In Tim Ferriss’s recent interview with Arthur Brooks, Brooks discusses the four false idols, what Thomas Aquinas called “the four substitutes for God.” Aquinas named those substitutes as honor, wealth, pleasure, and power, but Brooks uses fame as an Instagram-age stand-in for honor.
In this short, Brooks uses U.S. cities to demonstrate each of the four false idols, or vices: New York is money (wealth), D.C. is power, Vegas is pleasure, and Los Angeles is fame. He asks which one motivates you? Which one leads you to make poor decisions?
That got me thinking, what’s the main vice of San Francisco? Historically, pleasure has its role in the Barbary Coast sense. So does wealth (gold rush, tech booms, etc.). But I would say SF’s main vice is purpose. A lot of San Francisco’s ambition is funneled toward meaning, vision, and progress. This can become pathological in a number of ways. San Francisco’s Summer of Love had a dark, druggy, rapey, violent underbelly. Visions of improving society with technology can easily tip into Panglossian techno-utopianism.
And maybe that’s what Aquinas meant, at least partially, by honor. Because there’s a performative aspect to the pursuit of purpose and progress. We (especially San Franciscans) want to to appear as if we’re doing good deeds and making the world a better place. So sometimes we virtue signal more than we act virtuously. It’s not for want of fame, it’s the desire to have a good reputation, to be seen as honorable, that can get us in trouble.
And then there’s the true believers, who get a dopamine high by pursuing their dreams for the future of humanity and society: a colony on Mars, self-aware computer programs, fleets of self-driving electric cars, fusion power that provides unlimited electricity at negligible cost. What could go wrong?
Even the artistic side of purpose has a dark side. Putin’s dark reign is greatly inspired by the science fiction works of author Mikhail Yuriev. Purpose is my own main vice–my desire to write science fiction is largely purpose driven. And while I don’t think my science fiction works have injured anyone, it’s always possible to put bad ideas out into the world. And the blind pursuit of purpose via art can easily lead a person to personal and financial ruin.
So yeah, purpose is the fifth idol. Fame certainly belongs on the list, but Aquinas didn’t know about Hollywood or Instagram. So honor should be subdivided into fame and purpose.
mcslee
There is a good piece by Paul Graham on this topic: http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html
I roughly agree with his take. I think, within tech industry at least, “purpose” is often just employed as a moral smokescreen to disguise the pursuit of power. Often, I do think this moral smokescreen is not a ploy, but an earnestly held delusion that helps its believer function. But it’s also an odd local culture thing, where it is absolutely expected that every company has a world-improving mission – so in effect everyone is culturally forced to make one up, whether it’s accurate or not. I find that if I look at corporate websites from other parts of the world, there tends to be a lot less overt pseudo-moral blathering. I can just decide for myself whether I think the company’s products/services are good things.
Of course, I do think most people would love to be able to do good in the world. That’s surely a real human impulse, but I think it’s often the “being able to” part that is the real ambition. This plays out in countless examples when push comes to shove, and companies/individuals will time and time again choose the compromises that augment their power, often with a utilitarian rationalization along the lines of “our purpose is good, therefore this is ultimately justified.”
J.D. Moyer
Thanks for the share–I hadn’t read that one. I think he’s right about Berkeley (I grew up there).
I think you’re spot on about power and wealth pushing out purpose on a corporate level. Some companies may start with real purpose and principles (“do no evil”) but market forces overwhelm those intentions in the long run.
Spesh made a funny observation about how Europeans (esp. the Dutch) viewed the Bay Area dance scene back in the day. They found the trappings of spirituality and purpose surrounding the early Northern California rave scene to be hilarious–to them electronic dance music was just about partying and having a good time.