On SLC Sushi and Stories
Sharing stories over sushi in Salt Lake City was a great way to celebrate a friend's birthday and share visions for the upcoming year.
“Never order sushi in square states.”
That’s what one of my running club friends told me nearly twenty years ago when I was in law school. As she explained it, the square states in the middle of the country are so far from the coasts that the sushi is mediocre at best. It’s a sensible rule, though there are exceptions in Denver or Phoenix where the size of the market creates a demand for better sushi than one would get in a smaller city.
When visiting a friend from law school for his birthday this weekend, we went out for sushi at Yellowfinn Sushi Bar and Grill. My friend moved to Salt Lake City after living for many years in San Francisco, because the vibe and business climate were better than California, and the skiing was much closer and could be reached with less traffic.
Both of us have been through some serious business and personal challenges in the last year. Company failures, legal fights, betrayals, embezzlement, and the challenge of maintaining equilibrium in the face of adversity. We’re both concerned about the country, our security, our safety, the prospects for respect and flourishing in the face of forces of anger and division.
Before dinner, we watched “Leave the World Behind,” the new Netflix film. It’s a well done thriller, where a mysterious crisis threatens a family of four who just wanted to get away for the weekend. Julia Roberts plays the NYC ad executive who is cynical and sarcastic and rude and more than a little bit bigoted toward the owner of the house they are renting who shows up unexpectedly, played brilliantly by Mahershala Ali.
The movie feels preachy and overdone at times, but it gets past the harsh stereotypes in the first act to explore more of the human emotions and tribalism that has infected our modern society. Zombie movies have always flourished in times of national crisis and anxiety, because they allow us to deal with the collapse of trust and institutions on a screen as a catharsis to deal with the breakdown in the real world.
One of the functions of dreams is to give our whole mind time to wrestle with a problem undistracted by the pressures of the waking world, and play out strategies and tactics with the safety of knowing that even if things get really bad, the worst thing that can happen is waking up in a cold sweat.
Movie studios make stories that help us all dream together, showing us a fictionalized version of the fundamental human struggle in a crisis: do we see other people as cooperators in a common struggle, or do we see them as an additional threat of theft, violence, and consumption of our scarce resources?
In real times of crisis, people are pro-social. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the vast majority of people came together to help each other. Could our governments have handled things better by trusting people to mostly make good choices for themselves and others? I think so, but people mostly did the right thing anyway.
Could we have handled the path out of the crisis better by trusting people to mostly do the right thing? I think so, but most people did the right things there too.
This current crisis in our country, with angry tribes fighting on social media that is built to generate high emotional valence, to get the clicks, to go viral, to start brigades, it’s one we know how to face, but we have to remember.
Go visit a friend. Have a meal or a drink together. Talk about what is important to you, what your plans and goals are, how you can work together to achieve them. Ask for help. Be honest and be kind.
As Arnold Schwarzenegger recommends in his new book, “Be useful.”
Maybe break some rules that may have outlasted their correctness or usefulness. We broke the rule about sushi in a square state and were better off for it. The world is getting better all the time, be part of making it better.
Yours truly,
Nick
P.S. If you want to help, supporting the Libertarian Policy Foundation as we train candidates to focus on common ground and bring people together to fix what needs to be broken would be very much appreciated.