IN DEFENSE OF MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY

Hey ZOoooOOners

I’ve been chronically online again, or rather chronically plugged into the constant stream of commentary on pop culture. As any self respecting cool millennial, I was all ears when the controversial (and excruciatingly long …) piece on “Andrew Huberman’s mechanisms of control” was released. If you’ve missed it, in a thorough exposé stretching over Huberman’s professional and personal life, we learn that the internet Scientific Academia poster child operates under, to put it nicely, shaky morals. In detail, we’re fed the tales of his womanizing via savvy calendar management, his weaponization of therapy talk and his chronic flakiness. There it is, daddy Huberman, middle aged, jacked, dopamine detoxed, fueled on AG1, might have borderline narcissistic traits … mild shock. Saying the article got popular is an understatement. Most of all, it got Huberman fans pulling their shields up. By focusing on Huberman’s private life outside of the recording studio, the article was covertly (and not so covertly, when questioning the state of his Stanford lab allegedly crumbling down before covid) discrediting the very real positive impact he had on “providing zero-cost science related tools to the general public” - can’t we separate the man from the scientist goddamn it?! 

I agree and I don’t. I don’t think you have to be absolutely morally impeccable to have your work matter and be relevant. Being an absolute jerk (or a criminal for that matter) has seldom prevented any man from having a solid platform and being critically acclaimed. In the case of the Huberman article, I don’t even think that’s the aim. I think it induced a visceral reaction because it demonstrated that dedicating your whole career and (I assume) life to personal growth doesn’t prevent you from being bad. 

"There it is, daddy Huberman might have borderline narcissistic traits … mild shock"

It struck me because a common thread of my twenties has been to avidly consume self improvement content. Much like the author of this article I have been gobbling down the routines and protocols suavely outlined by Huberman and other scientific (and less scientific) thinkers, in a constant effort to feel better. You name it, I’ve done it : sun in the morning, good balanced nutrition, rest, curbing my vices, meditating, trying to control stress. A lot of that stuff works (again … shocker). I have also been in talk therapy for many years, putting words on painful experiences, taking them out of my hazy subconscious to catch myself before repeating unwanted patterns. The constant striving to polish away non optimal behaviors has softened a few of my existential breakdowns and helped me get to know myself better. And yet, if I’m really honest, I always draw the most satisfaction not from the ease or pep in my step I theoretically regain, but rather from reverse engineering the complex mechanisms of our sophisticated meat machine. I feel an ambivalent sense of pride when I exert enough self control and climb behind my own body’s steering wheel: it’s as if I could regain some agency on the ride of being alive. I’ve listened, changed, been disciplined and yet (I hope to a lesser extent than our friend Andrew), I’ve inevitably fallen short of my own expectations. I can’t help but be uncontrollably bad. My default so far when I’d slip was to adopt another routine , to maneuver myself back to being “the best version of me”. By a few of my standards I’ve recently become “bad” again. The difference is, this time around, I’m tired of working on myself.

"I feel an ambivalent sense of pride when I exert enough self control and climb behind my own body’s steering wheel"

Modern self-help has turned doing life “right” into an impossible quest. If you've looked for life improvement content on any social media or publishing platform, by modern genius of recommendation algorithm, I can almost guarantee that you were force fed twice as many videos, podcasts, blog posts, all written by “experts”. According to most of the latter, having a “growth mindset” requires time (duh) and a fair amount of resources . No funny business or lazy horoscope reading. Non non, if you help yourself, it’s a serious undertaking. You gotta “flex that muscle”, “build that good habit”, “be self disciplined enough to perform your 12 step 6am morning routine day after day”. They call it “the work”. To an extent, that makes sense. Strenuous activities that lead to improvements towards a set goal are undoubtedly satisfactory, even more so in a world where cheap dopamine thrills are ubiquitous. 

Interestingly though, the grand noble vocation of making people feel better has become a sizable industry that, pardon my French, might be slightly exploitative of our fear of being unwell to turn a profit. The online self improvement pipeline is fascinating because it caters to insecurities of all budgets and beliefs systems. Science based body hacker? Of course you need that $87 proprietary blend of tons of good things for mental health, immune defense and heart health (yes AG1, I’m talking about you). Manifesting? Your next quantum shift will only happen after you take that online course/ certification (all with extravagant claims, a lot of them with shady credentials - see the latest controversy on Jay Shetty). And behold, even if you are in the right tax bracket and can dedicate that time and money towards your self actualization, the internet keeps you on your toes. There are perpetual contradictions between the many “ single habit that’ll change your life” clickbaity videos being thrown around. This shows, despite the prescriptive tone in which the majority of self help messaging is shared, how much of being the best version of you is an (expensive) art and not really a science.

"Being the best version of you is an (expensive) art and not really a science"

Now that I think about it, as a prime advertising target and happy consumer of the wellness industry, the point of all that was never in the self improvement act itself for me. It always came down to how much I loved to tell myself “I got it”. The instant when the newfound theory made sense - the diet worked, the new routine made me more productive, a few research papers reinforce my confirmation bias. I had found something I could fully surrender to. Surely I was on my way to avoid chronic disease, to age well, to have minimal wrinkles, to step towards my life purpose. And while all of that could have been true, by law of trends and science only being right until proven wrong, life reminded me cyclically that I could never be so sure. Much like sisyphus, I was rolling my rock up enough to watch it fall back when a better theory was released or worse, when I fell off the wellness wagon I happened to be on at the time.

It made me grow resentful. After all, it was my sole responsibility to manifest what I wanted, to find the partner, the job, the life circumstances that would finally make me feel I’d arrived where I needed to be. I could find a way to methodically rewiring my very own computer by the sole strength of free will and exceptional individual skills. It was within my reach to heal myself and any failed attempt at doing so was only a reflection of my own shortcomings.

See how this story begins and finishes with the self. It did finish with me trying to control the environment I was in, as if it were as simple as a thermostat. Most of all, as if I always had my hand on the dial. Every sense of demise, every time I missed the mark, everytime I lashed out on people, everytime I indulged but it wasn’t planned, every time I just let myself go was a personal failure. Incapable of not taking a routine too far, I started isolating. I looked with contempt to those who weren’t as therapized, who were out of pocket, who indulged too often, never blamed themselves, or shall I say never took accountability for hardships they encountered. By striving to understand everything, I gave myself a blind spot as to what the human life experience is.

"By striving to understand everything, I gave myself a blind spot as to what the human life experience is"

What was it that I wasn’t seeing? I couldn’t get myself to understand until I dove into the world of fiction literature again. I had neglected the pleasure I got from reading stories for a while, favoring titles that would cater to my striving for constant self improvement. But I picked up novels again. I went so far as taking a class on how great characters and stories are built. I went in expecting to be taught systems and structures. I was indeed taught all that. And yet after having spent three hours, sitting on a chair, without even thinking of checking my phone or disengaging, I understood that the all consuming passion reignited in my brain wasn’t so much about plot building blocks. It was about how they enabled the author to encapsulate and share what the human experience is. The scaffolding of the plot was there to create space for the protagonist fatal flaw, to allow them struggle and fuck up and take us along with them. No story really worth telling is ever starring people that fundamentally have their shit together. Characters need something we can riff off. That’s the sort of edge that causes the necessary friction for a reader to care. Lizzie Bennet’s stubbornness, Amy Dunne’s calculated evil, Tom Ripley’s megalomania, Carrie Bradshow’s self centeredness.

"The absolute truth of what an experience entails is outside our grasp"

My theory is that there is a level of truth to stories told outside of the confines of rigid “how to be happy” recipes: they resonate deeper within. There is certainly a great case for research, advice and concepts, but sometimes the absolute truth of what an experience entails is outside our grasp. It can’t be decomposed or demonstrated because it can only be felt. That’s what fiction teaches us: How to deal with fear of time passing, how to come to terms with the never ending grieving process of being alive, how to take in beauty when we know it's always tragically fleeting, what’s the pit in your stomach when you realize that nature is so much bigger than you, what is it like to feel the fiery aliveness that comes with deeply connecting to someone? 

I was so interested in controlling everything that I forgot that what’s important is ultimately outside our grasp. Fiction reminded me that you can’t personal-develop or therapize yourself out of the human experience. 

So there I am now I guess, the fatally flawed main character of my own life. As TikTok recommends, I’m trying to find ways to romanticize my supremely unglamour faults. I’m still hopeful that as my own plot thickens I’ll get clarity and peace, not so much by striving and understanding but by radically letting whatever needs to be felt, unfold.

Mad Love