On friendship

I got a lot of feedback on my WaPo op-ed yesterday. The big categories were:

• Agreeing with me, often in heartbreaking and sometimes comical ways.

• Blaming Republicans:

This seems to miss the point if you are looking towards solutions you could actually do something about. Whatever your party, I still think we need to heed Eric Liu's reminder that "you are not IN traffic, you ARE traffic" and look to what we can influence to improve the situation.

• And dismissing the argument entirely.

But there was one comment that I want to dwell in for a moment, because it feels both scary and healing at the same time.

This commenter starts with "this the cost of a democracy," with which I agree in the sense that sclerosis does come with the territory, but disagree with in the sense that I believe we can no longer afford this cost, especially in the face of climate change. (See the second comment above.) The point about playing whack-a-mole with complexity is well-made, and somewhat true in my experience, but not entirely. But what deeply resonated with me is the last paragraph. "After having done a lot of system work flow unraveling over the years, it's still true that people with friendships formed outside of the workflow that make it work. We just have to accept that complaining is a part of what makes it work, and ignore 80% of that as noise. Real fundamental solutions are always in the works, because friendships are being formed by the chaos."

Real fundamental solutions are always in the works, because friendships are being formed by the chaos.

This is one the reasons I tell audiences that public service isn't just giving back -- that while it can be draining, in the end, you can get more than you give. What you get isn't just the feeling that your work matters, it's the friendships you make, and the strength of those friendships in part because of how much the work matters. It's been years since I read Sebastian Junger's Tribes, and while the greatest physical injury you're likely to get working in a bureaucracy is a paper cut (and I hope this doesn't come off as trivializing military service), there was still something in his description of the bonds that are formed in combat that resonated with the bonds that are formed trying to break through a bureaucratic stalemate to make some tiny corner of government work better for people.

Michael Lewis's The Premonition describes this too, not so much the value of friendship to the public servants but the ways in which these friendships can get stuff done "outside of the workflow," in the words of SteveT50. Lewis describes how, in the face of a frozen official response to the pandemic, an ad hoc group from all over government -- crossing agencies, roles, and federal, state, and local levels -- some of whom knew each other before the crisis hit and others who simply recognized in each other the will to act and developed near-instant trust, succeeds in creating an actual public health response. Real fundamental solutions are always in the works, because friendships are being formed by the chaos.

This observation will invite enormous criticism from various perspectives, and understandably. That's not how things should work. This kind of network-driven "friend-ocracy" can of course be used for terrible ends, and become deeply inequitable. But, as they say, two things can be true at the same time. It's also true that it's simply the natural reaction to a pendulum that's swung too far towards rigidity, towards a system that "sees like a state," that when it breaks, breaks in ways that deny our fundamental humanity. It's also true that friendship and mutual support is what keeps public servants going in the face of what seem like insurmountable challenges. It's also true that it's what keeps me doing this work, and what gives me hope. I'm endlessly grateful for all the people who answer my random emails, trust me with their stories, and conspire with me on seemingly crazy projects. Though I believe we are in a profound realignment of political tribes, I'm particularly grateful for those who do all of the above "across the aisle." Real fundamental solutions are always in the works, because friendships are being formed by the chaos.

There's something there. Thank you, SteveT50.