at the pleasure of profit. 

And, we're back.

So what is in our water? 

There was an opinion piece in the New York Times last week that got me thinking about all this nature of reality stuff. It was titled "The Key to Longevity is Boring."  In it, the author contrasts the torrent of viral health and longevity strategies that flood our social media feeds, the biohacks, supplements, cold plunges, intermittent fasting, and all the rest of it with five simple empirically proven strategies that actually work.  Regular exercise., A balanced, nutritious diet, quitting smoking, limiting alcohol consumption, and maintaining healthy relationships.  Now, I'm not saying that none of these trendy treatments, diets or behaviors could actually work.

I'm sure if some of them are beneficial. But the point of the article is that in our consumerist culture, it's very difficult for simple, relatively boring prescriptions to compete with sexier influencer, promoted supplements or whatever.  The author writes, this stuff is simple, somewhat boring and harder to make money off than trendy supplements, complex sounding theories, and new gadgets. But it's what actually works.  And that's the key to figuring out what our water is made up of.

Our culture isn't composed of a broad selection of goods and services and phenomena intended to help the greatest proportion of citizens attain their greatest life fulfillment.  It's made up mostly of crap that can turn the biggest profit.  Sure, there are plenty of things intended to serve the public interest, but you tell me how those things are fairing these days in the great American marketplace of ideas.  So our reality, what we usually think of as the way things just are, is actually just one way things could be, and it's a way that's profoundly influenced by our particular brand of market capitalism.  And that's not to say it's all bad. I mean, sure there are still a few non monopolized industries where actual competition leads to innovation that betters our quality of life.  But once again, how are those things fairing these days compared to Amazon, Facebook, Google, and all of those monopolies that occupy our particular pool of water.

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There was another opinion piece in the Times that caught my attention, understandably since it was titled, "The Supreme Court is Gaslighting Us All."  Now for the purposes of this podcast, I don't really want to get into the weeds about the monumental decisions that came down from the court, this recent term.  Nor the way that the majority's opinions, so often tried to dismiss the minority's concern about its decisions by often saying that the court didn't just do what it so clearly just did.  But what's most interesting to me about the way this particular court very visibly distorts our reality, the nature of our water, is simply due to the fact that we currently have a six-three split on the court. With the six conservative justices, all being very conservative.  

The way the court decides which cases to take is that they receive thousands of petitions for reviews every term. And in order for them to actually consider the case, four of the nine justices must agree that it's worth considering.  If the court is split five to four. The minority has pretty much equal influence over which cases the court considers.  But if the court is split six-three, as it is now, The minority has pretty much zero influence on the case selection.  And what that means is all we're going to see from the Supreme Court are cases where the conservative majority feels the lower court has made a mistake usually by issuing a judgment that isn't sufficiently conservative in its legal interpretation.  So we in the public get a sense that lower courts are just running amuck with liberal activist overreach since those cases are disproportionately represented among the cases that will make it to the court.  

Again, we think that our reality just comes into being and is regulated by at least objective rules, if not natural laws, when in fact, our reality is in some ways created by people who work really hard to make sure we have safe food, drinking, water, transportation, whatever.  But it can also be distorted by those in power to suit the interests of a select few.  

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So, what can we do about all this?  I think the best way to understand our reality, our own little pond is to spend some time in a different pond. That is, to travel.  Get away from the culture that you're so used to that it's completely invisible and suddenly you'll begin to see the countless ways your own culture is constructed, and maybe get a sense of how it can be constructed differently, maybe even better.  Go spend some time in a culture that doesn't worship consumerism as much as ours does. I recently met a retired air force officer who was stationed in Spain a bunch of years ago. He loved how much time families spent together, the long lunches, the pre-dinner strolls, the slower pace of life. He even loved the difference between watching soccer matches on TV versus watching most American sports. The key is in a soccer match, the action is uninterrupted by commercial breaks for the entire 45-minute half.  Among other things, he noticed after a few years watching soccer that he could hold his beer for much longer without having to pee. Go figure.  

That kind of lifestyle doesn't just magically occur. It's the result of creating a human-centered culture, more so than a profit-centered one. It's not perfect, sure, but you can never really understand the true nature of our own culture until you've experienced a different one.  So step one, get out and travel.  Now of course, travel isn't an option for everyone.  So the next best thing is to cultivate an awareness of the culture you're swimming around in.  One way to do that is to play dumb.  That is to imagine you're new to your life and just notice how things play out. And as you do things, experience things, and interact with the world, just ask yourself, how could these things go down differently?  Could I take a bus or a subway or bike or walk instead of driving? What if I didn't have the option of buying something online for next-day delivery, and I had to actually go out and find it.  What if I didn't have safe, reliable water coming out of every tap?  Doing this can help you appreciate a lot of the things you take for granted. And it also might open your eyes to the way things could be done better.  The point is to appreciate the things that work and be open to doing differently the things that don't, especially if those who benefit from a suboptimal status quo tell you that this is just the way things have to be.  

Well, that's it for this week. If you like this episode, please share it with anyone, you know who might also enjoy it.  And until next week, be kind to yourself, cut each other, some slack, and use your f$%^ing turn signal.