I have a checkered past.
Growing up with a profound hearing loss in the school-to-prison pipeline of Albuquerque as the son of upper-middle class white professionals was a life of contrasts, of privileges and pains that prevent any simple explanations of who I am and where I came from.
While simple self-descriptions elude me, I can confidently say that I am motivated every single day by a desire to do good. Not just tiny good, a modicum of good or “Diet Good”, but the greatest good I can do in my entire life. My parents named me “Alexander” because it means “Defender of Mankind” (and because it translates easily to Spanish… my grandmother was from Mexico). Doing good gives me purpose, and purpose drives me to do more, to go farther & fight harder than I would otherwise However, sometimes we make mistakes when we try to do good, and being good as a person requires unsparingly examining our own actions, self-critically seeking ways in which we may have failed to do good.
One example burned into my memory is when I fought a guy with brass knuckles.
I was at a party in Albuquerque back in college, a party in my neighborhood that was rather violent. Growing up in my “neck of the hoods”, I had seen some rough stuff. I had seen vatos arrive to a party and sexually assault a girl, and I saw how our efforts to intervene and send them home escalated into a brick fight that sent three people to the hospital - one of our guys and two of theirs. I had seen a guy storm aggressively into a party, shouting and cursing with a loaded gun tucked into his pants - I saw the loaded gun, told my buddies “Tucumcari” (our codeword for “shit’s about to go down”) and we left… but one guy who didn’t leave ended up getting a baseball bat to the brain and I deeply regret not getting him out of there. My checkered past has nerdy things like lizards, math, and a loving family… and it’s also sprinkled with stories like these, from brawls and stabbings to arson, attempted vehicular homicides, shootings, and more. There was good, and there was bad. Yin and yang.
At the party in college, all was well and good. People were chilling, drinking beer & hanging out, when, suddenly, I heard slams and bangs coming from the kitchen, bangs loud enough for a deaf guy to hear them. Something was up. I ran to the kitchen and saw a massive dude I’d never seen before holding my friend by the collar, raising his fist with brass knuckles, shouting and cursing angrily at my friend who was shouting and cursing angrily back. Bystanders looked shocked and backed away, and this looked like it could escalate quickly unless someone intervened. Not wasting a second, I pushed forward past the crowd that was backing up and rushed to the scene of the fight. I grabbed the guy’s brass knuckled-hand and, with a martial arts move I learned from years of street fighting, twisted his arm to slam his face into the corner of the oven and pin him down on the ground to not give the big dude a chance to retaliate until we could neutralize the brass knuckles and, hopefully, some other people might feel compelled to help instead of being bystanders.
As I’m sitting on top of this giant dude, people start pulling me up and trying to get me off of him. Buh? I looked around, they said “No Al, No!” including the friend of mine who had brass knuckles pointed at his face, and so I instantly let go. The guy got up, very pissed, shouting and cursing angrily. My friend said they were just joking, and now this big dude with brass knuckles and a bleeding face was back on his feet and wanted to fight me. I tried to argue my side, saying he shouldn’t bust out weapons at a party, but things were escalating and so a friend from the baseball-bat-to-the-brain night whispered in my ear… “Tucumcari,” so I apologized and promptly left.
That entire night I felt terrible. I asked my friends for forgiveness, I asked for their feedback on how I should act next time, and just felt like shit for being the bad guy who ruined the party. The big dude with brass knuckles and the friend he pointed them at were not from our rough side of town - they were from one of the good, well-funded schools nowhere connected to the school-to-prison pipeline. To them, weapons at a party were a joke because they hadn’t seen weapons used and it was all fun and games. To me, weapons at a party are one slip-up away from someone getting hospitalized or killed… Even now, years later, I feel terrible. However, if they weren’t joking and I’d done nothing and my friend was killed, I would’ve felt even worse today.
This story floods to my mind because I’m currently at a crossroads in life, wondering which path is the path of “greater good”, and remembering that “doing good” is a lot harder than it seems. This story was a time I tried to do good and failed. If you’re ever pushing through a crowd trying to take action in the face of some perceived evil, you’re inevitably going to make mistakes. Mistakes alone don’t make someone bad, but failing to learn from our mistakes does. Failing to be humble and self-critical as we execute decisive actions - and failing to learn from when our actions fail in unanticipated ways - limit our moral growth and limits the amount of good we’re capable of doing in life. Rigorous and honest self-examination is the only buffer we have against noble cause corruption.
There are many other instances in which I’ve tried to do good and failed. I will keep failing again and again and again for the rest of my life: so long as I try to change the world for the better, there will be instances in which I make things worse. The only solace I have, the only reason I confidently get back up and try again knowing that I will fail at times, the only way I can choose a path forward, is the reassurance that I am extremely self-critical, more critical of myself than others. By knowing one is capable of failures, one can become less likely to fail.
I’ve picked a path and I’m embarking on a new journey to do good, aware of my ability to fail. I co-founded Agora, where we’re making a “scientific medium” or a social medium for science. I look at the world of scientists on Twitter shouting angrily at one-another with verbal brass knuckles raised… and I see climate change, pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and food insecurity threatening mankind. I’m once again compelled to push through the crowd with a paradoxical humble confidence. The confidence comes from this path I’ve chosen being a deliberate path of profound purpose for me. I love scientists, as many of my closest friends are scientists and even my own mother is a scientist… if we can give them a place to share their work with less friction, less fighting, and more collaboration, then we can save the world. We can “defend mankind”. The humility comes from keeping my failures in mind as I try to succeed.
On our path to hopefully doing greater good and experiencing thrilling successes, there will be shortcomings and failures. Entrepreneurship is a massive risk, and I’m nervous. As long as we have funds, my career will be tied to a tiny plane that we’re building as we take off. Ego-defense may seem protective as it may guard me against unpleasant truths that I am imperfect or that I have failed at times. However, while ego-defense may seem protective, there’s an ironic self-preservation in the alternative path of humility and self-criticism (in moderation): open-mindedness that we and our skiff are imperfect, that our hull could have holes, can keep our eyes open for trouble so we quickly find and fix it before our failures sink the ship. Humility and curiosity are not only essential to being truly good in the long-term, but I feel they may prove essential for lowering the risks of entrepreneurship.
Life is complicated, but this much is simple: acknowledging our imperfection is essential for improvement. Humility liberates us from unrealistic expectations of perfection, whether personal, professional, scientific, or moral. I am complicated and imperfect, and that’s okay.
Now, with humility in heart, we’re ready to learn and grow, to defend mankind from both ignorance and arrogance.
Also, your link is down.
Good luck buddy, you'll find the ones who believe the standard stories (market covid, climate change, etc) you'll find them who believe the non-standard stories (lab covid, viruses don't exist) and you'll find, very rarely do they listen at all.