The View From Here

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Since the world is ending, I might as well just write about whatever the hell I want. And tonight, I'm thinking about black holes. Yes, really. Black holes. In space!

Anyways, black holes have this fascinating thing about them. They are not just scary celestial objects, they are arguably not even objects at all. Some physicists will tell you they are better thought of as “regions of spacetime”. Which is right about where you're going to be “what the hell kind of Substack is this? I signed up for the political commentary, found out that you're also an armchair philosopher and now you're talking about physics?” Well, yes.

The thing about black holes is they have this weird property about them. The black disk we would see if we observed a black hole is known as the “event horizon”. It's not a surface, it's not even really a physical feature in the way we think of what a physical feature is. It is, to put it simply, the point-of-no-return. But even that is not what is fascinating about black holes and their event horizon. What's fascinating is when you pass through the event horizon, nothing happens—okay there's a photon sphere or some shit—but the point is that you pass right through it like nothing is there. It's just this conceptually bizarre set of features to think about.

And I have pondered for a while if we have passed through something like an event horizon, without recognizing it. Much the same way as you might fail to recognize passing the point-of-no-return in a black hole.

Think about it. In our political and social landscape, we might have already crossed a threshold beyond which certain changes become irreversible, yet we carry on as if everything is normal. The erosion of democratic norms, the polarization of discourse, the concentration of power in the hands of tech oligarchs—these might be our societal event horizons.

Just as an astronaut crossing a black hole's event horizon might not immediately notice anything amiss, we too might be oblivious to the fact that we've passed a point of no return. We tweet, we argue, we go about our daily lives, unaware that the fundamental rules governing our society have irrevocably changed.

The parallel goes deeper. In a black hole, physics as we know it breaks down. Time and space behave in ways that defy our conventional understanding. Similarly, in our post-event horizon society, the rules we thought governed political discourse, truth, and power no longer seem to apply. Alternative facts, deep fakes, AI-generated realities—these are the gravitational singularities warping our social spacetime.

And here's the kicker: just as information can't escape a black hole once it crosses the event horizon, we might find ourselves unable to reverse the changes in our society once we've passed certain thresholds. The concentration of power, the erosion of privacy, the manipulation of reality—these forces might be pulling us inexorably towards a future we can neither fully comprehend nor escape.

But here's where the metaphor offers a glimmer of hope. Black holes, for all their destructive power, are also engines of creation. They drive the formation of galaxies, seed the universe with heavy elements, and might even offer passages to other universes (if you're into that kind of speculative physics). Similarly, perhaps our societal event horizon, while marking the end of one era, could be the crucible for something new and transformative.

The question is, as we hurtle past these invisible thresholds, can we be conscious enough to shape what comes next? Or are we doomed to be passive travelers, unaware of our trajectory until it's too late?

In the end, maybe that's why I'm writing about black holes while the world burns. Because understanding the nature of our predicament—the invisible lines we've crossed, the forces now shaping our trajectory—might be the first step in reclaiming some measure of control over our collective destiny.

Or maybe I've just gone off the deep end. But hey, if we're past the event horizon anyway, we might as well enjoy the ride and ponder the mysteries of the universe while we're at it.

I did a little Clubhouse room tonight where a handful of readers showed up and had a chat. One thing that came up—and it has come up for me a few times—is whether I've considered trying to make my writing have more of a “mass appeal”. Whether I might consider avoiding the “big words” or the heady language. And the truth is, I have thought about this. Friends have given me this advice. I get it. I write in a very intellectual style.

But here's the thing: this intellectual style, these “big words,” this heady language—it's not affectation. It's not me trying to sound smart or exclude anyone. It's simply how my mind works, how I process the world around me. To strip that away would be to strip away the very essence of what I'm trying to communicate.

I had a conversation with someone recently, a public intellectual—he has a YouTube channel and if you're the kind of person who likes me you may have even heard of him, but I didn't ask his permission to mention him so I won't—who gave me the advice that "now is the moment to be yourself". It was a pretty profound thing he said to me, now that I think about it.

Because I feel like, and this is something I've told my wife and others as I've been writing, that doing this Substack thing has just been so good for me. I don't view writing as a chore. I love writing. Always have. So for me, this whole thing has been what you might call “self-care”. I have these ideas I think about all the time, and now I'm writing them down.

I just happen to be doing it at a time where the world is falling apart, and there's a happy but morbid coincidence that writing is something I like, and I have a lot to say about what's happening. It's as if the universe decided to implode just as I found my voice. Lucky me, right?

So I guess this is a long way of saying, this is me being my most authentic self. I'm not dumbing it down. I'm not treating you, the reader, like an idiot. I'm just sharing what's in my head. And if you read me, like me, share me, and go so far as being a paying member, that means the world to me. Because this writing has been, for me, a way for me to “be myself”.

In a world that increasingly demands we simplify, flatten, and compress our thoughts into easily digestible soundbites, there's something almost revolutionary about refusing to do so. It's a stand against the tide of anti-intellectualism, against the notion that complexity is something to be avoided rather than embraced.

Sure, I could probably reach a wider audience if I stripped away the nuance, if I boiled everything down to simple slogans and catchy phrases. But at what cost? The ideas I'm grappling with—the collapse of democratic norms, the ethical implications of AI, the nature of human consciousness—these aren't simple topics. They deserve, no, they demand, the full weight of our intellectual capacity.

And here's the thing: I trust my readers. I trust that you're here not for easy answers or pre-digested thoughts, but because you, too, are grappling with these complex issues. You're here because you want to think deeply, to challenge yourselves, to engage with ideas that don't fit neatly into a tweet or a TikTok video.

So yes, this is me being myself. Unfiltered, uncompromised, wrestling with big ideas in big words. And in doing so, I hope I'm creating a space where you, too, can be yourselves—thoughtful, curious, unafraid of complexity.

Because in the end, that's what this is all about. It's not just self-care for me; it's an invitation for all of us to care deeply about ideas, about the world, about the future we're hurtling towards. Whether we're past some unseen event horizon or not, the least we can do is think deeply about where we're going.

So thank you. Thank you for being here, for reading, for engaging. In a world that often feels like it's spinning out of control, this little corner of the internet where we can think big thoughts together—it means everything.

Maybe we have crossed some invisible point of no return. But if that’s true, then the only thing left to do is decide how we meet what’s ahead—with eyes wide open, with minds still engaged, refusing to let the darkness swallow us whole.

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” — Carl Sagan