The Summer of Our Discontent

While the moral decay of American society is an over-discussed topic, this summer has made me think a lot about Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent. The book previously felt a little ham-handed and lacking the subtly I have personally experienced in observing moral decay, but recent events and actions, from a variety of sides, made be think that perhaps I’ve just not been paying attention outside of my narrow little world.

Sure, there are always politicians, celebrities, and financial crooks to point to as examples but we’ve always had those exceptions and they feel more like an unfortunate, but manageable, externality of capitalism, rather than a pervasive decline in American morality. However, watching people within the tech industry this summer, both the elites and people I know personally, I’ve observed an unfortunate tendency for people to be more and more willing to embrace their inner Ethan Hawley. That is an erudite and polite way to say, being willing to compromise their ethics for self-serving means.

This is not a new phenomenon but watching it up close definitely is for me. What is most striking are the ways in which people, both elites and nobodies, are able to weave a new story to justify their compromises. It is especially compelling as so many of these people are highly intelligent, independently-minded, contrarian people who are used to going against the flow. And yet, when the ‘vibe’ shifts, they find a way to justify going along with it. I think what is so surprising is that their intelligence does not make them more resistant to these compromises but actually much better at accepting and adapting to them. It indicates that the tech industry, broadly speaking, has no greater moral high ground than Wall Street or the CCP. In the end, we are mostly self-serving and will just adapt to circumstances as needed to ensure our own success.

Maybe Tethics really is what guides us, after all.

Back to Steinbeck, I’ll just say that this might be a good time for some people in the industry to re-read The Winter of Our Discontent. While we hopefully won’t be deporting our friends for economic gain, I suspect there will still be some personal reflections of morality and ethics coming up and I hope those people have someone around to swap out the razor blades from their pocket.