How to Dream

I don’t have a browser on my iPhone. It’s quite tricky to pull that off on Apple’s software, because browsers are considered an essential feature of the operating system. In fact, when trying to manually delete a browser, you’re immediately presented with a modal saying “at least one browser app is required on iPhone.” The difficulty of defeating this mandate reflects the rapidly increasing tension between software’s being remarkably useful and colossally distracting. The reason I had to delete my browser was this distraction. Every Google search I make is inundated with short videos designed to suck me in. When a friend sends me a link to a social media post, I click the link. After clicking the link I become a subjugate of the algorithm—an algorithm which, because of its artificially-optimized features, is a more effective black hole for engagement than anything a human could have engineered.

My relationship with software straddles two separate worlds: at heart, I am a minimalist. I like backpacking, rock climbing, and appreciating autumn leaves—and I know that software’s pervasion into day-to-day life isn’t fundamentally necessary. Nevertheless, I was obsessed with LEGOs as a kid. Then, during 5th grade, it was origami. Nothing could stop my hands from creating. It wasn’t long before I discovered that, with computer programming, you can build just about anything. And now, not only do I make apps in general, I’m guilty of a most flagrant offense: I’m a registered Apple Developer. I have my own app on the App Store, which I developed, that sits right next to all of the others—including browsers.*

Therein lies a broad crevasse between the ideal and the practical. The ideal is what the world needs—community, companionship, fulfillment. The practical is what people want—gratification, pleasure, utility. I’m not going to alienate myself by renouncing my smartphone entirely, but I refuse to be complicit in the hijacking of the modern attention span. Thus, even though I’m not sure smartphone apps are objectively good, I take advantage of the means of distribution they provide to make apps that make people’s lives better. Am I compromising my scruples? My recent reading has motivated me to wonder how to bridge lofty dreams with constrained reality.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice, which makes a strong argument for authenticity and genuine personal growth in the face of social pressures. Elizabeth enters the story with idealistic hopes for her romantic future, and finds success both by re-examining herself and working hard to achieve external goals. Elizabeth wants an honorable man who she truly believes in and connects with, and she believes that listening to her scrupulous gut will enable her to find him. The best example of this sentiment is when Elizabeth rejects her first suitor, Collins: “You could not make me happy,” she says, “and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who could make you happy.” In the end, she bridges the ideal and the practical: through Darcy, she finds a match that mirrored her integrity, yet took a bit of personal adjustment to get there. “‘How despicably I have acted!’ she cried; ‘I, who have prided myself on my discernment… Till this moment I never knew myself’” (p. 287). Elizabeth’s original dreams didn’t quite come true; she was a more open-minded person by the end of the novel. Does this imply that we should be satisfied even if our achieving our dreams requires an altering of our own identity?

One way to investigate this question is to examine what happens when the fulfillment of dreams lends itself to an adverse outcome. I was quite discontented by the outcome of Tawfik al-Hakim’s Sparrow from the East. As a sensitive, idealistic intellectual, Mushsin quickly became my hero (and I’m sure that admitting these qualities makes me doubly guilty of them). He’s proudly original—Roarkian in his commitment to his own values—yet acknowledges a reverence for his upbringing and a deep desire to find deeper connections with others. After he successfully woos the girl of his literal dreams, suddenly, he loses direction. Al-Hakim writes,

Those poor dreamers who are suddenly confronted by reality! It is usually so sudden that they have no time to mask the reality with the finery their imagination conjures up. They don't even know what they want from this unadorned reality which has suddenly been proffered to them. Reality is, in fact, a currency that is invalid in the dream kingdom (p. 102).

Once the couple is together, there is suddenly nothing for Muhsin to strive for. Not only does this make life strange for Muhsin, but it makes him less attractive: he is a different person when he cannot creatively address his existential concerns, when he can no longer spend his energy delicately bridging the gap between his dreams and reality. So, when Suzy’s boss poses a threat to their relationship, Muhsin balks and gives up. He won’t fight for someone whose dreams he does not entirely fulfill; he refuses to face the premise of competing for Suzy against someone who plays by entirely different rules. So, Suzy leaves him.

Muhsin worships his dreams. He wants to live a Western life with Eastern methodology, and resists any threats to his quest to achieve it. When his European friend André suggests purchasing gifts for Suzy, he responds: “Bags, powder, flowers, perfume! Meaningless things. You are stupid, Monsieur André” (p. 78). He believes that caving to the Western method would betray his identity. So, when reality doesn’t match his expectations, he runs away. He refuses to acknowledge a world in which he needs to use Western tactics to pursue his dreams. He chooses not to fight for Suzy not because the challenge is too difficult for him, but because he's too stubborn to continue playing this game. Despite the previous effectiveness of his approach, the game is fundamentally rigged against him. Muhsin is emotionally shattered at the premise that the means of being with Suzy might not be as perfect as he imagined—and that, in the moment, his unconventional tactics might not be enough to hold onto her. He refuses to compromise, and, as a result, he loses.

It’s worth acknowledging that Elizabeth and Muhsin face two quite different situations. Elizabeth does not experience existential identity concerns or the degree of social isolation that govern Muhsin’s experience. In other words, Elizabeth has a much smaller crevasse lying between her dreams and reality. Muhsin seeks much more—not only does he want a romantic match; he seeks an intellectual companion, someone as steadfast as he is, and will only use an 'Eastern’ approach to achieve this connection. So one interpretation is that Elizabeth succeeds because she has a shorter gap to bridge than Muhsin does: it takes significantly less effort for Elizabeth to achieve what she truly wanted. In this sense, Sparrow from the East must be appreciated as a broader societal commentary than a recipe for behavior.

However, crucially, not only was Muhsin further from his idealistic dreams than Elizabeth was: Muhsin was more stubborn and uncompromising throughout. While Elizabeth goes to dances and pursues socially conventional means of meeting men, Muhsin refuses any possible Western dating method he could possibly employ. Elizabeth and Darcy are deeply motivated by a care for those around them, while Muhsin simply refuses to conform. Thus, when reality suddenly departs from his dreams, Muhsin’s world shatters. When Elizabeth’s expectations are not met,  she gets confused and reconsiders her own biases; however, only Muhsin is existentially rattled.

There are two takeaways I’ve gleaned from this analysis. The first is that the further one’s dreams are from practical reality, the more one must put at risk in order to pursue them. Elizabeth’s dreams, luckily for her, aren’t entirely far-fetched. She’s aiming for the upper boundary of genuine affection in relationships with those around her. She has a respect for the practical, sharing many priorities with those around her, while remaining scrupulous within her social context. She picks a single battle and just comes out successful— while somewhat adjusting her scruples along the way. Muhsin, in contrast, finds it much harder to relate to others. Everyone around him is different from him—André is perhaps at a nearby point in life, yet has a much more practical mindset. While his companion Ivan has a similar mindset to that of Muhsin, Ivan is a cynical, dying man without reasonable personal aspirations. Muhsin is fighting many battles at once. He is so detached from reality that he doesn’t understand the magnitude of the bet he’s making—while he has an effective approach at first, he doesn’t realize how much he will continue needing to pour his heart into his connection with Suzy. Muhsin is ready to accept a challenge, but after he thinks he’s won the battle, he falters in the face of a threat instead of persevering.

Second, dreams are different from goals. In contrast to Muhsin, Elizabeth doesn’t warp every part of her life around her dreams; she is prudent. Elizabeth remains grounded in her connection to her family, and merely orients herself as much as she can in the direction of her aspirations. Muhsin doesn’t have true goals, he only has idealism. He can’t meet his goals because he can’t formulate goals for himself in the first place: he won’t settle for anything less than his dreams. And he dreams of a reality that is beyond what Suzy can offer him. He deludes himself throughout the novel, and only comes close to acknowledging reality when he first connects with Suzy—but doesn’t quite make it. Thereafter, he is listless. When facing problems as big as Muhsin does, it’s imperative to embody a degree of prudence and openness. Dreams are a direction to orient toward, rather than a goal to which one can hold himself accountable. When having dreams that are as lofty as Muhsin’s imagined fusion between Western and Eastern realities, the best course of action is to angle oneself toward the dreams rather than to ask reality itself to be different in order to have a complete sense of identity.

While it might seem as though tenacity to pursue goals (the first takeaway) and openness to the surrounding reality (the second) are at odds, they are entirely compatible. Muhsin could have both worked harder to achieve the fairly realistic goal of staying with Suzy while adjusting his expectations to reflect the world around him. He could have considered the possibility of Suzy’s priorities being different from his rather than binding himself to a delusion of Suzy’s identity—and with a greater tenacity to make their relationship work given this realistic constraint, he could have found success. Crucially, had he created true goals in the direction of his dreams, yet not predicated upon them, his aspirations would have become much more obtainable. This is the meaning of the aphorism “keep your eyes on the stars but your feet on the ground.” We must do none other than the best we can while being careful not to delude ourselves about what is possible.

This is my approach to fulfilling lofty aspirations—and thus, how I create meaningful technology. When a scrupulous individual meets an imperfect world, it is tempting to utterly refuse any version of reality that doesn’t match the ideal. As much as I’d like to snap my fingers and eliminate social media, and all of its negative emotional externalities, that will not happen. This was my approach to the latest app I created. The app is a feed-based news app, which is guilty of the engagement tactics of other media apps which are the bane of my existence. However, it doesn't use frightening headlines to captivate users; it uses artificial intelligence to filter out these negative, depressing news stories out of a user’s media feed—so that engagement-oriented content is genuinely inspiring, rather than simply being optimized for hysteria. It's not a perfect system—there are legitimate concerns about whether this blocks people from experiencing important truths about the world. But it's the truest possible step toward my dream of more sustainable interactions between humans and software.

When a tree is suddenly met by a fence that was installed in the direction of its growth, the tree cannot prevent the fence from existing. But the tree does not stop growing. It remains true to itself, living with nothing less than the maximum level of authenticity allowed by its environment. So even if technology is not ideal, voraciously living up to my passion to create good technology—given its constraints—is the only way to live honestly. And when faced with a threat to my ability to do so, I will not let my shattered expectations undermine my gumption to orient my actions toward my dreams.

*since writing this, my ADP membership expired and I haven’t gotten around to renewing it yet!