Tuning In
“In a space without direction it is possible to end a course of action at any time, and to begin a new one instead. Given numerous possibilities for further connections, completion does not make a lot of sense”
— Byung-Chul Han, The Scent of Time
Last week, Lola and I took a short trip to Washington, DC. It’s becoming a bit of an annual pilgrimage, a few days in which she’s immersed in dreams of the future: interning on the Hill, attending Georgetown Law, maybe even running for office.
This year, instead of the green expanse of the National Mall, we were greeted by an interminable fence covered in privacy screens, reminding us of the nation’s 250th birthday. The fence enclosed The Great American State Fair, a half-hearted attempt at pageantry aimed at stroking one man’s ego rather than celebrating the citizenry. I’ll spare you the details—the mainstream media has, rather ably, pilloried this sad affair. Though I really loved this 1st-person account on Bluesky from GWU professor Dave Karpf.
Lola and I encountered the State Fair as an inconvenience. Instead of being able to quickly walk from one Smithsonian to another on the other side of the Mall, we had to walk around the Mall or go through security checkpoints to cross through the fencing. Neither is something one wants to do in the swampy DC heat.
Thinking back on our brief encounter with this “spectacle,” I’m reminded—as I’ve often been lately—of the question Mark Fisher poses early in Capitalist Realism: “How long can a culture survive without the new?” The Great American State Fair is nothing new. Nor is it a celebration of anything old. It’s a lifeless copy of an unending present.
An unending present—unmoored from past lessons, untethered from potential—is a good way to describe how many of us work today. The productivity hacks and automations and AI-assisted shortcuts thrust upon us keep us churning away at the same stuff day after day, rather than aiding our realization of something new. There is a better way.
On the east side of the Mall, the “fair” morphed into a World Cup viewing area. In one sense, the World Cup defined this brief visit to the capital as much or more than the 250th. While there are always plenty of international and immigrant visitors in DC, they’re often hard to spot unless you catch a few words in a foreign language or pick up a distinct accent. This year, colorful jerseys—often donned by whole families—made the sidewalks a rainbow of national pride. I am not a fan of soccer (to say the least), but even I was buoyed by the general atmosphere the World Cup added to our visit.
Tuning in
Live sports are a fascinating part of the media business. Broadcast, cable, and streaming channels compete ferociously for rights to air games. Sporting events are rare opportunities to gain a bit of appointment viewing for a media company. Fans actually want to tune in, which means far more valuable advertising spots.
Tuning in also creates an unusual period of shared culture among fans. From within that pocket of mutual surprise, something new emerges. Even in the slog of a 162-game baseball season or the routine of the weekly NFL schedule, moments of possibility break through. These moments are fleeting, with minimal substance, but still point us back to the hope that tomorrow may be different from today. We welcome their surprises and delight in their uncertainty; the shared anticipation draws us into something like community, however fleeting.
Surprise and uncertainty are touchy subjects in the 21st-century economy. On one hand, we valorize the breakthrough innovation or the unexpected bestselling book. One the other, our technology, management theory, and politics are in deep on the project of ensuring there are no surprises. Surprises are inefficient. Uncertainty resists planning. The things we value—literally—rely on and help produce conformity.
The World Cup, like all widely televised sports events, exists within the culture industry. The event is designed to produce predictable demand for consumer goods within a predictable cultural market. And yet, like all widely televised sports events (excepting scripted sports entertainment like pro wrestling), it still leaves the door open to drama, to irony, to the unprecedented accomplishment. Sports often remind us that possibilities exist outside the familiar.
Part of the bleakness of the Great American State Fair was how, regardless of the content of individual exhibitions, each state's display was hidden inside bland tenting designed to resemble (in theory) the limestone and granite Greek Revival buildings of the capital city. Presumably, the exhibitions and concessions were concealed behind this facade to make it possible to air-condition the area or protect displays from rogue thunderstorms. But the effect was to hide the very thing that a “fair of states” would seem designed to showcase: the great cultural diversity of our fifty states. Even the flags marking each state's area were uniform, pennants featuring the postal abbreviations of states in alternating color schemes.
Everything about the event seemed carefully designed to foreclose on surprises. It was a real I see what you're trying to do here, and it's not working kind of experience.
Connecting to
One might expect that a Great American State Fair would have a strong connection to the past. After all, that’s the operative slogan—Make America Great Again—and the euphemistic valor of “heritage.” But there was no discernible connection to the past. Nor was there a credible connection to a future. The event, in my brief experience of it and in media accounts, seems to have no anchor to time at all.
If the World Cup is an illustration of the potential sizzle of surprise and its influence, then an example of a celebration of sorts acting as an anchor is a project by Roman Mars (99% Invisible) and the BBC called “A History of the United States in 100 Objects.” Entries in the series have included the 60-degree screw, the Civil War-era pension files, the Blue Black Speller, Lowe’s gas bag, and plenty more to go. These stories are simply produced, just Mars and an expert guest, yet they are rich and meaningful. A few moments brought tears to my eyes.
Yes, these stories are history. But it’s not history alone that provides the needed anchor. It’s not facts or information that create a meaningful connection to the past.
No, it’s the emotional, cultural, and social heft of these stories. Their gravitational pull draws us into the possibilities, the potential for surprise, that the stories’ subjects were alive to in their own present. The future is just as potent in these historical vignettes as the past.
Giving way
Philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that fundamental to the feeling of hecticness and acceleration in our current age is a directionlessness of time. Instead of moving from the past through the present to an unknown future, the continuity of time disintegrates. Life becomes a dense collection of events rather than a narrative with order, tension, and the hope of a conclusion.
“Myth once gave way to history,” he writes. “Now, history gives way to information.” Information, rather than experience or knowledge, is detached from time and lacks a coherent narrative. The Great American State Fair is awash in information but devoid of narrative. The World Cup contains plenty of information, but the game clock, expert commentary, and fandom lend it narrative and direction. “A History of the United States in 100 Objects” contains information, but its emotional gravitation gives the series deep meaning. Or as Han might say, the series invites us to linger.
What’s more, “A History of the United States in 100 Objects” is a commitment. New episodes come out every Friday, which means that the series will run for just under two years. And while it could seem like a two-year commitment is a bet on the future being the same as the present, I think it’s more accurate to see it as an investment in future surprises. It’s a commitment to lingering, to experiencing the unexpected possibilities that arise from curiosity and rigor.
In our present age, we tend to shy away from commitments like this. What might we miss out on? What new opportunities will present themselves? Why not A History of the World in 50 Objects? Or 25 Objects? Or hell, 10 Objects? Get it “done” and move on to the next project.
More and new seem to present themselves as possibilities when, really, they are more often dead-end cycles that do nothing to satisfy us. “Fulfillment and meaning cannot be explained on quantitative grounds,” explains Han.
Han encourages us to reclaim the vita contemplativa—the contemplative life, a life of lingering and meaning-making, a life that makes sense of itself in the in-between.
I encourage us to explore the labor contemplativus, too—contemplative work, work that draws us into lingering and meaning-making, work that makes sense of itself in the in-between. What would you need to change about the way you work or how you structure your business to create the space and time to linger? How could you tune yourself and your work toward capacious potential and away from the onslaught of options on offer any given day?
I’ll give the last word to Han:
“…the subject of experience must be open to what is coming, even to the surprises and the unexpected that the future holds. If it is not, the subject freezes, and becomes a labourer, someone who merely works away time, without changing himself.”
Summer Seminar
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Out of Time
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Summer Seminar ✳︎ Out of Time ✳︎
Summer Seminar is back!
Summer Seminar is a chill reading and discussion group where there’s no such thing as being behind and no right answers.
Join me for 8 weeks of speculative fiction and critical (re)thinking. This year, our theme is “Out of Time,” reflecting on time, solitude, and hope. Learn more and register.
