What pushes back is what keeps us honest.
Hello there,
I've been working on my website these past few weeks, and like many of us nowadays, I'm using AI to support the process. In many ways it's been really helpful, particularly in not getting stuck with writing as much as I once did.
However, I've also noticed that if I'm not careful, AI will endlessly try to please me. It goes along with whatever I'm thinking, generating more and more output. It celebrates my "intellect" and treats every idea as equally valid and important. That kind of agreement feels good initially, but it quickly begins to feel strange. Feedback is the friction that helps me shape my thoughts effectively. Without it, I feel ungrounded.
For most of human history, writing came with a lot of friction. The labor of drafting and editing, the slow process of finding the right words to communicate complex meaning and ideas. This effort has always been part of how we figure out what we want to say.
And the benefit of oppositional forces holds true at every other layer of being human: in order to understand the world and our place in it we actually need some pushback. We do something, and we require a response (positive or negative) in order to adjust ourselves accordingly.
We only need to look at billionaires to get a sense of what it's like to operate in a friction-free world. Their immense wealth absolves them of almost any consequence. As Noah Hawley puts it:
"It's not that the wealthy become evil; it's that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back. When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark."
— Noah Hawley, The Atlantic
Though we may not be billionaires, we're all surrounded by quieter versions of a similar offer of frictionless living: conveniences that promise to reduce stress or effort, and apps that smooth every interaction or need.
But what begins to atrophy in the absence of effort and resistance?
Years ago I read an article about orcas in captivity that stayed with me. Those working in marine parks argued that the orcas were living in stress-free environments: access to food, safety, no predators. Activists retorted that orcas are stressed by these bland environments. In their assessments, orca satisfaction is not found in the absence of stress, but in response to being called by life to utilize the fullness of their being.
"For an orca, an 'easy' life, where there are no challenges and nothing to do but perform tricks, is a stressful one."
— Lori Marino, Aeon
We humans are not so different. On one hand, we rightfully desire access to ease and relaxation. Yet on a deeper level what we also want is the messiness of real contact: relationships with other people and the world, experiences that test our own capacities and limits, and actions with real-enough benefits and consequences to teach us something about ourselves.
If we're lucky, we find this contact in the loving partner who taps their watch and says it's time to be done for the day, the concerned colleague who says "are you sure?", the dear friend who asks for our time and attention when it's inconvenient. Or in the call to share an idea that will take effort to express coherently. Navigating friction and stress is part of what makes life satisfying and meaningful.
My invitation to myself based on all this has been to notice where I'm seeking to remove ever more friction, and then to wonder how that friction might be calling me into something I value — into relationship, into self-understanding, into the work of honest expression.
Where in your life might friction be more useful than it initially feels?
Just easefully enough,
Stephen
