Paul Kasaija

January 18th, 2021

8:33 PM

 

Of the forces that determine what type of day one will have, in the end, productivity laced with sheer despondency and boredom ruled the day. Like one can assume, they don’t come without the other unless there is something that makes being productive fun: like a shocking realization from the discovery of new ideas, or the sense of kinship from sharing ideas with others, or something cool or just interesting enough to lighten up your mood for the whole day. Yesterday just wasn’t that kind of day, but at least I did complete the book Zero to One while writing notes and did write another commentary on a few of its chapters (which I will expound upon later). I don’t intend for this journal to be something where I write down complaints because it is counterproductive to the fundamentals of my routine, and against the productive purpose that I write in the first place. However, I am making note of my mood today because it did make me realize something: without any productive or self-enjoyment activities to attract my focus, that same mood is my baseline mood.

 

Some of you readers might relate to this: It is that feeling that I get after watching another video with a personality that I relate with and sit in dreaded silence while looking up another one, it is the same feeling that I get after scrolling social media and Reddit posts for hours on end looking for desperate happiness, and it is the same feeling that I get when I turn off the last YouTube page or chess game analysis board before I reluctantly close my eyes to sleep. That realization was obvious in hindsight but invisible in my everyday vision, the fact that I was lacking a baseline mood of optimism of the basic things— my own unique happiness in the small but ever-present things of my life, and an overriding curiosity in the minutiae of the world. Rather, I look for others to relate with and derive happiness through the medium of the computer, while lacking any ability to create spontaneous and unique happiness, which some call “optimism”, of my own. I have a good reason for it because I’m pretty much a loner and haven't had such a plethora of good experiences to produce "self-optimism", but it doesn’t change the fact that living with that mood is personally harmful. It’s like leaving garbage in your apartment, or hoarding trash that you’ll never use: it is something that when you overcome it the benefits are immediately obvious. It’s like being a roommate with a negative version of yourself that keeps your house from ever being your home. Well, I will do— not just try— better from now on; it’s time to learn how to be optimistic on my own.

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Never mind all of that, all of today besides my mood was rather productive, and I got a firsthand measure of startup business by completing Peter Thiel’s book, Zero to One. Now, I would say that my goal was to be open-minded and to filter whatever I read within the perspective of “listen to the expert”, but some part of me disagreed with a few topics on which Thiel based his fundamental theory. His perspective on monopolies and competition is very a cleanly antithetical, black and white one, just like his perspective on the relation between globalization and technology. As an economics student, I can’t just sit by and let Mr. Thiel bring down the system that makes him and many other big businessmen successful: free-market competition in our mixed economic system here in America. Furthermore, I cannot of an unconflicted mind allow the notion that all monopolies are “creative” despite clear evidence of the contrary. If they were so creative, then the 21st century would look a lot different than it does today: possibly we would have new forms of energy rather than the gas giants that threaten our environment today, possibly we would have new levels of medical development rather than the price-gouging pharmaceutical monopolies of today, possibly we would have solved world hunger and universal healthcare rather than the marketing and food companies that suggest greater and greater self-indulgences of today. And monopolies would just do worse if we had more of them, or if they grew of a size greater than they currently are. Overall, this type of anti-competitive logic is one of the fundamentals of Thiel’s theory; it drives his anecdotes and analogies and business strategies he advises one to leverage in their Machiavellian pursuit of growth.

 

Yet to me, despite its faults, Zero to One is still a book with many interesting and valid points that drive it to have a lot more meaning than if it was comprised of only that theory. I don’t plan on writing a book review, but if I did, I would give it a 4 out of 5 purely on the forward-thinking ideas, truths, observations, and business strategies that he incorporates in his writing. His book is more similar to a worldly and theoretical Freakonomics-style book with business tactics than a Startups: For Dummies book, and on that account, I would recommend reading it. As I move forward in my routine and growth into optimism, who knows, I might pick another Thiel book off of the shelf (or something similar).