I spent the last few days thinking about Alicia McKay's recent newsletter, "The Ambition Vacuum: Inevitability and Cultural Malaise." If you haven't read it, Alicia writes from New Zealand about what she calls an "ambition recession"—a cultural shift away from ambition that she sees everywhere, from political short-termism and managerial risk aversion to widespread cynicism in popular entertainment.

She writes about her Gen Z kids trading nihilistic memes while algorithms manufacture 2000s nostalgia, about how the old metanarratives (progress, democracy, science-as-truth) have collapsed, leaving us with a vacuum of inevitability and futility, especially around AI, climate, and democracy.

It's a fascinating piece, and I recommend reading it. But as I reflected on her observations, I kept bumping up against something that didn't match my lived experience here in the United States.

And it made me wonder: what if the internet is gaslighting us about reality?

This blog post was originally a newsletter that was sent last Friday.

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The algorithm wants you anxious

Here's what I think is happening: Social media and the internet thrive on our attention and engagement. The best way to get that attention is to make us anxious, upset, and angry.

If the algorithm can continually bounce us back and forth between anxiety, anger, and comfort—distressing us with what we're reading or seeing, then comforting us by making us feel like we're making a difference by sending a comment or signing an online petition—it keeps us engaged. If it can create a dual mode where we bounce between something harmful and then something restorative, only to return to the toxic quickly, that's how it keeps our attention.

I used to live on the internet. I'm an elder millennial, so I grew up before computers were ubiquitous, before the internet was really a thing. But once I got to college, I was online constantly.

Over the last few years, though, I've been withdrawing. I spend a lot less time on the internet, especially outside of work hours. I spend more time with real people through my church, at coffee shops, inviting friends into our home, and having play dates with our kids.

And you know what's strange? Sometimes it feels like I'm the one who's out of touch.

It feels like my lived experience isn't the real world, and what I see on the internet is what's actually true. That's a weird lie to be fed, but it's a powerful one.

What I actually see in the real world

My lived experience is that the people around me are trying to do good work. They have ambitions. They are working hard and accomplishing a lot.

I just turned 40, and our friends range from ages 22 to their late 70s. For those who are younger, I don't see them doing things too differently from what I saw when I was in college. They want to have a good life. They want to have a family. They want to have a good job.

The types of jobs they're pursuing have been different, I'll grant that. I know more people now who didn't attend college and went straight to work after high school, often in service jobs or physical labor. They're not unhappy, though. They're actually really enjoying the work they do. One thing they report enjoying is that they spend a lot of their time meeting and talking to people, getting to know them, and building relationships.

For those of us who spend a lot of time on the internet, we see so much anger because that's how the social networks keep our attention. We lose sight of the fact that real people out in the world, living life 24/7, are not as angry as what we see online.

Even if it's the same person posting something on Facebook, that moment when they're posting is just a moment in their life. There's a whole lot of other life going on. We reduce people to that moment and forget that there's a rich, complex, dynamic person who is often not as angry or as afraid, and who has all these other things going on.

Alicia writes about perceiving that the metanarratives are shifting, that we're reaching the end of something and the start of nothing else yet. She raises the question of what comes next—maybe something after democracy, maybe something after the enlightenment, maybe something after late-stage capitalism...

I look around at my friends, my community, and the politicians I know locally. Many national politicians are failing to lead effectively, but I know many people locally who work in city government or volunteer, and they're driven to make the world a better place. I see that constantly.

Now, I want to acknowledge I'm writing from the United States, and Alicia is writing about New Zealand. I don't actually know what's happening in New Zealand; I've never been there. My observations are limited to what I see here. But I suspect the pattern holds across contexts.

Faith, hope, and love

As I was thinking about this, a Bible verse popped into my head. The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:13: "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

I have faith in other people and in their desire to have a good life, to build community, and to have healthy relationships. And what I really have faith in is that we are created in the image of God, and we are created for community. That core of our human nature is just true and will remain true.

And I have hope for the future because of that.

I think the kids are alright. We elder millennials are wringing our hands and getting worried about the next generation. But we're doing that from the perspective of seeing what's on TikTok and Instagram—reacting to the moments that the internet shows us, moments that are explicitly created to make us worried because worry leads to engagement.

Things might be better than we think. And that gives me hope.

Start with yourself

I was also reminded of a quote whose exact origin is debated—it's often attributed to an unknown monk from around the 12th century, though it could be from Aldous Huxley in the 1960s. Nobody knows for sure. But the full version goes something like this:

"When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town, and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realized the only thing I can change is myself. And suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation, and I could indeed have changed the world."

We really should focus on changing ourselves and exercising faith, hope, and love.

Alicia writes that we have this perception of inevitability—that the climate is going to get worse, that the fascists are going to win, that everything's going to be terrible. She says, "We decide things are futile and they become so. But if we decide they aren't futile, well, they won't be."

I agree with that. But I want to posit that things have already shifted, and we, elder millennials, may not have noticed.

I think there is a huge population of people who are living really healthy, wonderful lives. We just don't notice that because healthy, wonderful, normal things are not what the internet shows us.

What you can do

So instead of doom scrolling and locking ourselves into the metanarrative of inevitable decline—instead of believing the world's going to hell in a handbasket and things are bad—what if we get out and meet some new people? What if we get to understand their hopes and dreams and loves and goals? What if we understand theirwhy?

I think we'll discover that there's immense beauty in this world, and many good people. The despondency and nihilism reflected on social media are perhaps only reflective of a very small part of the population. What's more, it could just be reflective ofmomentsin people's lives, not their actual lived reality.

I do want to be clear: I know there are mental health issues. There's anxiety and depression, and the statistics and science don't lie. I've done a lot of research on workplace culture and burnout, and I know enough to know I don't know everything. But what I have observed, and find odd and fascinating, is higher degrees of burnout, that is, more people are burning out professionally... but they're also recovering faster and getting back to it. And by recovering, I don't mean getting back to work. I mean, they're rediscovering their optimism and their excitement. That's been really interesting to me.

There is change. There's something happening. It's not to say there isn't darkness, illness, and challenge. There absolutely is. But there's also recovery and optimism and hope and faith and love, perhaps in greater degree than we had 30 years ago.

My perception of the kids these days is that there's actually less greed. There is less self-centeredness. I feel like they might be better than us.

Your practice as a leader

So I want to encourage you: Focus on how you can make yourself better.

In particular, if you're a leader and can improve, you can inspire others to do the same. But you can't do that by viewing your team members or future hires as despondent, nihilistic, hopeless people.

In my experience, almost nobody is like that. People need just the barest amount of breath to kindle the flame of hope.

As a leader, you have an opportunity to kindle that in them.

Practice faith in other people—in their desire to do good work and build community.

Practice hope for the future—not naive optimism, but grounded hope based on what you actually see when you look at real people doing real things.

Practice love—choose to love and not let what the internet presents as the real world get you down and prevent you from doing that.

You can make the world a better place. And honestly, it's not that hard, because the people around you already want that. We shouldn't accept the lie that they don't.

That's what I want to leave you with this week.

With all my love,

Matthew