From straight-edge hardcore punk to modern wellness social media influencers, it’s been a long journey to make clean living cool again.
In 1990 a post-punk rock band from Washington D.C. called Fugazi released the album Steady Diet of Nothing. The title perfectly encapsulates the band’s philosophy that, in a world where “sex, drugs and rock n’ roll” are practically de riguer, the most radical and subversive act is to reject all of it. This lifestyle would come to be known as, “straight-edge.” While Ian McKay and the members of Fugazi never set out to create a movement and have regularly distanced themselves from it, their ethos nonetheless inspired generations looking for a path that embraced their unique identity in a modern social context while rejecting the ubiquitous social pressure to drink and do drugs. Fugazi and most of the people who subscribe to the straight-edge ethos advocate freedom of lifestyle without judgement, yet choose to follow a path of voluntary simplicity, humane treatment of all living things, social equality, abstinence from drugs, alcohol, tobacco and a strict plant-based vegan diet.
The guys in Fugazi and Henry Rollins are what I think of when I think of the American hardcore punk movement. Fugazi is sort of like the bizarro world version of Mötley Crüe. From their perspective, the bone-headed excesses of 70s and 80s rock culture were just another part of the dominant culture that Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer described in The Culture Industry as “…a paradoxical commodity. So completely is it subject to the law of exchange that it is no longer exchanged; it is so blindly consumed in use that it can no longer be used. Therefore it amalgamates with advertising. The more meaningless the latter seems to be under a monopoly, the more omnipotent it becomes. The motives are markedly economic.” For the straight-edge punk, the individualistic rebellious hedonism of rock and roll and counterculture had simply been co-opted by mass consumer culture and was thus conformist. Fugazi’s fierce commitment to political and ethical ideals was not what we commonly call today, “virtue signaling.” It informed every part of their lives. From the infamous straight-edge lifestyle as well as the band’s commitment to making their shows as accessible as possible to all ages, cultural backgrounds and sexual orientations, Fugazi was so intense that few could keep up with (or tolerate) their extreme austerity and moral positions. They lived communally in relative poverty, refusing to participate in modern consumer culture except where necessary, wore second hand clothing, donated time and money to political causes they believed in, often fasting for extended periods of time. They operated their own independent record label out of a house in Washington D.C., refusing attractive offers from major record labels, and spent much of their free time when they weren’t writing, rehearsing, recording or performing engaged in intense sober discourse about music, politics and philosophy.
As one of my favorite fictional deadbeat hippy Taoist anti-heroes, Jeff Lebowski said about the opposite worldview of extreme anarcho-punk nihilism, being straight-edge, “…sounds exhausting.”
Nonetheless, I’ve always found the straight-edge hardcore ethos fascinating. The logical conclusion of the so called “radical counterculture” that emerged out of the 1960s and meandered through a decades of hyper-individualistic decadence would ultimately lead full circle to an alignment with ancient ascetic and renunciate traditions: a lightweight form of urban monasticism.
Counterculture in the Twenty First Century
As I was recently watching a restoration of the 1980 film Rude Boy that followed English band The Clash through two late 70s tours and documented the punk rock counterculture in Great Britain verses the rise of Margaret Thatcher’s neo-liberal conservative government, I thought about how a counterculture requires a dominant unified cultural zeitgeist, or monoculture. I wondered, do we have a dominant monoculture anymore? Is there even a culture to counter? Is counterculture dead?
Sean Illing and Derek Thompson argue in Vox magazine that due to the Internet and the collapse of mainstream media, the monoculuture of the twentieth century has irrevocably fragmented into a collection of cults. Thompson says, “I think of a cult as a nascent movement outside the mainstream that often criticizes the mainstream and organizes itself around the idea that the mainstream is bad or broken in some way. So I suppose when I think about a cult, I’m not just thinking about a small movement with a lot of people who believe something fiercely. I’m also interested in the modern idea of cults being oriented against the mainstream. They form as a criticism of what the people in that cult understand to be the mainstream. And cults, especially when we talk about them in religion, tend to be extreme, tend to be radical, tend to have really high social costs to belonging to them.”
“Today, especially in the media and entertainment space, we have this really interesting popularity of new influencers or new media makers adapting as their core personality the idea that the mainstream is broken, that news is broken, that mass institutions are broken, that the elite are in some way broken and elite institutions are broken. The fragmentation of media that we’re seeing and the rise of this anti-institutional, somewhat paranoid style of understanding reality, I see these things as rising together in a way that I find very interesting,” he says.
Thompson makes an interesting point that the rise of a dominant monoculture in the twentieth century can be seen as a historic aberration and that when people wax nostalgic about the 20th century, they overlook how much control institutions, corporations and governments exerted over culture via the culture industry. The dominant channels of media, advertising agencies and their corporate sponsors glossed over rampant destruction of the environment, institutional corruption and social inequality that society is now confronting head on in a divisive media landscape.
As I’ve navigated the media landscape over the past decade, I’ve observed a similar trend. Thanks to algorithmic recommended media, there’s no shortage of contrarian viewpoints. In fact, Julian Obubo makes a compelling case that we’re living in an era of dangerous contrarian bias. There’s a smorgasbord of subcultures to survey and choose from, and it can be challenging to seek a broad enough sample of differing “bubbles” to reconcile some sense of an overarching consensus or zeitgeist beyond the lazy narrative that, “the world is going to hell and everything’s broken.”
Finding Inspiration in a World of Contrarianism
Among those various media cult bubbles, it’s sort of like foraging for good food, you have to separate the good stuff from the field of click bait doomerism. There are some jewels that offer a glimmer of hope — individuals who seek to follow the modern science and historic traditions to maximize human health, joy and potential. Over the past few years I’ve discovered a fascinating world of emerging evidence from the field of neuroscience. Evidence-based influencers and authors such as Andrew Huberman, Rich Roll, Cal Newport, Johnathan Haidt, J.D. Signifier, James Clear, Tim Ferriss, Steven Bartlett and others have leveraged the democratizing potential of podcasts and social media to serve as thought leaders on well being.
Finding Baseline
Like many people, I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs and have struggled with periods of anxiety and depression. But I knew that diet, good sleep, hanging out with friends and regular exercise was a reliable pathway out of a slump. When I found myself out of sorts, I performed an inventory using a simple set of questions, and each time I encountered a slump, my answers were always the same:
- Are you following a regularly scheduled routine? No.
- Are you exercising every day? No.
- Are you getting enough natural light and spending time outdoors? No.
- Are you drinking too much alcohol? Yes.
- Are you drinking too much caffeine? Yes.
- Are you eating too much, especially high carbohydrate or sugary foods? Yes.
- Are you going to bed and getting up on a regular schedule? No.
- Are you meditating at least once a day? No.
I established that inventory nearly thirty years ago as a solution to a recurring pattern of anxiety. Based on my answers, as hard as it may have been to change my habits, I usually had the willpower to get off my butt and implement a regimen to force myself back to normal:
- Run or walk everyday outside in natural light.
- Cut back on or stop drinking alcohol.
- Cut back on caffeine.
- Reduce caloric intake and try to eat a low carb diet.
- Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.
- Meditate at least once per day.
Eventually I came to privately call it “baselining” or “my baseline protocol.” When I saw Bladerunner 2049, I found the test of the same name a hilarious coincidence. I imagine I’m probably not the only one out there that has something like this recipe that they fall back to to “reset.”
More recently, I’ve added two new items to my inventory:
- Are you spending at least two to three hours a day offline and not consuming digital media? No
- Are you taking on something fun and challenging that you haven’t done before? No.
Now, the obvious question is why didn’t I just adopt this baseline as a set of permanent daily habits? I think anyone can understand why. Implementing permanent behavior change is hard in the face of constant distraction and contrary social reinforcement. Life happens. Unexpected things come up. Temptation is around every corner. It’s easy to be lazy. Maybe it was a vacation, holiday or a series of social engagements where I partied too hard and that initiated a cycle of imbalanced behavior. Sometimes we find ourselves in social circles that encourage unhealthy habits. Perhaps I was mourning the loss of a friend or loved one, or going through a particularly stressful time in my career where everything, including my health took a back seat to meeting a goal. The mind is always ready with a fountain of excuses.
Our environment has also changed. Over the past twenty years the modern world has introduced a range of new popular products that are stealthy vices. In addition to the classic cast of characters: food, sugar, alcohol, drugs, gambling, status and shopping, we now also have to contend with highly addictive algorithmic digital vices in the form of social media, and digital content on a device that is with us at all times and has the potential to rob us of the mental downtime that is core to our well being.
Since the pandemic I’ve been on a mission to gradually adopt a foundation for permanent change. After a lifetime of fits and starts, I’ve finally adopted some of the “straight-edge” choices that have always appealed to me and enough time (years) has passed that I’m confident that these will be core behavior changes. I generally abstain from all intoxicants (except caffeine) and have adopted a plant-based diet. I meditate every morning and exercise regularly. Neuroscience and a lifelong passion for the spiritual traditions have provided tools that make it easier, especially as it relates to my understanding of neurochemistry, the dopamine-seeking rewards system and what Michael Easter describes in his recent New York Times best-seller, “The Scarcity Loop”.
Thanks to emerging research and influencers like Andrew Huberman, dopamine has been a trending topic online over the past few years. It’s a neurochemical that affects many aspects of our drive, health and behavior.
According to Dr. Susan Weinschenk, research initially believed that dopamine played a crucial role in the brain’s pleasure systems, leading to feelings of enjoyment and pleasure that drive behaviors like seeking food, sex, and drugs (all of which simply exploit one or more parts of our neurochemical pathways). However, further studies revealed that dopamine is important in stimulating seeking behavior. Dopamine prompts individuals to want, desire, seek, and search, elevating their overall arousal levels and directing their actions towards specific goals. This neurotransmitter fosters curiosity for new ideas and fuels the quest for knowledge.
Dopamine itself doesn’t produce any feelings of pleasure, it simply reinforces the link between activities we find enjoyable and the experience of pleasure. It’s closely related to adrenaline and the “get up and go” system.
Researcher Kent Berridge explains that there are two interconnected systems known as the “wanting” and the “liking.” The wanting system, driven by dopamine, motivates individuals to take action. On the other hand, the liking system brings satisfaction and prompts individuals to pause their pursuit. However, the dopamine-driven wanting system tends to be more powerful than the liking system, leading individuals to seek more than they need. This imbalance can result in a dopamine loop, where individuals continuously seek without experiencing satisfaction, leading to feelings of emptiness.
Michael Easter writes that, according to Thomas R. Zentall, a scientist who studies pigeons, this probably relates to how we evolved to find food in a world where food was scarce. You need food to survive. There’s the opportunity to get food but you don’t know where the food is and you don’t know how much you’re going to find. You spend your days foraging. One place may not have food so you go to another place and might find a couple of berries but provides fewer calories than it took you to burn to get them. You forage in another place and find nothing. Then you go to another place and BAM — JACKPOT! You find a large source of food and therefore you survive. You have to repeat that game every single day. All animal brains are programmed with this fundamental “operating system” because it is so important for our survival.
It’s no wonder that modern humans struggle with various forms of “dopamine sickness”. Capitalism is ever more efficient at providing consumers faster, cheaper, easier and better versions of what we crave and want, bombarding us with an abundance that has the potential to lead to addiction and raise our default threshold of what gives us pleasure. I don’t want to be alarmist, but innocuous activities like eating ice cream, scrolling through posts on a social media app or even “window shopping” for consumer goods on websites can become addictions that may lead to a desensitization to the simple pleasures of rewarding engaging work, leisure and human connection that bring us happiness.
Social media and many game apps in particular are meticulously designed to exploit our dopamine systems using the same mechanism that makes gambling addictive: variable-ratio reinforcement. By adding randomization and unpredictability to the frequency and quantity of rewards, it rapidly reinforces our behavior to want more and more.
The antidote to all this is quite simple conceptually, but hard as hell to implement.
We have to reintroduce abstinence, boredom and intentional discomfort back into our lives.
Sorry. If you were waiting for the five easy life hacks, I’m afraid there aren’t any.
And by abstinence, that means not only making a brutally honest inventory of the behaviors that we may be addicted to, or may becoming addicted to, but understanding how we restore and maintain a healthy baseline through an awareness of pleasure seeking “loops” and regularly engage in novel, difficult and uncomfortable things so we can experience more joy and deeper satisfaction in our lives.
Over-Stimulation
Over-stimulation via passive consumption of information is one of the more insidious temptations in the digital age. A few weeks ago, a series of storms knocked the power grid out for around five hours after work, right around the time that my wife and I would be preparing a meal and kicking back to watch TV. It was a stark and sudden pause of all the comforts of modern life. It was raining. We didn’t want to go outside. So, we lit a candle and just sat in the dark with nothing to do but talk. I suggested that we also not look at our phones, because the cellular towers were still operational. It was difficult, and we eventually did look at our phones, which reminded me that, despite my regimen of digital detoxing, just how addicted we were to a constant stream of passive information consumption. It’s different when you plan and mentally prepare for something.
Good Discomfort
We recently took a short weekend retreat with a few friends to a peaceful cabin in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee to disconnect, relax and hike in nature. One evening we were playing a card game that asked open ended questions to spark conversation. The question came up, “What’s the most delicious meal you’ve ever eaten?”
After others offered interesting responses describing a fine meal designed by a chef at a fine restaurant, my turn came. As I scanned my memory, I couldn’t really think of a fine restaurant meal to match, and for some reason the meal that stood out to me was a very simple one. When I was a freshman in college, like most young students, I was broke, didn’t have a job and was provided a modest stipend in the form of a meal plan card that I could redeem at one small university grocery shop or in cafeterias that served meals on a fixed schedule. For whatever reason, I had exhausted my funds by the end of the month and decided that, for the first time in my life, I’d fast for two days. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? By the second day I was ravenous. I ran into a friend out in the quad and when I described my situation, he laughed and said “Come on dude. I’ll make you some food. There’s no reason to starve.” We went to his dorm room and he grabbed a can of LeSeur sweet peas, margarine, salt and pepper and we went down to the basement communal kitchen area. He prepared the peas in a sauce pan and we talked.
As I sat and ate the peas, I couldn’t believe how delicious they were. My hunger made the experience of tasting a simple food I had eaten my entire life a blissful delight. I’ve had similar experiences following intentional fasting since, but I’ll never forget those peas.
Our ancestors constantly encountered discomfort on a daily basis. Hunger, thirst, exposure to extreme weather and strenuous activity were just a normal part of life. One of the problems with our modern experience is that it’s extremely easy to avoid any significant physical discomfort. Food is so abundant that we throw 30% of it in the garbage. Obesity is epidemic. We have climate controlled homes, cars and office spaces. There’s little to no need for the average person to do physically demanding activities unless they work in a job that involves manual labor or voluntarily exercise. Walking long distances, a constant activity for our ancestors, estimated at around 7.5 miles a day is now unnecessary. Boredom as we once knew it is now practically extinct thanks to the constant companion of the smartphone. The average American spends a staggering 478 minutes or 7.9 hours per day consuming digital media.
If you’ve ever gone primitive off-grid camping in the wilderness for a few days, served in the military or have had the misfortune being homeless, you probably encountered discomfort that is similar to what was once completely normal for our hunter gatherer ancestors. You may have been hot, cold, had to hike long distances, were bitten by insects, had to sleep on a hard surface, ate unsavory or unusual food and felt bored without your usual luxuries of television or online activities. The longer and more often you camp, the more you acclimate to it and enjoy the highly stimulating natural environment, sunlight, and fresh air packed full of oxygen and natural anti-inflammatory compounds produced by plants called terpenes.
When you return home you may notice something very interesting: the simplest of modern comforts are once again luxurious. Restaurant food is utterly delicious, possibly overwhelming. A hot shower or bath is better than a five star spa experience. Your bed is unbelievably soft and comfortable. You probably sleep like a baby.
If this was an augmented reality video game, it might read, Congratulation! You’ve returned to baseline!
There are multiple factors that contribute to this fascinating baseline effect, and two key concepts are what psychologists call “Optimal Stimulation Theory” and “Prevalence Induced Concept Change.”
Optimal Stimulation Theory
In psychology, Optimal Stimulation Theory suggests that all animals, including humans require a certain level of stimulation in order to thrive. If we do not receive adequate stimulation, we seek it out elsewhere. In today’s society, human lives have significantly deviated from the way we evolved to live. We no longer have to work for our food, spend less time outdoors, exert less physical effort, and have become less connected to others. As a result, we search for stimulation in alternative ways such as through our phones, drug and alcohol use, and excessive shopping. However, if we can incorporate positive forms of stimulation into our lives it can provide long-term benefits. Although it may seem obvious, we often fail to take action on our own because these temptations trap us. It requires conscious effort to create meaningful experiences that counteract the influence of these distractions, which contribute to feelings of loneliness, unhappiness, and various mental health disorders and addictions.
Prevalence Induced Concept Change
In a recent series of studies, Daniel Gilbert, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, along with his post-doctoral student David Levari and several colleagues, have shown that as the prevalence of a problem decreases, individuals tend to redefine the problem itself. This means that as a problem diminishes in size, people’s perceptions of the problem expand, potentially causing them to overlook the fact that the issue has been resolved. According to Gilbert, “When problems become less common, we are more likely to identify additional issues as problems. Our studies suggest that as the world improves, we become more critical of it, potentially leading us to mistakenly believe that no real progress has been made. It appears that progress has a tendency to disguise itself.”
In other words, humans need problems. If we don’t have any immanent problems, we have a tendency to blow trivial problems out of proportion. Think about how this relates to the media we consume. Media algorithms are not always intentionally designed to reinforce negatively biased information, but almost all of them are designed to feed us more of what we want. If social media is massive experiment of human bias, it’s clear that our biases are negative. Stephen Pinker’s book “Enlightenment Now” provides 576 pages of scientific evidence in the form of research, charts and anecdotes that humans are objectively better off than ever before and that progress has been overwhelmingly positive, yet so many of us seem to be convinced that the world is going to hell in a hand basket.
Once again, we can think of this in evolutionary terms. Humans that proactively sought to identify and solve problems were more likely to pass on their genes. A tribal leader who was constantly ruminating on the worst possible outcomes and was motivated to store provisions, increase defensive capabilities from competitors, and control more resources through conquest was more likely to survive, thrive and pass on those traits to their offspring.