Wyatt Edward Gates
Sep 9, 2018 · 2 min read

The irony is that this article is more worthless than any article it sets out to mock. It is without merit. It is anti-wisdom. It is worse than nonsense. I can’t believe something so cynical was featured on Medium; a site ostensibly about ‘big ideas’ featuring an article undermining the very notion of ideas is some kind of tragic absurdity. Have the editors simply given up hope?

This is the level of uncaring too-cool I would expect from a young teen, not an adult. It isn’t cool to care or to be sincere. It’s easier to pretend to be above it all. It’s also cowardly to hide behind that coolness. It looks like that kind of cool cynicism is what plays well with the editors and readers here. So be it. It makes me sad, but alas.

There are things that matter, and so there are things worth reading about and sharing. It is unbecoming of any decent person to mock the very concept of meaningful communication like this. It isn’t cool or fun to make a sincere effort at communicating things that matter, but in a world with so little sincerity it seems more important than ever to try. So I’ll try, even though I’m a joke. I would rather try and fail than to be such a coward that I excuse myself from the effort itself by pretending what I’m doing is just a game of empty signaling. Maybe that’s what life is to you, but it’s far more important than that for me. I hope others have similar purpose and dedication to the solemn task of knowing and communicating the truth.

It is a harder path to be sincere and try to actually change something, to build something up, to make a sincere effort that could fail. That means being vulnerable, which is uncool and scary and doesn’t sell well. Far easier to sit back and give people excuses not to care. Ironic detachment is the low road.

This has inspired me, though, to renew my commitment to sincerity. I never want to end up so hollow and jaded that I would mock the very concept of thinking and caring and communicating things that are important to me and the world.

    Wyatt Edward Gates

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    Small, simple, and sincere.