Lighting a candle, instead of cursing the darkness
Let's tell some stories to help us exercise some initiative and agency over our own lives.
Welcome to the The Initiative Podcast.
As a middle-aged American man, one of my biggest complaints about people in my generation and the ones that have followed is that sometime in the past few decades, the message that we are individuals with our own individual agency to shape the world around us has gotten lost.
As a software developer in my day job, within computing culture, I blame Steve Jobs with replacing the homebrew and do-it-yourself ethos of the personal computing era with the appliance model that's become dominant on mobile devices. Jobs believed that he and his designers knew best about how users should compute, and we have the iPhone and its locked down ecosystem as the prime example of what computing is. You don't build apps for yourself (unless you're a professional and ready to run Apple's review gauntlet), you download and use what others have made for you.
Outside of computing, classes that once taught students that they could make something cool and put something original out in the world (music, shop, art) have been demoted in favor of advanced placement courses that are taught to a strict curriculum to give students a well-marked path to getting into the best universities, instead fostering a "must-do" attitude, in place of a "can-do" attitude.
My biggest complaint about our world at large is that too many of us are on auto-pilot - seeking recipes for success in life more so than thinking for ourselves about what kinds of lives we want to live and plotting our own paths to get there. It's hardly a surprise that we are surrounded with dissatisfied people who remain passively annoyed at the world around them. We just finished an election, and we have voters annoyed with the candidates that we have to choose from - the same voters that can't be bothered to vote in primary elections or even be the kind candidate that they wished they saw on a ballot.
As I was complaining to a friend of mine over breakfast this morning, I had a rare moment of self-awareness - I was complaining about passive people without doing a damn thing to be a part of the solution, and instead was just yet another bitchy member of the peanut gallery. I was committing the exact same sin that I was railing against. I was cursing the darkness instead of lighting a candle. I was neglecting to exercise my own personal agency and use the resources I had to try and tackle the problem.
In my own life, the most significant moment that I experienced happened in a paddle boat on Monument Lake, near Trinidad, Colorado. In the summer of 1995, I was attending a summer session of the Upward Bound Math and Science program (UBMS) that Trinidad State Junior College hosted every year for first generation college students. I was dutifully following the path others laid out for me to get A Better Life, and that was how I ended up paddling a plastic boat with a philosophy professor who was teaching "The Philosophy of Science" course. He was from the rural southeast of Colorado, but had made it into Princeton University and went on to a very successful academic career, and he was teaching the origins of the scientific method and Thomas Kuhn to a bunch of clueless (but motivated) high school students over the summer.
While we were paddling, we talked about my future plans. At that time, it was either to get an engineering degree from New Mexico State University (a damn fine engineering school) or learn a technical skill in the military. (I'm a lifelong fan of the Marine Corps' Harrier jets.) He commented that I should think about applying to some schools out East, including his Ivy League alma mater. I agreed that I should do that, but didn't really think that was actually within the realm of possibility for a kid with my background from my part of the country. It turned out that he was right and I was wrong (a story for another time). The kid of the local water well and windmill guy ended up earning his undergraduate Computer Science degree at Princeton, learning from some of the best in the world, went on to earn a graduate degree, started several companies (and soon a non-profit), and is now starting a podcast.
What I was missing in my life up to that point wasn't opportunity, energy, or ability, it was simply knowing that things I thought were impossible were very much within my reach. And that that there was MUCH more possibility in the world than I was capable of seeing. I just needed someone to shine a light down a dark path to walk down it.
The Initiative Podcast is my attempt to try and do that at scale. In my life thus far, I've been fortunate to have crossed paths with many Regular People doing Interesting Things that never would have occurred to me. I know people who have started theater companies from scratch. I publish books with stories from folks making livings as professional horror and suspense writers. I have a family member who has had a role in the New Space Era as someone facilitating rocket launches. I know folks who have started their own companies that are brand names you know right now. I know people who have found great success, others that have failed (and learned something to share), and folks in-between. This is where I'll be badgering them to tell their stories.
The success of this podcast won't be measured in listeners or five-star reviews. It'll be measured in the invisible metric of how many folks I can reach who feel trapped in the prisons of their distinct circumstances, and we can shine a light down a dark path for them.
Despite the last sentence sounding like the empty promises of every self-help book and guru, this podcast isn't going to give you any "Four Hour" shortcuts to success, or "12 Rules" for doing something meaningful with your life. It's going to talk to Regular People who are doing Interesting Things, and it will be up to you to determine if their stories and examples highlight opportunities in your life to begin exercising your own initiative and agency. Because those are two things that no one else can exercise for you.
If sounds interesting, please subscribe to get the latest updates. I'm still getting our podcast house in order and lining up guests, and will share the details about how to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform as soon as we have some audio content to share.
And if you have an Interesting Thing that you're doing and would like to share, please reach out to chris@theinitiative.us and let me know.
Looking forward to lighting some candles with you,
-Chris J. Karr
P.S. A short promo I recorded to get us on the various podcast platforms while I line up the first guest. Enjoy!