Beware of hidden cultures
Dear Gup and Dabbles,
I read this article the other day about young women who feel FOMO on going to the Hamptons because of all the social media content from both influencers and “normal” people. They film their trips there and make it seem fun and glamorous which of course, makes other people want to go there and they spend thousands of dollars for something that was previously reserved for the very wealthy (or perhaps, someone of more modest means who saved for a splurge).
My first thought was, “if you get influenced by this crap, you must be pretty shallow.”
My second thought was, “hmm, I’ve gone out of my way to sign up for maybe a hundred credit cards because of points bloggers who made me want to fly first class for free.”
My third thought was, “am I actually just as gullible as these Hampton’s people?”
Then I thought I should write a letter to you both to work out my thoughts on this, because the world is going to try to influence you, and I want you to be smart about what you let yourself be influenced by.
Let’s start with my biggest fear: that you fall into the wrong crowd and start doing things that can hurt you.
Drugs come to mind. If you run with a crowd that normalizes that behavior, I worry that you’ll take something that will kill you. It may seem cheesy or something that doesn’t really apply to people who grew up in middle to upper-middle class families.
I read an article about a few normal professional types in New York who ordered delivery cocaine (I guess in NYC you can get anything delivered…) and died because the cocaine was laced with fentanyl.
Apparently cocaine is a somewhat normal part of high-achiever culture in NYC. I’m sure when these victims were in high school they didn’t envision dying of an overdose or making cocaine a part of their lives. But maintaining a high stress, high pressure career led them to believe they needed drugs. And maybe they did. One of the guys in the article was a Wall Street trader who probably worked 100-hour weeks. I don’t know how you do that without some kind of drug.
But this is where I hope you take some of my fatherly advice. If you are pursuing something that requires you to take drugs, or really, do anything that is so obviously risky to your health or life, you should re-evaluate your goals.
This seems obvious but I imagine it’s easier said than done. If you dreamed of becoming a top tier New York lawyer or investment banker or [insert other dream job] and you actually got there, you would probably go to great lengths to not lose it. Giving up something you worked hard for and that you love will make you do crazy things, like starting a cocaine habit.
Avoiding these types of tragic goals is probably the preferred strategy. If someone told these guys they’d have to do cocaine to get their dream jobs while they were kids, they probably would have done something else.
But you’ll inevitably be in a position where you might have to give up on something that’s become a part of your identity, your self-image. That’s when it’d be hard to walk away and you might try negotiating with yourself. “Well, if I can just get through this tough period at work, I’ll stop the drugs and get healthy and really make some changes.”
But it will never happen.
I don’t have a good solution or technique for walking away from a part of yourself, but there is a lot of ancient wisdom about attachment and how holding onto things too tightly can corrupt you. You basically get greedy and cling to what you have.
You could be greedy in the traditional, material sense. For many, a little coke is a small price to pay to live in a nice apartment in Manhattan.
Or you might be greedy for a vision of yourself as someone who will do anything it takes to do good in the world. One of the women in that article was a social worker who counseled cancer patients. She witnessed a lot of suffering and did her best to help, but perhaps to sustain this career (and therefore her self-image), she needed drugs to help manage the emotional energy expenditure.
Now to be fair, I’m guessing most social workers and Wall St. traders don’t do cocaine (though I’m less confident about the latter), but the slightly more normalized culture of cocaine use in NYC made it easier for the young people in those articles to feel okay about trying it, which of course led to tragedy.
I went on a bit of a tangent with this whole cocaine thing, considering I opened the letter about some silly Hamptons influencers. The chances of either of you dying via fentanyl laced drugs is pretty low, statistically speaking. It’s just my dad brain that watches out for these very overt threats.
But it’s not as much of a tangent as it may seem. The NYC cocaine story is about how how an extreme behavior can become normalized in the culture, occasionally leading to tragic outcomes.
The upside is that it’s observable, so you can avoid the threat. You know drugs can kill you, so don’t do drugs and don’t pursue things that would subtly pressure you to do drugs.
But there are lots of hidden cultural pressures that are much harder to detect that are also harmful to your well-being. They just shape you without you knowing it. It’s like having poor eating habits. No single day of bad eating really matters that much, but a decade of it can lead to health problems that you just accept as normal. You didn’t even notice you were making yourself sick.
Your aunt Chloe came to visit us here in Arlington, VA this week. She has lived in Portland almost her entire life, and she made a comment at your [Gup’s] pre-school graduation and birthday party that all the parents were extremely put together, organized, and wealthy. This was in contrast to Portland where the population basically self-selected for it’s creative/slightly slacker ethos.
Her comment made me feel a little proud to live here. But what she doesn’t observe is that the DC crowd, on average, are very career focused, stressed, and a bit trapped by upper middle class golden handcuffs.
I asked some of the dads from your pre-school at a happy hour the following question: if all careers paid the same, what would you choose to do?
No one chose their current career.
But lots of people don’t like their careers. What was interesting is that none of them mentioned making any serious efforts to change it. They basically accepted that they needed to make a certain (high) amount of a money, make sure their kids go to excellent schools, and buy a nice house in a reputable neighborhood. Their values were shaped by the DC culture, which prioritizes career success above all else. Or, more accurately, a successful career is a minimum requirement to be here.
What happened to my DC parent friends is just the more, subtle, long term version of what’s happening with those women who have FOMO onHamptons trips. You start wanting and believing what your peers (or perceived peers) want and believe, even if you don’t actually want or believe those things.
You don’t have to be particularly gullible, it’s just the way humans are wired.
But you are my daughters, and naturally I want you to be happier and more fulfilled than the average human, so I want you to become cautious observers of the cultures you participate in. If you get good at observing the values underlying the culture and groups you are a part of, you can make a conscious decision about whether to adopt or reject them.
Your mom and I are wrestling with the cultural values we want to accept or reject right now. We’ve seen the good and the bad of our zip code, and on the surface, it’s mostly good. But something keeps calling us elsewhere and it’s really hard to pinpoint.
We like people with ambition so DC seems like a good place to be but we also like people who have unique ambitions, so Portland seems better for that. We also like good coffee and Portland is way better for that but DC also has all the jobs while Portland seems to get by on part time barista work and dreams.
We haven’t reached any decisions which is why we’re still here in the DC area, but I feel good about noticing the tension and contradictions in our values. That’s the skill I want you both to cultivate: to identify the values of the cultures you’re in and the feelings you have about them.
And to say no to drugs, and not get in credit card debt to go to the Hamptons.
But mostly the values thing.
Love,
Dad