Memo 36: Higher Rebirth
nepo babies & Nagarjuna
By this time of year, very little in the external world gets to me. Tasks for daily life take me out already. Can I finish the last 40 pages of a book that I’ve been stuck on for months? Will I catch up with my friend, or will reorganizing one corner of my room derail me for three days? Who can say. I’m in no rush, I’ll get to it.
As much as I pretend to be immune to pop culture, unfortunately I am not - which means I recently read Vulture’s nepo baby article like everyone else. I was curious about what could be elaborated on in a long-form article. Surely there must be a new big-brain point to be made here, right? Why else fuel a journalist’s salary for the month in an underfunded field, if not for a critically needed article? Hungry for a fresh take, I put aside the unopened book and started reading.
Like the above Nathan Fielder scene, I found myself with a web browser full of nothing. A smarmy sentence followed by a pop-culture reference, then an unattributed pull quote and another reference. Rinse and repeat about 18 times - that’s the entire article. But the article committed a sin, a much worse offense than mere pussyfooting around a lack of direction: misleading information.
In the article,¹ multiple diagrams (and some sentences) classify nepo babies as having parents in the industry they ended up in and/or in positions of power. In theory, this fits. In actuality, Phoebe Bridgers being the daughter of a set builder is a far cry from your dad being Dennis Quaid. What is disappointing about nepotism hires go deeper than parental lineage; it stems from the era of seemingly limitless potential we are in, the zeitgeist of genuine personal identity and the compounding of have and have-nots.
The article doesn't touch on any of this but instead peddles out gross oversimplifications. This adherence to logic on paper and not using critical thought to distinguish situations with tact is painful. If we do not think critically on a case-by-case basis, what do we have left?
This made me so tense that I turned to the only other material I had on hand this week: a commentary on Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland. It’s a revered piece of Buddhist text from Indian philosopher Nagarjuna, in which he advises a king on how to live and rule with Buddhist ideals. Nagarjuna is no small fish in the Buddhist sea and has a litany of achievements, such as creating the philosophical school of Madhyamaka.
Before I begin here, I want to make it abundantly clear that in no way do I think nepo babies are examples of higher rebirth.² That is not where this is going! In the same way that simplicity ≠ lack of complexity in evolutionary theory, being born into a higher position of social status is not a higher rebirth; it comes with its own benefits and drawbacks, like any human rebirth.
The throughline between these two reads goes deeper. As I was struggling to form how the nepo baby article made me feel, I read a passage in the commentary about comprehensible phenomena in Buddhism that clicked things into place for me.
There are three types of comprehensible phenomena: obvious, obscure and extremely obscure phenomena. Obvious phenomena can be realized via personal experience/cognition, while obscure phenomena cannot be deducted logically so it must come through a line of reasoning. Seeing a car stop at a red light is obvious, but understanding that a red light culturally means ‘stop’ is obscure.
Extremely obscure phenomena takes this one step further as we can’t understand these phenomena ourselves; we need an authoritative text deemed perfect through three analyses to make it clear for us. The nepo baby article is not an authoritative text, not even close. But in an inverse way, the article was just as effective as one.
By reading the nepo baby article and identifying which classifications were grossly wrong, I ended up articulating my own opinion and have a stronger personal perspective on nepotism in action. Whether or not they are authoritative, texts are conduits above and outside ourselves that help us redefine our views. I shouldn’t have been hungry for someone else to tell me their opinion; I would have come to my own conclusion either way.
So thank you, nepo baby article, for forcing me to be patient and fume as I read the third pull quote from an anonymous casting director. Interacting genuinely with another person’s point of view helps us understand ideas that we are unable to logically reach ourselves, even when they are wrong. Especially when they are wrong.
I wonder which I’ll experience first: a higher rebirth out of cyclic existence, or being a nepo baby. Strangely, Nathan Fielder had it right. I should be hungry for no attachments or expectations. Whatever I get served, I’ll get to it.
And because there is always more to consume, here are some LINKS from this past week:
I recently found Arman Naféei’s Are We On Air? podcast, which is simply divine. Arman is the Music Director of André Balazs’s hotel group (Chateau Marmont, the Standard to name a few) which means his taste is impeccably. His voice feels like he’s taking me by the hand and guiding me to the best happy hour of my life.
I’ve been obsessed with the currency track record of Brock Purdy of the 49ers, who is the living incarnation of the FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS plot essentially.
I’ve also been digging Perfectly Imperfect, a Substack where various people of semi-importance in pop culture give recommendations on what they like. Matty Matheson’s article is a really earnest, endearing example.
I haven’t been able to see it in the article properly, most likely as I do not pay for a subscription or a physical copy of the magazine. But it’s been all over Twitter, which makes it fair play.
Devoted readers know that I rarely bold-face font as emphasis. I mean business!
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