Walking the Great Road with Friends

The economist Albert Hirschman once said of developing economies that "all growth is unbalanced growth" and that they should concentrate their limited resources into developing a few key sectors at the expense of others. By doing so, he argued that the short term chaos and exacerbation of inequalities would eventually smooth itself out across the economy through positive spillover effects where growth in the economy's key sectors would stimulate growth in others.

It struck me recently that a young man is literally and figuratively a developing economy: at any point in time, one or more sectors of your life are in poverty and you need to decide how to allocate your limited resources to plug the holes in the sinking ship. Like Venezuela, your debt levels are soaring from student loans. Like Greece in 2008 you have no savings, making you vulnerable to downturns in the global economy. And environmental shocks or Black Swan events threaten to send you into depressions that destroy your productive capacity.

While Hirschman's advice may work for developing economies, I don't think it applies to a young man's life. The trap I fell into repeatedly during my early 20s was abandoning every other interest I had to focus on a single specific thing. In secondary school, it was going to the gym at the expense of grades and social life. In university I spent almost the entire the time locked away inside my room studying instead of joining social clubs, partying or making friends. Then after university it was coding, while other areas of my life fell into disarray.

I've taken to calling that period of my life my “Great Leap Forward” in reference to Chairman Mao’s radical campaign in the '50s and '60s to revolutionise the Chinese economy. Just as Mao's blind idealism drove up China's industrial output at the cost of disastrous nationwide famines, so did my ascetic daily routines help me find a career I'm passionate about, but at the expense of having no deep or meaningful friendships with people in real life.

This is by far my biggest mistake and regret in life - chasing something I wanted by withdrawing from social life to spend as much time as possible working alone. And I suspect that many of the men reading this can relate. The idea of isolating yourself from the world for six months to undergo some sort of self-imposed rite of passage appeals to that Mao-like revolutionary fervor in our genes to achieve our goals through sheer force of will and self-destruct in the process.

But isn't the expression of talent, even reasoning itself fundamentally social?¹ Look back through history at how many of humanity's greatest intellectual and creative achievements were the products of so-called collaborative circles like the Inklings, the Lunar Society or the Vienna Circle.² Isolating yourself and expecting to reach your potential is like trying to lift yourself off the ground by pulling on your own hair.³

I feel blessed to have finally found people online scattered across the globe who love me for my authentic self rather than the character I play in real life, brothers with whom I’m comfortable sharing my wildest, most tentatively held ideas, friends who've funded my speculative projects despite having never met me and who lift me back up when I fall flat on my face.

The unpayable debt I owe them is for their sheer encouragement.⁴ Because while I might be able to regurgitate some reasons why optimism is rational when I feel hopeless or rattle off a few motivational quotes when I’m feeling depressed, it’s only when I’m with close friends that I can achieve truly delusional levels of self-belief and experience those spirals of escalating mania as we talk away into the night about our niche obsessions.

To anyone struggling to find their people, I hope you find your way.

We Walk On the Great Road (1962)⁵

An excerpt from a Chinese patriotic song published in 1962, the end of Mao’s Great Leap Forward. The “Great Road” symbolises China’s future road to development. Cast in their historical context, the lyrics are bittersweet; the dreams of China’s “infinitely brilliant” future stood in stark contrast to the horrors endured during the deadliest famine in human history.

Our friends are all over the world,
Our songs are heard in all directions.
The revolution’s storm sweeps far and wide,
Sending ghosts and demons to hide.

March on! March on!
The revolution’s force cannot be stalled,
March on! March on!
To victory’s call we’re all enthralled.

Our road is endlessly broad,
Our future is infinitely brilliant.
We give ourselves to this grand cause,
With boundless joy and noble applause.

March on! March on!
The revolution’s force cannot be stalled,
March on! March on!
To victory’s call we’re all enthralled.

Thanks to Alexey for his feedback.

1. See the The Enigma of Reason.

2. See Collaborative Circles and Powers of Two.

3. Coincidentally I first heard this phrase in Ye Wenjie's criticism of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution in The Three Body Problem."人类真正的道德自觉是不可能的，就像他们不可能拔着自己的头发离开大地。要做到这一点，只有借助于人类之外的力量". “True moral self-consciousness in humanity is impossible, just like they cannot lift themselves off the ground by pulling on their own hair. To achieve this, they must rely on forces beyond humanity.”

4. J.R.R. Tolkien about C. S. Lewis: “The unpayable debt I owe to him was not influence as it is usually understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my stuff could be more than a private hobby”

5. On the Great Road