Are You Serious?

Newsletter essay, January 8, 2023. By Visakan Veerasamy.

Key Takeaways

• Serious does not mean solemn. It means dynamic persistence in meaningful work — commitment over decades, playful engagement with the craft, preparation by studying predecessors’ failures, and resilience during hardship.
• It can only be verified over time, and specifically during difficulty. That is why claims of seriousness are cheap and evidence of it is expensive.
• Cynicism about seriousness is rational, given how much of it is performed — and Veerasamy grants this rather than arguing around it, which is what makes the piece credible.
• “Seriousness is love and curiosity expressed earnestly.”
• “We crush the caterpillars and complain there are so few butterflies.”
• “Simple doesn’t mean easy. Bullshit is easier.”
• The prescription is to encourage seriousness rather than demand it.

Connections

• The definitional source for Rebuilding a Serious Society and the best of that draft’s six sources — it is the only one that defines the term rather than assuming it.
• The caterpillar line is the draft’s thesis in miniature: the complaint about a shortage of serious people is usually made by the same culture that punishes the early, awkward stages of becoming one.
• Against the Alex Karp “likability is a jail” material on Contrarian Conformity: both describe institutions that select against the behavior they claim to want.