Watched ’the Drama’ this afternoon.

I won’t give away ’the big twist’, although it happens fairly early on in the movie.

This is a genuine love story, rather than a ‘drama’. It starts off as a meet cute ’typical romance film’ and ends as a more realistic take on the two people sharing their intimate inner worlds with each other.

We’re all reacting to projections of one another. Maybe one way to make long lasting relationships work is to move past those illusions and see them for what they are; your own inner model of someone.

Instead, what we should try to do is see the person in front of you as they already are.

Accept that they are changing (as are you), and that the task is to ‘begin again’ and see one with unfiltered eyes at every moment.

That was what I felt the ending was getting at. A very cute and hopeful ending.

I came across this fantastic distinction by Venkatesh Rao on different forms of writing. Particularly in dividing writing into instrumental and metamorphic.

Instrumental writing is that which is done for some end. To convey information, persuade, cajole, entertain, pillory etc. You have a goal for the writing. Examples include writing emails, reports, how to guides, scientific writing, journalism, news reports, business books, screenplays etc.

Metamorphic writing is that which ‘attempts to change the author in unpredictable ways’. They are about transforming the self. “If you don’t like, or are bored with, who you are right now, whether as a writer, or more generally as a person, you can write yourself into an unpredictable new version.” Examples include : journals, personal blogs, poetry, fiction, memoirs, research writing, spiritual texts etc.

There is an overlap between the two modes, some forms of instrumental writing will have a metamorphic effect and change you as a person, although I suspect the email you are about to write does not fall into that category.

In general, the books about the craft of writing I love (Writing down the bones, The Artists Way) generally promote a metamorphic mode of writing. The act of writing as being a process of self transformation, where you are planting seeds within the garden of your mind that overtime bloom and change how one sees the world.

It’s more akin to meditation- about changing the lens through which one sees. Externalising thought changes the thinker. This is why Natalie Goldberg says that writing for her is a zen practice. It’s a spiritual practice.

I’m curious at where AI fits into this distinction. Clearly it will help with instrumental writing, aiding with research, helping form more persuasive arguments. Rao says that the ‘creator economy’ is 99%+ based on instrumental works. With AI assisted writing, that number is only going to increase.

But can AI assisted writing be metamorphic?

Many people are using it as a personal journal that talks back to you, a digital therapist. It can function as a sparring partner when prompted correctly, a mirror to bounce off ideas. Pre-AI, other humans would have played this role, but AI can do the same without any added moral judgements.

But at the same time, AI will agree to whatever you say. It will hallucinate. It will make logical errors (maybe humans do this all the time too). So it’s sensible to have some cognitive defences or awareness to recognise this.

I suspect that you also need cognitive friction for metamorphic writing to ‘work’. You have to sit and live with the uncomfortable questions. Sit with your confusion and inability to articulate certain thoughts to get to the juicy self transformation. AI has the danger of smoothing that friction, or worse yet, deluding you. Too many people who have been one shot by AI.

For now, I’m using AI in a very limited fashion, never to actually write anything down, but for research if I’m doing any instrumental forms of writing. But I feel that for metamorphic forms of writing, it is not going to ‘work’.

Last week, I climbed Mount Snowdon in Wales, a 5 hour leisurely journey up the Pyg track and down the Miner’s track. Every year 600,000 people make their way up the slopes and summit the mountain; the busiest peak in Wales.

After reaching the summit, I came across a fantastic consequence of popularity of the hike, there was a queue to take a picture at the summit. Not a small queue either, probably a 20-30 minute wait time.

I was happy to snap a picture with the sign and climb back down.

On the way down, I kept thinking about the concept of instrumentalism; the idea of treating things as mere tools for achieving some further end, like health, productivity or personal wellbeing. For example, ‘hitting your 10,000 steps, or going for a walk in nature because it will lower your blood pressure’, or climbing Snowdon to grab a picture at the top.

There is nothing inherently wrong with instrumentalism, but it struck me at how it’s slowly weaselled its way into every corner of modern existence. Every activity we do has some justification as to how it’s good for you.

Meditate so you can perform better (the entire Headspace/Calm pitch). Reading challenges (52 books a year challenge!). Food reduced to macronutrients. The instagrammification of travel. Gratitude journalling to rewire your brain.

Julian Baggini in this wonderful essay tackles the instrumentalisation of everything. The essay is titled the six second hug, a slight at Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project book, where she hugs her husband for at least six seconds because her research told her that’s the minimum time to promote oxytocin and serotonin release.

Seemingly, we’ve entered a period where virtually everything good in life, art, nature, friendship, learning, keeping a diary, laughing, is reframed as not being valuable in itself, but as a tool for achieving something else.

Instrumental activities have their place in the world. We have to turn up at our job to feed ourselves and house our children.

But what’s wrong when all your activities being instrumental?

Firstly, it hollows out the activity. The motivation behind why you are doing something matters and it changes how you experience it. Two people can inhabit entirely different internal worlds based on their motivational structure for doing something.

For example, if you’re hugging someone with the purpose of releasing oxytocin, rather than because you love them. It looks the same from the outside, but one of those is infinitely thinner than the other.

Moreover, trite as the sentiment is, the journey matters not the destination. The end isn’t itself intrinsically valuable, because once you reach it (if you can really reach it), then what?

Health is not valuable in itself, but as a foundation to allow you to do meaningful things. Wealth only matters for what it affords you, not an ever larger number to aspire to. Friendship is valuable for its own sake, not because it ‘releases endorphins in your brain’.

Treating activities as instrumental can also drain them of any potential benefits that they actually do have. Suppose you read that loneliness is bad, and that it worsens your health outcomes. So you reach out to fix that.

But if you’re only socialising because the research tells you to, you’re still centred on yourself. The value of friendship is that it takes you out of your own self concern and into care for others. How much ‘value’ are you really going to get with the focus being on yourself? It’s cargo culting friendship. The internal motivational structures matter.

Furthermore, instrumentalism traps one in the future. Everything you do has to be justified by some downstream pay off. Baggini in his essay writes that “life isn’t preparation for the future, its a game that’s already started and time is running out”. You don’t ‘get’ to the end and complete the video game. It’s a river that’s always in motion.

Seeing the world through the instrumentalist lens becomes a habit over time and the consequence is a dearth of meaning. You end up with a chain of ‘instruments’ pointing at other instruments with nothing of genuine value at the terminus. The consequence is some sort of existential nihilism or ‘meaning crisis’ as John Vervaeke puts it.

What’s the alternative?

In asking that question, I fear that I fall into the trap once more.

In asking what the alternative to instrumentalisation is, I’m subtly asking ‘what does the non-instrumental approach get me?’. The answer is nothing, and that is the point. Things that are intrinsically valuable don’t need any justifications, you do them because you are internally drawn to do them. You want to do them.

A commenter on Baggini’s essay put one of my favourite quotes by Victor Frankl related to this.

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.” Victor Frankl

Surrender is the right word.

Thought is not the way through. It’s instead immersion into the flow of life. The quietening of the self and ego, rather than the reinforcing of it.

It is in the moments that I was not engaged in thought on the way up Snowdon, where I felt there was ’nothing to do’ that I felt alive. No peak to reach. No external metric to optimise. That is, until my thoughts pulled me back to the instrumental worldview.

Perhaps it is difficult to escape, especially for those of us inclined to optimise everything, but having outlets where there is ’nothing to do, nowhere to go’ puts it all into perspective.