Dear Kate,
At least four years ago, at Soho House in New York, a 35-year-old with suede shoes and pine-scented cologne told me something.
He was at the bar by himself. He was flirting with my roommate, leaning into her barstool, ordering another round of drinks. Not to be left out, I was on a verbal tirade, talking, talking, talking. He worked in finance-something-or-other, and I wanted to show off, jabbering about cryptocurrencies, Tesla, what the markets might do next. We were at Soho House after all. âMarketsâ were what you talked about.
When my roommate tried to get a word in, chuckled âsheâs a kick, huh?â he leveled his eyes over his drink. Quietly, almost to himself, he said: âShe knows less than she thinks she does.â
It was the kind of thing I forgot immediately. The kind of thing you canât possibly acknowledge, or you might just shatter into a million pieces.
Itâs also the kind of thing that floats to the surface when you least expect it. Like when youâre in the dark, alone, watching the sun sink without any lights to turn on, crawling into bed with a flashlight and a bowl of spaghetti at 5:30 PM, singing to yourself to ward off the silence, watching icicles grow so long they become bars on the windows.
Last week, as the state of Texas fell into chaos, an equal meeting of natureâs brute force and mankindâs implacable arrogance, I thought of this sentence again and again.
âShe knows less than she thinks she does.â
The power is out. What does that mean?
Thereâs no cell service. Why?
I canât Google anything. What is going on?
âShe knows less than she thinks she does.â
My fridge isnât cold anymore. How long does it take for food to spoil? Do eggs last longer than meat? Does meat last longer than eggs?
The water is unsafe. How long do I need to boil it? One minute, two?
âShe knows less than she thinks she does.â
Hour 72. The power is still out. Why hasnât anyone fixed it?
I see cables from my window, frozen, encased in ice. Is that the problem?
The whole grid is down. What grid?
âShe knows less than she thinks she does.â
What do I really understand about the world beneath my feet?
Our modern economy prizes soft skills over hard ones. Awash in information, there is no need to know things anymore, not really. Smart people understand that to know things is inefficient. Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitter, the answers are all there. What would you ever need to know that you couldnât just look up? It takes time to know things, and you should use that time more productively.
You should use your time learning how to learn. Teach yourself to drink from the fire hydrant. Consume vast amounts of information, curate it, analyze it, regurgitate it, put it into blog posts, PowerPoint decks, and Excel sheets, always moving, always more.
The gentleman at Soho House had a high-value skillset like this. Iâm sure he could learn things quickly. I imagine he reads Substacks. Whitepapers. S-1s. 10Ks. Important paperwork, emails, tweets, Bloomberg terminal alerts.
But what happens when information stops? What happens when that cycle breaks down?
Consider the difference between our SoHo friend and a cook at a local elementary school cafeteria. In a crisis, the cook has knowledge: How to prepare food safely. How to prepare food for other people. How to stretch one ingredient into several meals. The cook is also likely to have knowledge of the community: Who is nearby? Who can help? Who might need to be helped? And because the cook works at a school, he also has knowledge about the public systems in place: Which buildings are emergency shelters, which campuses will be used for aid distribution. Where will the lights stay on.
Thatâs not information you can ferret out on Twitter. Thatâs the result of years of labor and attention. Thatâs knowledge.
Knowledge is all around us, in the skills it took generations of struggle to master. I think about the purposefulness of our grandparentsâ hands: Fixing the engine of a car, repairing the dishwasher with a wrench, welding raw pieces of iron into a gate. Iâve watched my grandfather do all three of those things. Itâs a marvel. And what about growing vegetables; fertilizing the soil; making preserves; roasting ham; baking German chocolate cakes out of eggs, flour, and sugar; stitching dresses from bolts of cloth? Iâve watched my grandmother do those things too.
How much does our generation actually know about the world? How does a combustion engine work? How does an HVAC system work? How does a septic tank work? How is waste water treated? How does your oven heat up? How do you make a jar of peach jam? How do you build a bird feeder?
What do you know, without looking anything up?
In many ways, practical knowledge has been devalued. Vocational programs remain âless thanâ four-year universities. âJust learn to codeâ is gold standard advice. TikTok prints millionaires, plumbers are scoffed at. Andreessen Horowitz, the firm that declared software is eating the world, also derided the U.S. economy for its ineptness at structural progress: weakness in constructing, building, producing value in the physical world. Boy, I wonder why?
We pour our time into laptops, podcasts, audiobooks, into hours and hours of information consumption, getting smarter every day. Confidence inflates itself. Egos grow impenetrable.
Then the power goes out. The electric grid breaks. Power plants freeze. Cell towers shut off. The 18-wheeler trucks that deliver our food stop driving. Water runs brown.
All of us, with our unquestioned certainty that the lights will always turn on, that Amazon will always deliver, that Google will always know the answerâwe know less than we think we do.
Thatâs a loss. Because knowledgeâpracticed, manual masteryâis beautiful. The material world is full of little miracles. Each time you run a hot bath, itâs a miracle. Each time you start up a car, itâs a miracle. Electricity is a miracle. Pound cake is a miracle. Understanding something in all its complexity, taking an hour or two to unravel its secrets, reveals beauty.
Imagine what you could learn about the floorboards of your house, about the pipes in the ground, about the wires across the sky, if only you thought to look?
On Friday morning, the sun came out. The temperature cracked 30 degrees. The snow melted away, and so did the fear. Trucks from Louisiana, Arkansas, and New Mexico drove all night to deliver Texans cans of baked beans, potatoes, strawberries, chicken thighs, sausage, eggs, milk, yogurt, bacon, butter, flour, water, and beer. The freezer aisles at grocery stores whirred to life. Lights clicked on. Plumbers climbed into their trucks, prepared to fix what was broken.
To be honest, it was a relief to have a crisis that only lasted a week. As quickly as it came, it slipped away. And yet, some things linger. Some things I canât forget.
A question remains: What do I really know?
My book rec: Leave the World Behind
I did not like this book. I was annoyed by this book. It was short, and fast, and it was uncomfortable. In âLeave The World Behind,â Rumaan Alam writes about two families trapped together as the world unravels. Neither really knows what to do. They donât know what action to take, so they donât really take any. They just flail about.
âI would be so much better prepared,â I thought as I read this book. âWhat are they doing?! What idiots!â
I finished reading it 48 hours before Texas froze over. I cursed Rumaan Alam out loud. He was exactly right. He captured not what we want to be in a crisis, but what we are: Flailing, self-pitying, and lost.
If youâre brave enough to look in the mirror, itâs worth reading.
The book: Leave The World Behind
My rating: đ€·ââïžđ€·ââïžđ€·ââïžđ€·ââïž
Read more: âArt Requires Not Knowingâ