You’re only supposed to care about making money on Substack.
You’re only supposed to write for free and not care about money on Substack because it’s all about the community and putting yourself out there.
You’re Republican. (Evil.)
You’re Democrat. (Lost.)
You’re Progressive. (Soldiers of enlightened truth if you’re from Column A; idiotic, fascistic antisemitic crazies if in Column B.)
You’re either good or bad, right or wrong, happy or sad, on the right side of history or on the wrong side, following the correct tribe or the opposite, etc.
Anyone can see—if you turn your brain back to the “on” position—that this manner of thinking (if “thinking” is really the proper word here) is diabolical, infantile, ineffective, stupid, incurious, unserious, unhelpful and broken.
The simple truth is this: To be human is to be complex. This extends from your thoughts to your ideas to your [sometimes taboo] desires to your needs to your expectations to your political leanings and everything between and under and beyond.
We are in a very dumb cultural moment in America. The notion of having to “pick a side” is not only foolish and toxic, it’s also incredibly damaging. The lying on both political sides has been shocking and infuriating. On one hand we have the malignant narcissism and cheap gaudiness of Donald Trump along with all the spineless pansies on the Republican side who have blindly followed his every word in order to attempt to stay in power and hold onto his stubborn base. On the other hand we have an angry, aggressive, violent, antisemitic, dishonest, hypocritical Progressive wing of the Democratic party which is causing Black, Asian and Hispanic voters to peel off to the Republican party in small but not insignificant droves.
Both sides believe the other is “evil” and “fascistic.” The fact is that we’re in a negative feedback-loop: It takes two to tango, people. Republicans are banning books legally in libraries, etc. Clearly, that is beyond antidemocratic, illiberal and stupid. Hard stop. And yes: You can go back to the 80s and 90s when Republicans were censoring everything in sight. (Also stupid and wrong.) And yet, to anyone with open eyes and any sense of honesty, it’s also clear that this current iteration of censorship most certainly started (around 2013) on the Left, not the Right.
Think about all the cancellations and deplatforming, all the Leftist activist calls for either preventing a book’s publication (which is worse than banning a book from the library because you can’t even access the book at all, even on Amazon), or pressuring stores to remove a book, or else employees at certain publishing houses writing open letters threatening to walk out if a certain book is published. Look at the behavior of say The New York Times circa 2020, the editorial censorship of Conservative views (Tom Cotton, anyone).
My point is that both sides are largely full of shit. Both sides desperately need new leadership, ideally, in my view, younger, more diverse, and more centrist. All races, genders, etc welcome. We’re all sick of ancient white men dominating politics. It’s old: Pun intended.
Ditto with this tired, hackneyed debate I keep seeing via Notes on Substack about whether to make money or not, etc. Look. Here’s the basic, simple reality. Substack allows anyone of any view to write on the platform. This is both good and bad but either way it’s the way it is. (I am all for it. A wide diversity of perspectives is a good thing.) Some newer writers seem to feel angry and/or threatened by more traditionally successful and/or established authors who moved from other platforms to Substack and brought their 10,000 followers, etc.
But the thing is: That’s on YOU. Writing is an art; a craft; a serious creative act. Not everyone, in my opinion, is “a writer.” That sounds baldly pretentious. Maybe it is. I don’t know. What I do know is that serious, innately talented, driven writers write for one deep core reason: They can’t not write. For me it’s never been about community or sharing my ideas or even expressing myself. It’s because I have to. Believe me: I tried many times to leave writing. I couldn’t do it. It’s in my DNA.
And there are new writers on the platform who haven’t ever been published outside of Substack and who just want to express themselves and connect to an online writing community. Write on!!! I think that’s wonderful. Do your thing. Have fun with it. Here’s a shocking truth: Both these types can coexist; it doesn’t have to be one or the other.
If you want to make a living on Substack—like I do—that’s perfectly reasonable. Remember that realistically it’ll likely take five, ten years or more to get there. (There is rarely any overnight magical success, either in traditional or online publishing.) If you have the artistic integrity of Valdimir Nabokov—possible but doubtful—and you absolutely reject the making of money and solely want to write to share your work and connect with others and be part of a community: This is just as awesome. Why not?
But the weirdness, in my view, stems from thinking you have to strangely pick one side or the other here. That’s a false, maladaptive way of thinking about the issue. Instead, like any thriving democracy: Understand that everyone will do things according to their own value structure and ethical agenda. That need not be threatening to anybody. To each their own. If you don’t like someone who you think self-promotes too much or in your opinion is too obsessed with making money: Don’t subscribe to their stack. Better yet: Remove and/or mute and/or block them. (Read: Nazis or extremist progressives chanting ‘from the river to the sea.’) Then go on with your life.
We’ve inherited—from Millennials and Gen-Z a la social media—the false notion that we have to either be A or Z, but never anything in-between. It seems stupidly obvious to me that this IS the problem of our current moment. There’s a saying in Zen Buddhism: Don’t just do something; sit there. You get the jest I’m sure. And yet it’s an axiomatic truism: Often, when we’re highly emotional or psychologically charged, sitting in silent meditation instead of reacting can change your whole perspective, and ultimately your life. In AA we refer to this as “Restraint of tongue and pen.” Pausing. Waiting. Giving distance and breathing space to. Etc.
I’m proposing a new saying for our cultural-historical moment: Don’t just binary; think critically. In other words: Instead of just knee-jerk reacting according to the tired dictates of your “chosen” (is it really chosen?) tribe, instead pause, take a deep breath, bring nuance and complexity into the cognitive equation, and use your critical thinking skills. This requires wild courage, of course, because the emotional-political stakes seem too profoundly, inanely high right now. In our age of Pick-a-Side-ism it can be very hard to push through that fear, face the potential social rejection and pushback, and think for yourself.
But I think we need this right now more than ever. The sides are clearly deranged. Neither political party seems to represent We The People. The incentives are skewed and all wrong. Kids on TikTok are being brainwashed—purposefully or not—and learning to love terrorism. Young people in the modern era have always been critical of Americanism (American “Exceptionalism”) but we’ve reached new and terrifying heights.
Join me in thinking in shades of gray, not black and white. Gray is where humanity has always resided and always will. The Manichean idea of dividing us all into dumb little categories based on race, gender, ethnicity, heritage, historical suffering, etc, only performs a narcissistic divide-and-conquer formula on ourselves. It’s time to wake up and rediscover love for our common man, to realize we’re all citizens of this great and imperfect nation, and to see that only through love of ourselves and one another—as MLK preached—can we find peace.
So far, we are not anywhere near this goal. It starts with self-honesty. It starts with complexity. It starts with thinking.