“When you’re a single cell in the body of a giant, it’s hard to understand what the giant’s doing, or why it is the way it is, because you can’t really zoom out and look at the whole thing all at once. But we do our best.”

This is the first in what I hope to be a series of talks drawn from the series of posts on Wait But Why called The Story of Us. This series is the result of Tim Urban, creator of Wait But Why, following “some sick-ass rabbit down a hole for three years, deep into U.S. history, world history, evolutionary psychology, political theory, and neuroscience, through dozens of books, hundreds of datasets and articles, and into literally thousands of conversations.
…
“Part of what [Tim has] spent three years working on is a new language we can use to think and talk about our societies and the people inside of them. In typical Wait But Why form, the language is full of new terms and metaphors and, of course, lots and lots of badly drawn pictures. It all amounts to a new lens. Looking through this lens out at the world, and inward at myself, things make more sense now.”

“In the early parts of the series, we’ll get familiar with the new lens, and as the series moves on, we’ll start using the lens to look at [more challenging topics]. If I can do my job well, by the end of the journey, everything will make more sense to you too.”

“As with all Wait But Why posts, everything in this series is open for debate—it’s [Tim’s] latest draft in a never-ending work in progress.” As the series progresses, your comments and discussion will help enhance our clarity and understanding.

This week’s speaker will be Jack.

After the talk, we’ll have a group discussion to explore the ideas presented, and to share related thoughts, resources, and personal experiences.

This is an online event hosted on Zoom. You can register for it here:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88100488322?pwd=X1pf7BJakUqEIa8zFbc7MToYlrCMYj.1