Show me your data!
Seneca, Marcus, Byung-Chul, & Thee
“I shall learn what I do not yet know.” — Marcus Aurelius
“No one more foolish than one who stops learning” — Seneca
Let’s keep learning:
I was talking to a woman in a grocery store coffee shop the other day because she was reading a novel from 2023 that I’d never heard of. We talked about Stoicism and how the convos all just call back to the ancients. We talked about how dumb that is. Stoicism is a living, breathing philosophy that applies to us now. So here’s my conclusion:
Stoic Running needs to be a book.
This will be a long-form, modern meditation on and contribution to the philosophy that seems so grounding in our modern world.
If you’d like to support it, please consider changing your subscription from “free” to “paid” for a month or two. Turn it off when you’ve donated as much as you want.
I think I need about $8K to do this. That means that if each subscriber donated $7.80, or a month or two of support, I could get there.
Thank you to everyone who’s contributed so far!
When I was very young there was still an East Berlin. An entire city carved out of another city from which you could not leave except by clever contraption or by making a run for it and probably being shot.
There was an East Germany, too. An entire country my 5 year old self knew very little about except the fact that the people, like their East Berlin cousins, were pretty much trapped inside. I used to consider how the East Germans really had nothing to themselves except the 6 inches inside their skulls. That was sacrosanct; no one could get to it.
And then the Wall came down. David Hasselhoff danced in a nerdy jacket, everyone celebrated, and then we all learned about the Stasi.
Really and truly: the East Germans had only had the 6 inches inside their skulls to call their own. Everyone had been an informant. Informants on informants. Nothing created and nothing gained; just a country-sized circle of people whispering about each other.
I filed that away in my mind as a lesson and then the internet came. The concept of open source. The social web. Then the mobile web. The concrete tangible social networks built on the gossamer transparent threads of actual relationships, all in our pockets, all the time.
These new entities have turned out to reward personal transparency. The more you point out what builds you, the more others would want to know about you. So you point out more and more. Disclosing everything about how you’re built in order to help yourself and your network. But it doesn’t end there. Like the Stasi, the companies broadcasting you are also watching. This is what German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han* calls the Society of Exhibition. But like the promise of a centrally planned paradise, constant disclosure is a trap. It doesn’t set you free; it walls you inside.
I have always somewhat celebrated what has happened in the US as a result of the internet and performative transparency. It’s proof that we’re so innocent, so naive, that we have never had to worry about the consequences of our Society of Exhibition.
So perhaps now it is time to learn our lessons. From Byung-Chul Han. From the East Germans. From the companies themselves, as they move through data leaks and litigation. From Marcus Aurelius and Seneca.
Running without data can be a start to learning. Without data, you lack the massive internet stage of exhibition. Without the network’s validation and dopamine bump of visibility, you must grow the inner life. Because let’s be honest, running is boring and running for years through the ups and downs of life can be intensely repetitive.
But in boredom there is also sublimity. In privacy there is freedom. By performing only for yourself or for people who are actually present, you learn. And learning is what we’re here for. Learning is one of the few things that makes life worth living.
The interior life is a gift that we give to the data companies who track us. But do they deserve it? No, they do not. Put down your phone. Leave Strava at home or in your car. Start with one no-data run per week. Per month. Per race training schedule. But start. Build your interior life. Tune into the 6 inches inside your skull. Go run.
*I learned about Han’s work from designer Ken Sakata in a recent post from Ken on his substack, Ken Sakata
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