Cultural Fatigue

What I felt in Steinbeck, Big Sur, and a world that doesn't stop to think...

I’ve been feeling something I couldn’t name for a long time, until now… cultural fatigue.

It’s not just the pace of life, the digital noise, or the always-on pressure. It’s a deeper exhaustion the kind that builds when everything is polished, fast, shared, and performed. Even meaning starts to feel mass-produced.

I’ve watched this unfold in so many ways. After Adderall hit in the late ’90s, academic life changed. PhD students were expected to do triple the work in the same amount of time. The tools made it possible, laptops, internet, research databases but the struggle that once gave things weight disappeared. Everything became faster. Everything became more.

I use my own tools, nicotine and coffee. It dials me in. I focus; I produce. But afterward, I don’t feel accomplished. I feel drained. Because what I’m doing isn’t always thinking, it’s output. It’s survival in a system that won’t slow down.

And now there’s AI. ChatGPT doesn’t just help you think faster, it thinks for you. A book you haven’t read can be summarized in a paragraph. A feeling you haven’t processed can be turned into a caption. It’s efficient, but there’s no friction. And without friction, meaning starts to dissolve.

I just finished The Wayward Bus by Steinbeck. I have had it a long time, I have all of his work. It was panned by critics. I just read it. Slowly. Quietly. And it hit me. The people, the mood, the way it lingered. It worked not because anyone else said it would, but because I let it. I feel it is one of his best books. I’m pissed that I hadn’t read it sooner, but I let others influence me.

That kind of experience feels rare now. We don’t trust our own reactions. We want confirmation. Is this book good? Is this town worth visiting? Is this thought valid? We crowdsource meaning and in doing so, we often lose the chance to form it ourselves.

I’m in Carmel right now. The town is beautiful, tidy, curated. But like so many places, it feels like it was made to be posted. Pleasant, but familiar. It could be anywhere but with beautiful scenery.

I drove down PCH 1 toward Big Sur, and something shifted. The road was open. No billboards. No noise. Just cliffs and coastline. The Bixby Bridge was packed with tourists. It’s stunning. Built in a time when people didn’t have all the answers but still knew how to build something that mattered.

Big Sur still has magic. Even with crowds, it holds something real. The land humbles you. The shops feel lived-in, not staged. The restaurants feel like they belong there. Authenticity hasn’t been erased. Not yet.

That contrast, between the real and the polished, is something I’ve been feeling more intensely. Especially in the way we talk to each other. Or rather, the way we don’t.

I struggle with how polarized everything has become. I don’t mind disagreement. Opposing views are healthy, if they’re reasoned. But what I see isn’t disagreement. It’s tribalism. Emotion. Slogans. An “us vs. them” mindset that makes no room for nuance. I get that in sports, you’re invested, it’s part of the structure. But in real life? In politics? In how we live together?

It confuses me.

We’ve dug in. Picked sides. Built entire identities around conflict. And in doing that, we’ve erased the grey, the spaces where things could be explored, not just fought over. There’s so much we could learn from one another. But we’re not allowed to pause. Everything’s either proof you’re right or proof you’re wrong. It’s exhausting.

Even in my own work, my writing, my photography, Baseball Buddha, I feel the pressure. I create to express myself, not to chase likes. But still, there’s a pull to keep up. To stay in rhythm. To produce, even when I want to slow down. I sometimes dream of supporting myself through this work, but that dream carries a fear, what if it turns the joy into a job? What if I start creating to feed the machine, not myself?

Right now, the thoughts are flowing. But I know I want more than momentum. I want clarity. I want space to think. To breathe. To not worry about the next thing.

Because what I’m really searching for, in books, in places, in people, is authenticity. And the strange thing is, the more I look for it, the more I see how much of the world isn’t.

That’s the fatigue.
That’s the ache.

But also, that’s the hope.

That some things still hold up.

Some places haven’t been flattened.

Some books haven’t been reduced.

Some conversations still matter.

Some people are still listening.

And maybe the most meaningful things are the ones you don’t share. The quiet reads. The long drives. The walks without music. The feeling that something, somewhere, is still worth discovering and keeping for yourself.