Making video essays on YouTube has to be one of my favourite things to do. From finding a topic,
to doing research, writing a script, recording the script, editing the video and sharing it.
All these steps are fulfilling in themselves, but arriving at a finalized product that you,
the creator can be proud of, is an incredible feeling.
The kind of video essay I’m referring to is a relatively new form of media,
I’m talking about more specifically the YouTube video essay.
Not that it needs to be published on YouTube, but what I mean by it
is a video essay freely accessible, on a broad variety of topics made by a single creator.
And this last element, the single creator, is really important to me.
That’s what makes the YouTube video essay singular.
To put it simply, the YouTube video essay starts with someone who finds something fascinating and
then goes on explaining why they find that thing fascinating or compelling.
The result of this is a communication of passion,
not an abstract interest relayed by a team hired to make a video, but personal genuine passion.
My first interaction with the YouTube video-essay was through one of its pioneers,
Nerdwriter, as it might be for many of you. Because of my particular interests, I was drawn
to his art analysis videos which I hadn’t seen anything like before. It was a revelation to me,
as it probably was for many to-be video-essayists, because Nerdwriter proved it possible to showcase
something they love, explain why they love it and find an audience for that.
I wanted to create the Canvas right after this moment…
The Most Disturbing Painting was a pivotal video in my life.
It’s what made me want to make videos on art.
Not only did Nerdwriter make a video explaining Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son,
he made a video explaining why he liked it. His case was supported through eerie music,
audio effects, visual effects, amazing script supported by strong historical research,
incredible narration and all of that was powered by the creator’s passion.
Not by a team who made concessions about the topic of the video or worse, who were dictated the topic
of the video, but by one person who really wanted to share that topic. And the passion transpires.
I’ve never been really good at any art, but this, this art is what I wanted to do.
All of this is an incredibly long introduction to say that
I’ve been really excited to read Evan Pushak’s Escape into Meaning.
It’s a book of 11, often personal, essays and,
though they widely differ in subjects, from public benches, to Jerry Seinfeld,
Lord of the Rings and Superman, they overlap in themes and are all driven by Evan’s passion.
And if there’s one thing this book is worth reading for, it’s Pushak’s contagious passion
and it’s really what allows such a diverse range of topics to have cohesion in the book.
I think another important element for this cohesion between the essays,
is the essay introducing us to the book, which was personally my favourite, Emerson’s Magic.
It makes for a great introduction, not only because it traces back Pushak’s
educational journey, but also, and most importantly, it outlines the origins of
his intellectual curiosity. And why would we read a book of essays if not for that,
intellectual curiosity. Pushak is writing these essays because of this curiosity and,
as he underlines from Emerson, we learn by expressing, not by thinking.
And Pushak loves to learn and expressing is what he does best,
both through his video essays and through these written essays.
Though he says he struggles with writing, the subject of his last essay,
he still thoroughly loves it, or at least it feels like he does when he writes. And, if I understand
correctly, Pushak loves writing, he loves making video essays because he loves learning.
When he describes Emerson in this first essay, it sometimes feels like he’s describing himself:
“He’s a thinker bursting with ecstasy for life, and his prose is an attempt to
bottle that ecstasy. He approaches everything with a child’s sensitivity. Often the essays
swell with excitement, like a nine-year-old itching to tell you the coolest thing ever.”
And how can a Nerdwriter fan read this and not think of Nerdwriter? Pushak sometimes gets carried
away in his excitement, like a nine-year-old would and, in an act of self-awareness, will write:
“Yes, I know. I just spent six thousand words refuting one fictional character’s argument
about another fictional character. I should probably go outside.”
No Evan, don’t go outside, we love it.
As I said, this passion is what I love this book
for. I read a whole essay on the Lord of the Rings, I read a whole essay on Jerry Seinfeld,
I read a whole essay on Superman and I’ve enjoyed them all despite not having seen the
Lord of the Rings movies, or any Seinfeld skit, or any Superman movies or comics. I
probably couldn’t appreciate these essays to their full potential, but I was still able
to appreciate them through Pushak’s ability to craft accessible and passionate essays.
Now, though I’d definitely recommend this book,
I still want to criticize it for one thing because I found that one thing annoying.
But before going into that, I want to talk about biases.
I started reading this book with many biases, obviously.
I’m a huge fan of Nerdwriter, so of course I’m inclined in liking what’s included in here.
I read the whole book with Evan’s voice in my head and, on the last sentence of each essay,
I would include long pauses between words to make everything more dramatic.
I also went into this book as a content creator,
as a video essayist. There are many parts in this book dedicated to the communication of ideas,
either through Emerson, Seinfeld or through the process of writing. Communicating ideas
is Nerdwriter’s job and it’s also mine. I could really appreciate and relate to these points.
These biases made me appreciate the work even more, however,
I also went into this book with a bias that would make me appreciate this book less.
The essays I usually read are political essays and, more specifically, anti-capitalist essays.
I’ve made it clear in the past that I’m an anarchist, so I went into this book
as someone very critical of capitalism, without expecting a critique of capitalism in this book.
However, there were many seeds of capitalist critiques, though often incomplete.
In I Think the Internet Wants to be my Mind, Pushak criticizes not only Apple,
but also the fossil fuel industry, for essentially getting away with ruining the world for profits
by convincing the world that social problems can be resolved through individual responsibility
rather than collectively. However, when faced with the issue of profit-driven social-media addiction,
Nerdwriter hopes for some impressive people to design a new business model for the internet,
as if business in itself wasn’t the issue here.
In The Comforts of Cyberpunk, Pushak says: “Cyberpunk turns those messy feelings into
a place, where it’s no longer necessary to resist the splintering pressures of society because the
fight’s over and we lost.” Who’s “we” and who are “we” fighting? What are we fighting for?
In Ode to Public Benches, one of my favourite essays by far,
Pushak talks about how one of the beautiful aspects of public benches
is that they aren’t commodified. He also talks about how market forces ruined our cities
and made them car-dependent. He talks about gentrification, homelessness and how hostile
architecture “cruelly harms the homeless, without addressing the root causes of their predicament”.
In Jerry Seinfeld’s Intangibles, Pushak almost condemns capitalism:
“Advertising (and by extension, capitalism) only offers us a superficial happiness, and maybe
that’s not the most we could hope for, but it’s not bad, either. Superficial joys are still joys,
after all. They’re “pretty good” and pretty good is good enough.
There’s something strangely freeing about this perspective.
We know consumerism and materialism are Bad Things. […] We are all hopelessly
entangled in the system we criticize. That’s a feature of global capitalism:
the implication of everyone in a great number of morally messy activities.
It can make you feel bewildered, impotent, guilty, apathetic - most of all, hypocritical.”
He ends this essay with an example of being better as “we could fight for a system that
prioritizes people over profits and real relationships over transactional ones.”
This last essay on Seinfeld was the best criticism of capitalism in the book. Though capitalism
often hides behind the words “materialism” and “consumerism” in it, that was good enough for me.
Those were just some examples. Pushak points out many issues with capitalism, which is great,
but fails to do anything with them. There’s something frustrating about that.
The reason for why this is frustrating to me can be found in his fourth essay:
When Experts Disagree.
Pushak explains how his political beliefs are very often informed
by the opinion of experts. When it comes to climate change, he explains,
he can agree with it because there’s pretty much a scientific consensus on the subject.
However, what if experts disagree? He gives the example of the idea of a 15$/h
federal minimum wage which some experts think is a good idea and some others don’t.
He later goes on saying he believes in an increase in the federal minimum wage,
without specifying he’d like it to be 15$, and says:
“But can I say with certainty that this is the right thing to do?
No, I can’t. The best information I can gather on the question nudges me in one direction,
but it isn’t conclusive. Credible experts have divergent views. That’s a stalemate I can’t break,
and as far as I can tell, neither can anyone else. Anybody speaking about this
issue with complete conviction - from the president of the United States to
your pal Gene from accounting - is either ignorant or dishonest.”
“I’ve learned a lot in the last decade, but feel less sure than ever.
It’s bad timing. The world pleads for good people to stand behind
their beliefs. […] I’ve become deeply skeptical of conviction in recent years,
and much quieter at dinner parties as a result (at least when politics comes up).”
And we can feel that skepticism, this hesitation to stand behind your beliefs.
Reading this as someone who wants to radically change the world is so heart-breaking and almost
frustrating. This might come off as harsh, but Evan seems, in a way, for a lack of a better term,
politically castrated. He’s skeptical of conviction, to the point of calling ignorant or
dishonest, people who defend a point of view with complete conviction, without scientific consensus.
At first, the need for scientific consensus to hold a conviction
might seem like the most rational thing to do but, of course,
the argument is faulty. I hope Evan watches this and if you are, I’d love to know what you think.
It’s impossible to predict the future, obviously, so it can be very difficult,
if not equally impossible, to predict the outcomes of a policy. Nobody can
be certain of the exact outcomes of a policy, we can agree on that.
But that’s not what conviction is. Conviction is not being confident about knowing the outcomes
of a policy or an idea. Conviction is being convinced that the risk of adopting this policy
is worth taking. When my pal Gene from accounting has complete conviction for the 15$/h federal
minimum wage, he’s not saying he knows, with absolute certainty, that it will be beneficial.
Every policy or social change entails risks and Gene thinks, with complete conviction,
that the 15$/h federal minimum wage is worth taking the risk.
Gene looked at the data, they assessed the risks of a 15$/h minimum wage. Then,
Gene looked around him, his family, his kids, his colleagues and Gene asked themselves,
is it worth taking this assessed risk? Conviction is risk assessment.
I think saying people with conviction, or certainty on unsettled issues,
are ignorant or dishonest, though mostly still good people, can come off as a bit pretentious.
It also raises some red flags pertaining to technocracy.
It might sound counter-intuitive, but democratic decisions can’t always be entirely based off
expert opinions. When experts disagree, we don’t shrug, we look at what the risks are
and, if we judge that they’re worth it, we go for it and we try it out.
When we have conviction and we try to convince others to vote for a proposal,
we’re not trying to convince them that this proposal is 100% right and that virtually all
experts agree on it. If that was the case, nothing would change because it’s
impossible to do. What we are doing is convincing them to take a risk to improve our lives.
Evan comes off as someone who doesn’t want to take any risk, perhaps from fear of being wrong and
misleading the people he loves, and I understand that, but as long as we can’t
predict the future, politics will remain that, taking risks. To some, the 15$/h
federal minimum wage is a risk worth taking, to others, it’s not. And then there are some that
can’t make up their mind because, after looking at the research, experts disagree.
However, aside from that, I really enjoyed Evan’s book. He makes himself
very vulnerable at times, which makes for personal essays, funny at times, entertaining,
thought-provoking and I’m already excited to get a sequel one day. Escape InTwo Meaning or something.
This book was obviously carefully crafted, Evan put a lot of work into it and it shows.
If you like Nerdwriter’s video essays, these are even more candid, more personal, more detailed
and just as pleasurable. Let me know what you thought of the book if you read it yourself!
And, as always, thank you for watching, thank you for liking and subscribing if you have already.
And I’d like to thank Preston Light, Virdee and all my other patrons who support this channel.
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Thank you!