I Want To Be A Public Intellectual

On Losing Sight of The Way and The Future of Occam’s Lab

Actually a rock star visionary but I’ll settle for intellectual.

A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They’re like strange countries that you have to enter.
-Bob Dylan Chronicles

Today¹ I saw A Complete Unknown, the film about Bob Dylan making the leap from folk to rock music. Any film has to make certain trade-offs in authenticity but I liked its portrayal of how fed up Dylan was with being stuffed into a shoebox. How being a “folk singer” came with all these rules he was expected to follow.

I’m fed up with some things myself.

• Publishing and how publishers try to keep all the power to themselves so authors have no choice but to stay with contracts that don’t earn them what they should earn.

• Authors accepting the outdated idea that money is dirty and they’re not supposed to want to get by on their writing.

• Authors embracing the outdated idea that artists are not supposed to be marketers, that selling your own art makes you less of an artist.

Literature doesn’t work the way it used to anymore. Money by itself is neither good nor evil. I’d rather be an entrepreneur with enough in the bank to eat and enjoy life than a poet living on air and cheap coffee. I won’t be forced to choose between art and financial security.

In other words, I want to write stories but I also want to make money.

Bob Dylan was able to do what he did because he was already a popular artist by the time Like a Rolling Stone came out. Some folk fans were scandalised but many other people loved it. In a similar vein, Brandon Sanderson only raised millions with his kickstarter campaigns after he became a successful author with a traditional publisher.

You have to bow to the system first, get the means to forge your own path. Nowadays, it’s harder than ever before to make a living just writing fiction—even if you start online, building a direct relationship with readers through platforms like Substack.

I’ve been trying to get fiction to be my money machine but been dissatisfied with results over the past two or so years of writing Occam’s Lab. I’m not so idealistic as to believe that a (mostly) unknown author could get by on a (mostly) fiction newsletter. So I asked ChatGPT for advice on how to monetize my specific skills and knowledge. ChatGPT recommended creating nonfiction content around Japanese culture and expat lifestyle in Japan. ChatGPT drew up content calendars and strategies for building a following on social media to drive traffic back to the newsletter. I started drafting, writing copy, planning my days. I called it The Yen Files.

Then I read the death of the public intellectual by

bea

and decided to be a public intellectual instead.

Public intellectuals were simply translators, people who helped turn complex ideas into mainstream discussion. But now, intellectuals are trapped producing work for journals and conferences rather than the public sphere. As a result, public-centered intellectualism has become rare. It’s not because intellectuals of that caliber no longer exist, but that the structures that once made their ideas visible have been buried under layers of institutional gatekeeping.

I believe we need more deep and complex conversations online, to push back against the flood of mere aesthetics and intellectual echo chambering. Many newsletters and podcasts are already contributing but I want to add my voice as well. Reading this piece reminded me of that.

When I asked ChatGPT how to grow my newsletter, how to be successful on social media, it gave me hyper-sensational headlines and captions designed to snatch attention, manipulate emotion, and get as many readers as possible to engage or buy. I told myself this is what marketing is but it still didn’t feel right. It was too manipulative to be authentic².

Perhaps “successful online writer” is just another shoebox, one I’ve been trying to stuff myself into. bea’s piece, however, reminded me of the things I enjoy thinking and writing about: literature, art, culture, how we should live, how to define death, love, happiness, etc. This is what I want to spend my time doing! Bob Dylan, too, never thinks about his fans when writing his famous lyrics. They come from a mystical place deep within him or the cosmos. He never writes to market but he always knows the right thing to say.

I’m not satisfied with how Occam’s Lab has been going but I don’t want to abandon it altogether—this is what I want to write about, after all. All it needs is a subtle refocusing of the lens, the way I frame or talk about what I write. How? That’s what I’m figuring out now.

In the meantime, here’s what I have planned or been working on and hope to publish in the near future.

• Deep dive on moving and finding an apartment in Japan

• Essay on Paradise Lost, which I’m reading and loving right now

• Essay on why we should cancel IKEA

• The conclusion to Season 3 of my serial Requiem of the Moth

If you like any of those things, stick around! And if you have a friend who might enjoy Occam’s Lab, please share!

I’m grateful for all your support—now more than ever. Thank you for reading!

1. A few weeks ago now.

2. Which leads me to believe that AI can’t really grasp the concept of authenticity but that’s a topic for another day.