#26: Eric — Quality Over Quantity, Systemic Change, Electronic Music
Shifting from more, more, more to better, better, better.
Welcome to Mia’s Queue, a newsletter spotlighting the secret agents of taste among us. In each edition, I chat with an undercover tastemaker infusing creativity and wonder into their (and our!) everyday life. Learn what lights them up, where they find inspiration, and what they think we should all be enjoying right now. Meet Agent 026: Eric Solomon, Ph.D., the founder and CEO of The Human OS.
When it comes to music, I am a floozy. I have several “music husbands” — friends (usually male) for whom electronic music is also a spiritual quest.
is one such comrade. He’s so voracious a consumer he spends three hours each weekend sniffing out new music and has maintained a spreadsheet since 2015 that tracks his discoveries. It’s over 600 pages long.Eric is also the founder and CEO of The Human OS, a blueprint that helps companies align their actions with their values. He’s doggedly devoted to the big idea that we must shift our mindsets from quantity to quality. Eric reached career heights at places like YouTube, Spotify, and Instagram, but he became disillusioned with the status quo. So he decided to do something about it — starting with himself.
I highly recommend checking out Eric’s Substack, In Pursuit of Quality, to explore his vision for a better world. You’ll get a taste of that here too, coupled with some of his recent sonic delights.
Tell us about your philosophy of quality over quantity.
Whether it's the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the first wave of the Internet, the Information Age, or whatever we're in now with AI, in business there’s always been a fairly myopic focus on profit, productivity, and efficiency, all of which are numerically-based. Every company needs that to survive, but the myopic focus on more, more, more, and up and to the right has always led to worse outcomes for people.
Yuval Noah Harari called the Agricultural Revolution the greatest fraud of all time. Taylorism from the Industrial Revolution still exists in the nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday work week that we're almost still trapped in, even through the pandemic. It's especially prevalent in how the only thing that seems to matter is the stock market price. This goes back to Milton Friedman's thing that the only purpose of a company is to make money. I've been firmly against that for a long time.
I'm not saying that we need to ditch the focus on quantity at all. I just think some of the spotlight needs to be shifted to quality, for better human outcomes. So quantity is more, more, more; quality is better, better, better. I'm just asking businesses and people to make a shift from thinking about the only thing that matters is profit, productivity, and efficiency to understanding that between every “what” there's a “why.”
I've also learned from this paradigm work that, to shift, it has to happen in individual minds first. I want people to be focused on better outcomes for themselves.
To play devil's advocate, though, what would you say to someone who says: “What are you talking about, Eric?! At least for some people, things seem better than ever!”
That's a common argument among the Steven Pinkers and Marc Andreessens of the world. This is an amazing time and no doubt technology, in particular, has improved our lives, but you just have to look at the the data. We can argue what the causes of the data are, but we're in a place now where one out of five men or boys say they have no close friends. Where a third of teens self-report that they cannot stop using social media constantly. Where a majority of voters think that the other side is detrimental to human values. We don't even have a political system that people trust; the most trusted institution is business and that’s at a low 50%. The people who think things are better have their incentives aligned to money. The rest of us are suffering.
OK, but this is such a big ship to steer! How should we begin?
Movements start with an individual, then build to several individuals, then build from an “I believe,” to “I believe, we believe,” to “We believe, we believe.” You cannot get through that journey without individual minds shifting.
The first thing people can do is ask: What does success mean to you? What do you think is success versus what do you think other people think is success? People always think that what's important are connection and community and having a fulfilling life. What they think other people care about is fame, fortune, and power. And so what are people pursuing? They're pursuing what other people want, not what they want. They're pursuing quantity, not quality.
Individuals have to decide to live their eulogy values now, not when they’re on their deathbeds.
Is it a hard argument to make with your clients and others?
It ebbs and flows. It was a hard argument in 2019. It felt like a vitamin. Then, when COVID [and civil unrest] hit, and there was starting to be a distributed workforce, people were like, “OK, this is a painkiller. I need this to help with everything that's going on with my brand and culture because I don't want to make a misstep.”
Now it's kind of out of fashion, as people are starting to go back and people are starting to ramp up back into a profit-driven space. I'm finding that fewer people are interested in what I have to say about this. Increasingly, I have to go to purpose-driven leaders and companies, not just any company, and that's new.
It's been a hard year.
Why is this mission so important to you?
Because I suffered a lot. I grew up with parents who hardly made it out of high school. I was always under this idea that I needed to constantly be achieving and going up and to the right. I pursued quantity for so long without being thoughtful. I made it to the top of this marketing ladder before I realized how detrimental it was to my well-being, to my health, to my relationships and the quality of my life.
Then I started to realize: I don't know if it's me so much as the systems we're working in. I hate our criminal criminal justice system that penalizes people of color. I hate our education system that churns out robots. I hate our business system, which focuses on profit at all costs. And I hate our political system, which is warped beyond belief at this point. So I'm like, “What can I do to help at a systemic level, that requires strategic and academic thinking?” I want to institute change even if it's in one individual mind, because that's how things start.
Well, who or what inspires you?
I am deeply inspired by people who are not afraid of taking on radical change because I'm realizing how hard it is.
📙 Sara Horowitz wrote a book called “Mutualism: Building the Next Economy from the Ground Up” and another called “The Freelancer’s Bible,” all about this idea of what it takes to get groups of independent people together to help them create something that looks like a union; support without the social safety net of a business. People like me are on the open market for health insurance. I'm on Obamacare. I'm pursuing some version of the American Dream and I'm not supported by the country I live in.
I'm also inspired by electronic music and the incredible amount of stuff coming out from every genre right now. Just the amount of creation that's happening right now. It's so inspiring, right?
RIGHT!!! What are you listening to these days?
🎧 Bella Boo “DreamySpaceyBlue”
Luscious deep house that I’ve been digging beyond belief on a label — Studio Barnhus — that I love.
🎧 “Ricardo Villalobos reimagines: Stars Planets Dust Me”
Outstanding techno and deep house with a little bit of chill.
🎧 Salamanda “In Parallel”
Wisdom Teeth is one of my favorite electronic labels, and this is one of my favorite albums on the label. I’m an album guy through and through. I don't listen to singles.
You are methodical about how you discover music, I know that about you.
Yeah, I spend almost three hours on Fridays and Saturdays discovering new music. Everynoise.com was my favorite place. [Ed. note: Sadly, Spotify laid off the engineer who maintained this site.] Then I’d cross-reference with the electronic sites I go to, like Resident Advisor, Inverted Audio, and Juno.
🔎 One of my favorite guys is Ban Ban Ton Ton. He puts up an album a day and talks about why he likes it. Sometimes I'll do a Bandcamp bonanza with all the stuff he's covering.
What about books? You must read a lot.
I've been reading a lot about AI lately, just because I've been trying to think about that as the backdrop for quality. 📗 I read “Power and Progress: Our 1,000 Struggle Over Technology & Prosperity.” It was a fascinating read by two economists talking about how the division between the haves and have-nots has gotten greater with every technological advancement and how we need to be very concerned about this with AI when the incentives are aligned by the people controlling the power.
Another one that I recommend is 📘 “Collective Illusions,” which explores what we believe privately versus what we think other people believe. There's a huge difference between our personal beliefs and what we think other people believe, across almost every dimension.
Mia’s Queue is a free newsletter about taste, curation, culture, and consciousness. Expect a new post every Thursday (with periodic breaks). Each edition is full of links hand-picked by authentic curators who savor the hunt for the Good Stuff and know that sharing is caring. Thanks for being here!
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Another gem here, Mia. I love Eric’s philosophy of quality vs quantity and changing mindset one individual at a time. I’ll check his newsletter too. Thank you!
Love it! Queueing up DreamySpaceyBlue right now :)