A Heavy Lift

The Problem with Scale (Return to Sender: 4/10)

Dearest CB-St. Louis,

You know, someone asked me recently how you and I know each other, and I had a hard time explaining the story. You are one of those rare people who are so obviously meant to be my friend, even though the odds of us meeting were actually never that good. It’s just that our interests are so deeply overlapping, the way we think and talk are so similar, it’s like we’re some kind of long lost twins. But also, we’re from opposite sides of the country, different colleges, different jobs, different cities, different worlds.

I think in our very first conversation, you mentioned weight lifting. That was back before I started lifting, when I was still an organized-fitness skeptic. Judgmental me, I remember thinking that you didn’t look like someone who lifted– as if I knew what people who lift look like. I remember you describing your workout regimen, and talking about how you were lifting every day with a trainer at like 6am and then you’d work for the rest of the day and into the night. That was the thing that impressed me most back then. You are a work machine, and it showed. You’re wildly well-connected, you know everyone and everything. You know about all the secretive projects, all the promotion and firing gossip, all the juicy details behind the bland press releases.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

It didn’t occur to me until more than a year after I started lifting (which was many years after you first told me I should), that these things are not separate. I’ve been a mind-over-matter fiend for as long as I can remember, and for better or worse I’ve often thought of myself as little more than a brain in a skin bag. My mind is what people care about, I would think, my thoughts are what people pay for. Why invest in my body? What’s the return profile on that?

____

You have heard my rant about the problem of scale probably more than almost anyone else. I remember starting the book “Scale” and not being able to finish it. In theory, there were some really interesting ideas in there. In reality, I think I’ve just soured too completely on the whole concept.

Okay, let me try and make a clear point for once. The problem with scale in food and agriculture is that that’s what we’ve already achieved. If you want “scalable solutions” for a food and farm system– TA DA! It’s the system we’ve already built. The main benefit of the way food and farming work today is that they work at a massive global scale. We pay a tremendous price for that to be true, but there it is. If you want scale– Mission Accomplished.

And yet, I have been in countless meetings, on innumerable conference panels, and in and around a million discussions about potential solutions and changes to U.S. food or farming, and heard (especially funders) say, “yes, but that doesn’t scale. It needs to scale.”

Jesus Christ dude, it makes me want to pull my fucking hair out.

Okay, I get it. At some level, I understand why funders and non-profits have this commitment to “scalable solutions.” I know that some of them need to write $10 million checks, and some tiny community group in one small town in rural Iowa needs like $50,000, and they simply can’t do it (cowards!). Sure, okay. I also get that funders and VCs and the like, they need a return. I understand that that’s a fact of our current capitalist system. Fine.

I even understand that there’s more than one way to scale, and that it’s up to people who need funding to make the case to funders that their solution can scale, in some way, even if it can’t scale in the same way that fucking amazon can.

And at the same time, I don’t get any of this. Since when are big things the only good things? Since when is it only worthwhile to fund solutions if they might turn out to be The Solution. It’s hard for cynical old me to see this stuff as anything other than ego. I worry that the concern of money-havers is not that their money might be “wasted” funding small projects that only lead to small wins. Their concern is that while they’re occupied with small potatoes, some other VC, non-profit, or family office might come along and dig up the big one. They don’t want their time and resources to be “wasted” on projects that won’t lead to them getting all the credit for “saving the day.” Some days, I believe that the average wealthy person would rather see the world burn than save it, if the saving doesn’t come with accolades and perks.

Once upon a time, goldilocks didn’t pick the biggest bed or the tiniest bed, the hottest porridge or the coldest porridge, she picked the bed and the porridge that were just right.

When the fuck did we all get on board with the idea that just right isn’t good enough? Who decided that it’s got to be the biggest, hottest, most valuable– or nothing?

____

I don’t remember if I told you, but when I started lifting, I got a trainer. I wish I could say it was for a wholesome reason, but the reality is that deep down, I’m a people pleaser, and I knew that if I had to go and workout in front of someone, I would do it more and better. (Sometimes, you just gotta tie yourself to the mast.)

Obviously, before this, I’d never really been one for going to the gym. I’d always thought, essentially, that I just don’t like it. It wasn’t my vibe. My problem is that I’m an achiever, and I like to be the best. And I had never been, and reasonably would never be, “the best” at the gym. Maybe that was also part of why I got a trainer. Maybe some part of me believed that a trainer would somehow be able to press some button on my body that I’d never been able to reach. Maybe a trainer could make me great.

To his credit, my first trainer wanted to make me great. He was a bodybuilder, and most of his clients were elderly, so when he saw me and my lack of grey hair and rickets, he was psyched.

He had me doing the hack squat every time I came to the gym because my posterior chain was weak. It turns out that sitting at a computer all day fucks your legs, butt, and back. But you know what, I fucking hated the hack squat, dude. I’d never been on a piece of gym equipment that made me feel like I was going to die. When I was down at the bottom at the end of three sets, I swear to god my life flashed before my eyes.

But I kept doing it because there was a part of me that thought, “this is going to make me great.” I used the same logic on a number of other things too. He told me I should be working out five to six days a week, so I started doing that. He gave me a cardio regimen and a meal plan. When I told him I was feeling tired all the time, and asked if I might be working out too much, he told me I definitely wasn’t, and that it was probably that I wasn’t eating enough salt. As I say, I’m not really into fitness, or like, caring about my body most of the time. So I took him at his word.

Probably about eight months into this, he got fired, and I was switched to another trainer. I had my worries at this point. Was this trainer going to be as adept at making me great as the last one? Would she keep up the pressure, keep up the pain? Or was I about to lose all that I had gained?

The first thing she said to me was, “I manifested you.” I’m sure I just blinked back at her, confused. “I used to watch you work out with that other trainer, and I could tell you were working so hard, and I just really wanted to train you cause I knew I could do it better.”

This seemed like promising “make me great” energy.

She started training me. We hit legs, and at some point, I mentioned offhandedly that I’m surprised she didn’t want me to do the hack squat. And she asked me, “Do you like the hack squat?” Candidly, I said no.

“Then why would I have you do it?” she asked. “There’s plenty of other ways to work those same muscles. We’ll find one that doesn’t make you miserable.”

And in that moment, I worried. How could I ever be great if you don’t teach me to love the hack squat?

____

I’ve been thinking about you, and all of this, and I’ve been thinking about the cost of our collective obsession with scale. Because it’s everywhere, right? It’s not just in the realm of projects and solutions in the food and ag sector. It’s also in the broader economy, on the internet, in the arts and in content creation. Why start a company if you’re not aiming to be in the Fortune 500? Why build a website or be on socials if you’re not trying to go viral? Why write, why paint, why take pictures or make films or do anything creative if you’re not trying to become the greatest writer/painter/photographer/filmmaker/creator of your generation?

What’s even the point if it doesn’t scale?

Obviously, I fucking hate this. No, not just hate. I am repulsed by these ideas. The fact that so many of us think this way makes me want to take a sledge hammer to all the technology in my house, to burn down the entirety of my digital footprint, and slap peoples phones out of their hands.

Sorry, I don’t mean to yell. I just.

Well, one of the things I think you and I have in common is that we grew up in spaces where nothing was ever enough. And we’ve worked hard, and continue to work hard every day, to escape that. But isn’t this preoccupation with scale just a society-wide version of the same thing?

One of the hardest fought learnings of my adult life so far is getting to a place where I know what is enough for me. Especially because I know that unbridled want is the main thing that’s fucking everything up right now. Like holy fuck, if more people could figure out what’s enough for them, and then stick the fuck to it, there’d be a lot fewer problems for philanthropy to solve. If fewer people hoarded the things that other people need– be they physical things, jobs, opportunities, what have you– then a lot fewer people would go without.

And you know what, people's attention is one of those things that we’re encouraged to hoard. Attention is money, so why wouldn’t you hoard it? That’s why everything about the digital world is so perfectly tailored to addict us. From the color of apps to the structure of headlines, from every graphic on cable news to the tone of your average think piece. Every single page of the internet, from the browser home screen to your email terminal to social media to search engines are designed to keep you on them as long as physically possible. This is what our obsession with scale has wrought. A world where the only rule is “get big or get out.”

____

Me and my new trainer, the one who manifested me, are going on two years now. She encouraged me to stop going to the gym so much. And you know what, I got a lot stronger, and my muscles grew a lot faster, once I did. I made more progress in our first three months, in fact, than I did in those eight with the other guy. That wasn’t really the lesson for me though.

About two years after I started lifting was the first time that I really, consciously realized that I had grown strong. It was a weird thought, because I’ve always, always thought of myself as a mentally strong person. But this was different. I had become a force in the world, and not just when my mouth was open. Just sitting there. I wasn’t massive and bulky and I wasn’t bodybuilder slender, and thinking back now, I probably looked a bit like you did, when we first met. I was just me, but more dense, more sturdy, and more immovable. There was more of me, and at the same time, I was more me, too.

I’m also heavier than I was when I started this whole thing. Weight, ironically, might be the only thing our society doesn’t believe should be as big as possible. But weirdly, I’m more confident in my body now than I ever was back when I was “skinnier.” Because now I know my body. I know how it moves and works. I’ve reconnected it to my conscious brain, and doing so made me realize they were always connected, I just wasn’t paying attention, and there was a cost to this ignorance. My body has meaning and value to me, in a way it didn’t before.

What had happened, I think, was that I’d given up on my body because I thought it wasn’t going to help me get ahead, and so I decided that it didn’t matter, that it was a waste. I wasn’t going to play a professional sport or go into modeling, so how important was it to be fit? It’s not like I was ever wildly unhealthy, I just felt justified spending my time and energy on other, more valuable investments– like my brain. Well. My body might never be the strongest or the best. It might not ever earn me any money. But that sure as hell doesn’t mean it's not worth investing in. There’s incredible power in growing, protecting, and investing in all the parts, not just the ones that are already strong.

In the same way, I think we need ideas, solutions, and actions at every scale, because all the pieces matter. Agriculture is not going to be saved by one brilliant, $10 million idea. It also needs small, cheap, marginal improvements that will be wrought through the work of thousands of tiny communities and groups, fighting to make their lives a little more livable.

Real solutions, the kind people love to talk about wanting; people-centric, community-centric, ecosystem-centric, sustainability-centric ones, those solutions only exist at one scale. The human scale. Not the global scale, the national scale, or god forbid, the fucking scale of the internet. Adopting solutions is often painful, hard-fought, even miserable, and if it’s too much so, it might just be the wrong solution. The biggest, fastest, most intense solutions are often the wrong ones, and we’ve got to find the courage and strength to say so, to walk away, and to manifest something different, something smaller, slower, and more gentle.

____

So I guess I just wanted to write you this note to rant a little. And to tell you that, at some level at least, you’ve been inspiring and motivating me since the very first day we met. I love the way you take up space in the world. I think it’s helped me feel like I can too.

I’m also writing because I’ve spitballed ideas with you from time to time, about my next steps in this whole writing saga. I sense that you’ve been unimpressed with my ideas (you are, after all, the person who told me media companies are always a bad investment haha), so I wanted to take a little more time and space to express at least one of the reasons why I’m thinking about doing things differently. I got the impression that you were a bit concerned about the possible scale of the kinds of endeavors we’ve talked about, that I might be envisioning something that is too small to ever be sustainable.

I’m writing this to say, first of all, thank you. Thank you for being my sounding board and my trusted advisor. Thank you for always looking out for me, and for always being simultaneously hopeful, clear-eyed, and dedicated to my success. I don’t plan to let you down. I also have been crunching some numbers, and I want you to know that I do think it’s possible to write and to turn my writing into something beautiful, tactile, and provocative, that people will love (and sometimes hate), and not go broke doing it. I mean, I don’t think it’s likely I’ll get rich doing it either, but hey, why would I ever want to be rich?

I don’t think this thing I want to do will ever be huge. It’ll never be a New York Times Bestseller, a blockbuster, or a global phenomenon. But you know what, it’ll be fucking special as shit to the people who get it. It’ll be gloriously bespoke and magically rare. A thing for your brain and your body. A thing that exists on a human scale. Maybe it will occasionally even be a thing so meaningful it’ll be worth repairing, preserving, and passing along to someone you love.

That’s what I want to do, and I’m excited to hear what you think. In the meantime, I hope your training is going well, and that the giant stack of work you’re always doing hasn’t worn you down too much. I hope you’re taking care of yourself, in all the ways that you deserve to be taken care of. And I hope that all the dreams you’ve been fighting for are coming into view.

Yours,

EQ-Albuquerque

(Assistant: Sarah K Mock)

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We hope you’ve enjoyed this series exploring the tensions between living and working in the internet age and writing in our overlapping focus areas. My collaboration with EQ does not end with this series. We’ve recently published our first pamphlet together, a WAAL Histories Collection entitled MAFIA CORN SALAD: An American Cookbook. It is a 36-page booklette featuring four original essays about food, farming, and land that will never be available online. If you are interested in learning more or purchasing a copy of this pamphlet, please fill out this form and you will be contacted about next steps.