The Pendulum

Life is full of truisms, universal truths; things that we all observe and notice. Often, things come full circle. They swing. It's an age-old piece of wisdom, that to do wrong by someone is digging two graves, one for you and one for them. Or put more bluntly, things come back to bite you in the ass. Good things also work this way. Pay it forward. Reap what you sow. These proverbial bits of wisdom are no accident. Life is phasic, it's littered with sagas or stages. Most people go through similar stages in life. We can live vicariously through each other indeed. We recognize epochs in our own life and we recognize them in society. You often see this with parents and their children. In my own life, my father was voted "most attractive" in high school. He taught me how to weightlift when I was little. He developed an incurable disease. Years later I was also given the same superlative, I taught others how to weightlift, and I developed the same incurable disease. Call it biology, call it coincidence. It's all those things, but at a deeper, conceptual level there is a wave-like property to time. Alex Atala, the famous Brazilian Chef calls it "The Circle". I call it, The Pendulum. 

Fashion is the obvious example of a concept that works through time like a pendulum. Think high wasted shorts for women or long hair for men. 1960's and 1970's concepts coming back in the 2020's. But what is it about humans that we live in a state of pendulum swings, some subtle, some drastic? Why does it skip some generations and not others. Why do some things swing and others stay stagnant? I want to explore this line of thinking in three categories where I've noticed rather obvious candidates for pendulum activity, Economics and Politics, Technology, and Human Interaction. 

Economics and Politics

In the last 10 years or so, America has seen a real shift in political and economic sentiment, but I'd argue that it isn't novel, it's been seen before. The most recent example was the Reddit blitz on the market with Wall Street Bets. In this strange example you saw a group of young individuals, most of which are conservative politically (the symbol for their thread is a cartoon Trump) going after Hedge Funds with a short squeeze scheme. There was a distinct anti-Wall Street sentiment behind the movement, from conservatives, against what would have traditionally been considered a "conservative institution" just 20 years prior. But Donald Trump changed all that. Hedge Funds, Investment Bankers, and Wall Street are now synonymous with powerful liberal elites, because action has proven that to be true. Their donations to movements like Black Lives Matter, political campaigns like Bloomberg and Biden, and exclusive recruiting from highly liberal universities provide a clear track record for this appropriate analysis. 

Let's take a step back and analyze the larger economic and political landscape, to understand this pendulum swing and where we may see things continue to swing. The Republican party was founded by abolitionists. Abraham Lincoln was their first president. Republicans were The Union. Ulysses S Grant followed Lincoln not long after. Over time, Republicans became institutionalized, think about Presidents like Taft, Harding and Coolidge. There was heavy association with big business. The Democrats forged their path at this time through the platform of worker's rights, unions, civil rights, and social programs. Finally, Republicans morphed into the Nixon's and the Bush's. Heavily aligned with investment bankers, Wall Street and institutions. It was during this era that Occupy Wall Street occurred, a liberal movement (different than Wall Street Bets, a conservative movement?) Yes, there was brief interruption by a true conservative, Reagan, and the truth of his conservatism and popularity showed in the election results. Reagan won the election against Carter taking 489 electoral votes, the highest ever won by a non-sitting president. It was a landslide. Then something happened in the early to mid 2000's. The pendulum swung. The products of such manifested themselves in the 2016 election when Donald Trump handedly won states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio where democrats once had strongholds. Trump's administration passed Federal Parental Leave. He passed Prison Reform legislation. He had dozens of enormous rally's in steel and coal states. Yet he received almost no support from big business, institutions, Wall Street, or Ivy League educated individuals. A complete flip flop. Nowadays, the Republican Party is headed by a National Conservatism agenda called America First. In fact, one of the speakers at a domestic National Conservatism conference was Peter Thiel, a billionaire investor, former Founder and CEO of PayPal, and although unimportant in the grand scheme of things, important for this conversation, homosexual. This National Conservatism holds traditionally conservative values at its core like peace through strength, closed borders, low taxes and regulation, maximal freedom and liberty, emphasis on the bill of rights, and constitutionalism in law. But, it now garners the support of traditional Democrats because it enforces principles such as Made in America, energy independence, anti-trust, and opposition to institutionalization, discrimination, and prejudice. It is the most comprehensive form of conservatism ever crafted by a modern nation. On the other hand, we have the left. What started as a party of founders like Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, who fought for Democracy and Freedom, morphed into a party of socialism with presidents like Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Carter and Clinton. The principles once supported by Democrats were adopted by Republicans when they split in the mid 1800's (hence the Tea Party). Although the early Democrats played an important role with regards to individual liberties and civil rights, they've become a party dominated by racists, communists, and totalitarians. They want to defund the police, remove the filibuster, pack the courts, nationalize health care, open the borders, outsource energy and manufacturing abroad, pass greater legislation as it pertains to affirmative action and "equity", remove school choice, indoctrinate the public with critical race theory, and "fundamentally change America" (Obama, circa 2008, as stated in his acceptance speech). The modern democratic party supports "democratic socialism", think AOC and Bernie Sanders. 

Eric Weinstein put it best in his recent appearance on the Glenn Beck show. He said we are currently faced with a bifurcation of the American public. There's two different camps, and we can think of them like 'stans (Uzbekistan or something of the sort). There's Magastan and Wokestan. That's the hard right and hard left. In the Magastan corner stands the Proud Boys and QAnon. In the Wokestan corner stands BLM and ANTIFA. They are staring each other down like the USA and USSR and we're days away from the Cuban Missile Crisis. Where does the "moderate center" fit into this? They are the shrinking kleptocratic rule. They are Pelosi, Schumer, McConnel, Graham, beholden to deep interest groups, grasping at power and institutionalization, controlling the two major parties but with a grip that weakens by the day. But here is the interesting part. Who is metaphorically stepping on their grip from either side? On the right you have Republican's like Tom Cotton, Ron Desantis, Kristi Noem, Madison Cawthorne, and Dan Crenshaw who are heavily conservative with political backing from highly intelligent pundits like Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens. On the left you have AOC, Rashida Talib, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris. They collectively control a dementia-laden puppet of a president who by most rational observation, is one step away from having zero mental faculties left in his possession. 

How did this happen? How did the pendulum swing for a party that started with America's founders to a party now controlled by Socialists? How did a party once deeply aligned with institutions win a recent election by turning blue states, red? I would argue two things happened that caused the Pendulum to swing. First, power breeds institutionalization. Once a party, individual or nation, obtains power, they will hold onto it until their dying breath. Power is comfort. It's freedom. It's capability. The only problem is that it's for the select few. This occurred with the Republican "do-nothing presidents" of the late 1800's, early 1900's and was broken by the two World Wars and Great Depression. It occurred again under the Bush, Clinton, Obama years and was broken again by Trump. Trump's slogan "drain the swamp" was the very objection to this state of ultimate power that Obama cemented during his 8-year tenure. Second, as the great John Dalberg-Acton so brilliantly stated, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This is a truism as fundamental as the Pendulum itself. It's why extremism is born. Extremism is the byproduct of power. It's the militant mindset that collectivizes and attempts to topple current power structures to implement their own. 

Technology

Boom and Bust. This may seem like an economic concept but you can actually look at it quite nicely through the lens of technology. And what it showcases is that technology, perhaps industry in general, has a pendulum-like behavioral pattern that follows a similar mental model to what we've discovered about power and consolidation. Let me explain. In Zero to One, Peter Thiel astutely analyzes this very technological pattern. From about 1969 to 1989 the computer age began and it was tightly managed and monopolized by a few big giants, the Federal Government (NASA, Military, Education), IBM, and Intel. From 1999-2003 the internet age began and it busted the consolidation wide open. It became anarchist and decentralized. Things slowly consolidated again as the big companies bought the smaller ones, some survived and most didn't. In 2016 we saw the tech giants essentially consolidated to the following: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook. There were a few other big players like Twitter, but essentially an oligopoly had formed. The booming economy under Trump, followed by COVID and the rise of retail investment through platforms like Robinhood, have uncovered yet another bust, perhaps still in its infantile stage. For example, you have major disrupters to AWS's monopoly, like Snowflake. You have a major competitor to Facebook and Twitter in the form of Parlor. You have huge numbers of SPACs funding start ups that seek to upset the way of things and yet again we see hints of the internet going rogue with the previously discussed Wall Street Bets movement, which analogized an anti-Wall Street sentiment but even more profoundly, a funnel of accessible money that was a sleeping giant, big enough to crush hedge funds. That money could be, and is, capable of funding new market entries. There's an undercurrent in 2021 that has been building and forming a sizeable wave. The endless reinventing of mediocre social media ploys, like Vine becoming Tik Tok then becoming Reel, is being exposed. Interestingly enough, young people are getting off some forms of social media. Half of everyone I know isn't active on Facebook or Twitter. They use Instagram in ways they're upset about, and constantly claim to be sad because of it. I think the next exodus will be from there. But what will succeed it? I don't know. 

We can take this technology conversation in a slightly different direction as well. Look at what's been going on in recent years with Cryptocurrency. Why is crypto so popular right now? Perhaps it is because of that same undercurrent we spoke of - the desire for decentralization and the busting up of institutionalization. Cryptocurrency is libertarian. Sure the discussion around crypto by some is that we may finally have one world currency, but the likelihood of that is slim to none. The world can't even agree on basic civil liberties, let alone economic systems, and smaller still, currency. The more pertinent conversation to have around crypto is how it is freeing. It busts the doors wide open on the gatekeepers of financial access. It removes the need for Federal Reserves and inflationary controls. It fundamentally eliminates the need for middle men. And it throws a wrench into banking, investment and allocation of resources. Based on the topics discussed in the last 1000 words or so, it's no surprise that the affability of cryptocurrency is high right now. There is an conceptual antithesis, although not particularly intuitive, to cryptocurrency, and that is Artificial Intelligence. If Crypto is libertarian, AI is communist. Here's how we can prove it. Crypto knows nothing about you. It doesn't need to. AI knows everything about you. That's the whole point. Here's a less theoretical proof: China loves AI. They hate Crypto. The pushback against AI seems like a Luddite movement to some, but to others it's founded in reality. We must be very, very careful with how much freedom we extend to our AI systems, how much we're willing to allow technology to track. The rise of AI infrastructure does not signal a bust-quality of any particular industry, it instead screams of consolidation. It's hard to determine whether or not it's particularly "popular" right now, but I will provide one final postulate: Elon Musk is pro crypto and weary of AI. He has disagreed vehemently with Mark Zuckerberg, who is pro AI and unsupportive of crypto. Elon Musk is a titan of busting up consolidation. PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla were all disrupters in their own right, so it's no wonder he's interested in crypto. While Facebook may once have started as a disrupter, it's quickly become part of the oligopoly, gobbling up smaller companies along the way. Mr. Zuckerberg himself has not diversified his interests as Musk has. In fact he's doubled down on that consolidated quasi-monopoly. It's no wonder he's a fan of AI and not of crypto. What was that quote from Jimmy Hoffa? Right, "power leads to more power." 

Psychology and Human Interaction

In the last few years I've seen some really interesting things. I've experienced vicarious living. I've observed myself deeply empathetic to the happenings of others. And I've watched as my friends and family's lives have displayed pattern recognition that only I could relate to. I've lived the Pendulum. I want to explore some of these ideas now as I think human psychology, behavior and interaction are the fundamentals for the Pendulum-nature of life, and in my short time on Earth I've been able to garner some wisdom through a few meaningful examples of this. 

Relationships are in essence the output of cognitive input, through which the medium is life. Friendships, family, and sexual relationships all contain deep patterns. They're like snowflakes, each one is artistically unique, yet the chemical composition is the same.  As I started my career in 2018 Daniel was completing his master's degree. He was privy to my working conditions, and lack of balance, as well as to the self-doubt that I expressed in that first year or two. He'd lecture me on working less, on the finite nature of a job, and he'd encourage more confidence out of me in my journey and less permanence applied from me to my decisions. It was helpful, and I look back on those conversations with fondness. It's important to have friends who will give you the truth, and tell you you're being extreme or unreasonable. In 2020-2021, the pendulum swung for me and Daniel. It was his first year in his career and I found myself lecturing the very same principles to him that he'd once said to me. I'd remind him that working 60 hours a week wasn't sustainable. I'd reassure him that we had plenty of life ahead to make changes and that we could have dynamic experiences. 

While I was working so hard for those first few years out of college I reflected heavily on my long-term relationship with Sam. I tried, fundamentally, to understand what she'd gone through in ending our relationship. I tried, with such rigor and fervor that I induced insomnia, to rationalize the relationship's end. I'd admittedly concluded on marrying her and whether that sounds naïve and ignorant now, I don't care, it's the truth. But the other truth is that no matter how hard I tried, and no matter how many others around me like Daniel, Connor, Zach, Mom, and Dad explained similar experiences they'd had, I couldn't fully understand it until I repeated it. In 2021, the Pendulum swung, and I found myself repeating it. If you can imagine, it was actually a sort of three-dimensional pendulum in which case there was conceptual overlap with my relationship with Sam but also with Daniel's relationship with Cynthia. What Sam did to me, I did to Taylor. Simultaneously, what I did to Taylor, was what Daniel did to Cynthia. Essentially, Sam ended things with me because of incompatibility and a lack of what he and I refer to as "the spark". I did the same, for the same reason. Daniel did the same, for the same reason. And going back to the snowflake analogy, the artistic, deeply personal, and phenotypical appearance of each of the three aforementioned relationships were unique, the chemical composition was the same. It was a real eye opener, to see myself living out The Pendulum, and where my place in all of it was. 

My final example is yet another relationship. This time instead of a friend or sexual partner, it's about my brother. In college I was lost. In fact, I didn't find myself until some time after my surgery, around age 24. I'm still finding myself in all honestly, but at least now I've got a compass and a map. Those years had some darkness to them. Episodes of anxiety and mindless wandering. Things drastically improved when I found communities like my Case Competition Team, my swim coach crew and my two roommates. But the first 2.5 years were hard, not to mention containing the emotional drain of repeated relationship terminations and reformations. I'm now seeing the same thing occurring with my younger brother. He's expressed feelings of being lost, of not having direction, and of being unable to see the future clearly. He's expressed self doubt, questions about his capability, and his choices. He's the same age as I was when that happened to me. The pendulum has swung. I have some wisdom now, born of hardship, experience, success and failure. And I'm doing my best to impress it on him. I have two pieces of advice. One, find communities. Find deep friendships, colleagues, coworkers and acquaintances. As Jordan Peterson accurately states, humans outsource the problem of sanity to the larger group. Find a relationship or two. A female, whom you very much want to impress and bring pride to, can be a massive motivator for action and performance, as well as being a beacon of light in a dark ocean, even if the bulb burns and you have to replace it with a longer lasting, brighter and more sustainable bulb a while later. Two, absorb knowledge and try hard. Life is about choices. The problem is that there are so damn many choices. But the solution; choose. Choose at least one and run with it. See what happens. You may succeed, you may fail. You may strike out, you may hit a home run. You may be bored, you may be excited. But every choice, good or bad brings you closer to obtaining that map and that compass. Because the reality is you have to draw the map, and forge the compass out of the elements of the Earth. No one gives it to you, but once you have it, you're infinitely more prepared for the future, and your choices will improve. One day you'll wake up and realize you're on your way, a path that you deem to be the right one. And just as that happens, the Pendulum will swing.