10/12/2023, 00:58 The Masculine Urge to build something Real - Apex’s Notes

The Masculine Urge to build something

Real
A YouTube video made me rethink my life...no, seriously...wait, where are you
going...
APEX
12 JAN 2022

17 7 Share

For a number of years now, I have been cultivating an interest in architecture and
urbanism. Not sure when it started, but it's been a welcome respite from endless
political debates or 2am musings about the world and my place in it.

About 6 months ago, I stumbled upon a YouTube video about a rock climber
spending a year during COVID buying an abandoned house in Catalonia, Spain and
painstakingly renovating it. I was hooked. The house is gorgeous, the landscape is
gorgeous, and I was jealous.

HOW I RENOVATED AN ANCIENT ABANDONED HOUSE // 🛠️ Full DIY …

But I wasn't just jealous because I felt that he had a nice house and I live in a one-
bedroom apartment in Techno-Babylo-, I mean, New York City.

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10/12/2023, 00:58 The Masculine Urge to build something Real - Apex’s Notes

I was jealous because he built it.

I think there is something primal-ly satisfying about creating something that can be
passed down through the generations. To know you imagined something with your
mind and then gave it form with your hands; that this thing you created has sufficient
value that it can be passed down to your children, and then their children, and so on.
To know something has a life that goes beyond just you. To take part in the grand
landscape of human ancestry and tie yourself to the past and future.

Apex 🌲🏴‍☠️
@apex_simmaps

The Masculine urge to stop being an excel monkey and

go out and build your own house and make something
Real
6:42 PM ∙ Dec 9, 2021

922 Likes 48 Retweets

Compared to the house-building rock climber, my work generates nothing of lasting

value. I'm an excel monkey, staring at spreadsheets and proprietary databases for 12+
hours a day in an attempt to explain to rich people how to get richer.

Just incredibly meaningful work.

There is a scene in the movie “Margin Call” (think a more dramatic, better version
of “The Big Short”) where Stanley Tucci’s character delivers a monologue to Paul
Bettany about a bridge he built and the immense material impact it had on the
lives of the people who used it:

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Margin Call (5/9) Movie CLIP - A Bridge (2011) HD

Of course, the subtext in the scene and its context in the movie is that Tucci’s
character feels that his time as an engineer—when he was poorly compensated
compared with his job on Wall Street—was when he had more meaningful effects
on the lives of people. There was an immediacy. He could see what he had done.

On the other hand, in our hyper-bureaucratic and obfuscated world, it isn’t

particularly clear what we are doing. Do financial markets actually work toward
“proper” capital allocation, or is it all just a game, divorced from its underlying
purpose? (My guess is Tucci’s character would argue the latter.)

For 40 hours a week or more, we are taken away from our families, friends, and
community in order to do work that does not seem to contribute much at all. All
around us there seems to be a massive proliferation of "Bullshit Jobs." Actual
production/value created seems to take a back seat to busywork, bureaucracy, and
rent-seeking.

And this isn't just a workplace phenomenon. As early as high school, busywork and
useless assignments seemed to take up so much time, at the expense of actual
learning. Bullshit Work is built into the system from an early point. When we
evaluate the activities that take up so much of our waking hours, we need to be able
to substantively answer the question "what are we contributing towards?" Today, we
seem to just shrug and accept the grandiose Ponzi scheme that is the American
economy.

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Meaningful Work for a Meaningful Life

Part of a fulfilling life, of proper human flourishing, is making a meaningful
impact/contribution to the world. This has been robbed from most of us, as we drown
under layers of debt, sterile hedonism, and alienation.

Considering this, I must stress that GDP is a worthless measurement, as likely (if not
more likely) to mislead us as it is to bring us greater understanding of the world and
better predictions of the future.

It's time to focus on building an economy focused around human flourishing and
stop making the patently absurd assumptions that either a) the market will allocate
resources towards human flourishing, or b) that participating in the market is a more

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important element of human flourishing than being able to make a meaningful

contribution to the world and being connected to your ancestors and descendants
and your community.

This begins by looking at real, concrete measures of HUMAN conditions: "How

many hours of work at minimum or median wages does it take to afford median rent
in this town?", "Are people getting the medical attention they need?", "How healthy
is the populace?", "Are people satisfied with their lives?", etc.

Next, we need to use these real, concrete measures to make clear distinctions
between real productivity (creating value, etc.) and rent-seeking & busywork. If work
improves concrete human conditions, one can reasonably consider this to be
productive. If it simply extracts value from the commons, then it clearly is just rent-
seeking. There's a whole lot of gray area in here, but I think that we can identify some
rather massive financial parasites in the system.

And so we need to ask, do our economic activities actually improve our ability to live
full lives? What does "human flourishing" mean, and how do we achieve it? The
home that Nate Murphy built is one that he could pass down to his children. Each
day he can wake up and look around at the product of his own hands. Even if not
everyone is cut out to build their own home, I believe there is a longing for more
meaningful work than what we have today. Re-orienting ourselves around human
flourishing instead of vulgar productivism, around measures of human conditions
instead of GDP, will require us to consider how we incentivize production in our
economy and how we ensure that we build the healthiest society possible.

Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront
the poverty of satisfaction— purpose and dignity—that afflicts us all.

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and
community values in the mere accumulation of material things. . . .

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning,
neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in
short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

And so, if we want to address the poverty of purpose and dignity that Robert
Kennedy so eloquently described, we need to focus on building a society that truly

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allows for people to build lives worth living.

In the coming weeks, I will be devoting a number of posts towards tackling the issue of real
productivity vs rent-seeking in the abstract, and applying this distinction to a number of areas
(notably, housing, healthcare, and education). I hope to engage in fruitful discussions with
readers, so please leave comments with your thoughts.

Join the email list to not miss any of my posts, and consider a paid subscription if you would
like to support my work.

(Thumbnail image source: The Spruce Crafts)

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AvoidAVoid Writes AvoidAVoid Jan 14, 2022

Same boat. I hang on to my overpaid / under-fulfilling job on account of the relatively
comfortable life & flexibility it provides, as well as a suspicion going anywhere else would
be more or less the same, and increase my workload as the "new guy who has to prove
themselves." I consider work to be a tolerable means to an end, which I have come to
regard as a product of having fallen deep into the comfort trap.

That said, last year I moved to Alaska to help build a cabin on some land I purchased
with my sister brother-in-law (he is a carpenter and knows how to do this stuff). I am
basically unskilled labor, but learning a lot.

Obviously it is extremely hard work. Our building season is short, and we have try to
cram a lot in where we can find time. I am sore, it is admittedly NOT what I usually want
to spend my weekend doing, but getting closer to family, learning a craft, camping on that
land and waking up on property that is MINE, and seeing the product of labor is a truly
glorious feeling that provides a species of satisfaction that my job - nor any other job I've
ever had - has ever come close to offering. And this is an endeavor of pure sacrifice; "all"
I get in return is that feeling (and, eventually, a badass cabin).

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Ultimately though, I believe that rather than building individual structures, the ultimate
posterity we are capable of & arguably should be creating is the cultivation of
communities that understand & emphasize their connection to the world and the history
the next generations are born into. A recognition that the "glue" that brought all this stuff
into existence in the first place was people giving a sh*t about it, and trusting and caring
about each other enough to cooperate and build it. That, as young people, they are not
just "inheriting" a pre-made world that was always here and which can simply be taken
for granted, but that they are custodians of these values and need to recognize the social
value of keeping those connections active. Moving out of the Denver metro area, which,
over the last decade+ looks increasingly like somebody just used the photoshop cloning
tool to stamp a bunch of giant, cheaply-made, drab & lifeless townhomes virtually on top
of each other, virtually wringing every ounce of character out in the process, I find these
things on my mind a lot, but unsure of what to do beyond try to set the best example I can
in a place I care about, and with people I care about.

Long comment aside, all this is to say that a lot of what you're doing here resonates, and
with regard to this post in particular, I say if you get the opportunity to do something like
that - it is very hard work, but rewarding in proportion.
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Aslan Jan 13, 2022 · edited Jan 13, 2022

If you want to build something real, join civic tech. I build stuff everyday that has real
material impact on people. And it requires the same skills you already have.

It just means taking a pay cut and having to deal with a lot of bullshit politics. But it's
worth it.
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