Your expectations, for your day, your life, this Cortado, will inform your experience.

Let’s discuss, and by “let’s discuss,” I mean that I’ll write about it and you’ll read. That’s how this medium works. You signed up for it.

The equation might be written as:

Happiness = Reality - Expectations 
OR 
Happiness = Reality / Expectations  

Some people prefer the latter formulation for its asymptotic possibilities, but the point is: you will be happier if you can find a way to lower your expectations. And the broader point of this section is: I think the American mythos does a terrible job at managing expectations.

While you can manipulate your reality, manipulating expectations (your own and others’) will usually be easier. Reality is unreliable. To our customers, clients, stakeholders, we underpromise and overdeliver; we manage their expectations.

One particularly difficult-to-manage form of expectation is the expectation that comes from deserving. When a person feels they have not gotten what they deserve, they are aggrieved. Taking a hint from the etymology, one who deserves has “served” and now seeks their just reward.

In America, the marketing material reads something like: “anyone can be anything if they want it badly enough and work hard enough.” I’m paraphrasing, of course. I think you can see where I’m going with this.

This is awful expectation management.

There are risks to telling everyone they deserve to achieve everything they want.

If your society tells people that they can do anything or that anyone who works hard enough deserves to be successful (whatever you want that to mean), then you should understand two things:

1. Your society’s expectations are very, very high

2. Large portions of your society may become upset when they realize that what they were taught is a fiction

The American myths are quite good, by the way (powerful images, strong characters, and a respect for the narrative form). Noam Chomsky, American’s foremost scholar on propaganda, wrote, “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” American soft power has been shaping worldviews to our benefit for generation. I grew up in Northern California believing in the absolute righteousness of the American cause and the American project. And while no longer absolute, I still believe in many of the tenets.

However, it is an uncomfortable tautology that 70% of any group will be in the bottom 70%. (Cortado readers will be in the top 30% of any group, don’t worry).

If the marketing material for a society tells us, explicitly or implicitly, that only the top 30% or 10% or 1% of people in a field are worthy of our admiration, because if they aren’t then they didn’t work hard enough, then that society will be home to many who people feel un-admired and like they haven’t gotten what they deserved.

Psychologically, this is painful to acknowledge — that you haven’t become all you could have been or should have been, that you deserved better but are now adrift in an indifferent universe. People in pain will look for ways to alleviate that pain, and people who haven't gotten what they feel they deserve are vulnerable to specific types of messaging and manipulation (e.g. someone coming along saying “it wasn’t your fault, it was the fault of X or Y, and I’m here to restore your rightful place in the top 30%).

This feels like a psychological vulnerability of the American people. I don't mean to imply that it's a uniquely American vulnerability, as the playbook for exploiting been used many times throughout history, but I do mean to imply that the risks are not well-appreciated. Expectations have a way of creeping up until they are disappointed, especially in systems of government that feature charismatic politics. “Things are going to get worse before they get better” is not a winning campaign slogan. Politicians make promises and have to manage the consequences, but, like pollution, the slow accumulation of expectations in the air is a large negative externality.

Things of the Month

Book of the Month

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

I enjoy reading, but that’s really not why I do it. I read because I think, and I feel, that it makes me a better person, and I enjoy believing I’m becoming a better person. Reading Ursula Le Guin makes it easy to believe.

Have I recommended a Le Guin book here before? Can’t remember. Per last month’s Cortado, who can remember anything? ANYWAY, this book is so good and so smart. As ever, Le Guin is able to ask the biggest questions, this time about how humans coordinate and cooperate, in a story that winds through space-time.

Imagining of the Month

Song(s) of the Month

I heard this for the first time on the Blue Line to O’Hare, haven’t stopped listening to it since. Also, for the avoidance of doubt, I don’t think I have good taste in music. I have no musical training, and the stuff that gets radio play usually sounds good to me. I am not a sophisticate. But I thought this was fun. Love the horns.

Suggestion for your affirmation tomorrow morning, somewhat at odds with “temper your expectations” stuff above, but aligned with the part about lucky people fulfilling their own prophecies:

You are the smartest, and the prettiest.

Until the 30th,
Ethan