OSD 307: Don’t waste your life on reacting
On the perpetual rush to opine on the Current Thing.
Imagine you’re an ambitious person in the early 1700s watching the explosive growth of transatlantic commerce. You love ships. Their technology, the economic results, the seafaring spirit, the whole thing. The early 1700s are an exciting time to be in the industry, and you want to make a big impact. Naturally you look at what the biggest blockers for the industry are, and you find that one of them is actually on the land — shipwrecks. Specifically, ships running aground on rocks near the coast. So to follow your love for ships, you build a lighthouse on your country’s most dangerous coast and become its keeper.
You spend every day and night in the lighthouse. When the signal fire wanes, you bring it back to life. Ships can see you from 35 nautical miles out, and shipwrecks in your area drop. You keep at it, sending out your warnings every day to protect the industry you love. Over time you upgrade the lighthouse. (Here we’re going to assume you’re an immortal lighthouse keeper.) You transition the signal from wood fire to oil fire and eventually to an electric light. Ever vigilant, blinking out your warnings for all to see, decade after decade.
That’s the view from inside the lighthouse. From outside the lighthouse, a passionate up-and-comer in the shipping industry saw a problem, focused on fixing it and then … kept fixing it. The early years had real impact. But the industry moved on, and the lighthouse keeper didn’t. He was so focused on reacting to threats that after his first few years, he never ended up making any contributions to the field. Always reacting, never on the front foot. Holed up in his lighthouse, blinking out warnings for all to see while reality passed him by.
This is a useful parable after mass murders like the one in New Orleans last week. The internet is full of people who are capable of deeply valuable work. Too many of them instead spend their life as the lighthouse keeper, in reaction mode. The temptation to be reactive is strong. It feels good and it gets high engagement. And in the moment it seems important. But there are two problems with it.
First: very, very few of the most important stories in any given year will matter (or even be remembered) in the long run. So if you spend your days reacting to them, you are wasting your life reacting to things that do not matter.
Second: it would be one thing if you were reacting to a random selection of low-quality things. But by rushing to react to the acts of the worst among us, you’re doing even worse than that — you’re reacting to a selection of things specifically chosen by the worst among us. Much worse than random, you’re allowing them to choose what matters to you.
This reactionary frame of mind is very common in gun rights circles, but the irony is that shooting instructors will teach you that action beats reaction. The person on the back foot in any situation is likely to lose. The person on the back foot for their whole life is guaranteed to lose. We can all apply that lesson throughout our lives.
Reactivity cultivates a cynical worldview, and it puts you in the position of always playing defense. Over time you become defined not by your own values and actions but by those of the people you’re reacting to.
Let’s spend less time reacting and more time building.
This week’s links
T.Rex Arms newsletter
A particularly educational edition this week, with videos on how body armor is made, the early history of the ATF, and the practical differences between candela and lumens.
Rapper accidentally shoots himself in the leg during an interview
Unholstered pocket carry strikes again.
About Open Source Defense
OSD Capital
We invest in civilian defense and tech that accelerates it.
OSD Podcast
In-depth interviews with outstanding founders and builders in the civilian defense industry.
The company store
Grab a t-shirt or a sticker and rep OSD.
Discord server
The OSD team is there along with lots of subscribers. Paid Substack subscribers can join the chat.
> First: very, very few of the most important stories in any given year will matter (or even be remembered) in the long run. So if you spend your days reacting to them, you are wasting your life reacting to things that do not matter.
This quote was originally about technological change, but I think it applies just as validly to politics: "people tend to overestimate change in the short term and underestimate change in the long run".
This is why my prior on just about any random political issue is "it probably won't change (*implied*: in the short term)". Jumping and being the first to comment usually just means commenting first on something that doesn't matter.