A New, Third Thing.

The good news is you can choose not to look old anymore. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to look young again. Instead, you’ll look like a new, third thing.

You can see it in the faces of celebrities in their sixties who no longer resemble traditional sixty-year-olds. Botox, fillers, hair transplants, testosterone therapy, they don't restore youth, but they don't allow aging either. They generate an uncanny new category. You can see it in the artificially sculpted physiques of older men on testosterone therapy. They don't look old but they don't look young either.

@drjaymz1

Me when I’m a Grandpa 🔥 #bodybuilding #weightraining #weightlifting #mrolympia #fitness #workout #gym #gymmotivation

Martin Scorsese unknowingly captured this phenomenon in The Irishman. He digitally painted 40 year old faces onto 75 year old Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. It made watching the movie really strange. Young faces on aging bodies created an unsettling hybrid, men who looked like themselves from three decades earlier but moved with the careful gait of septuagenarians. It just didn’t look right. 40 year old men just don’t move like that.

The Age of Third Things

We live in an age of new third things. Our attempts to restore what we've lost sometimes fails and it creates something that feels fundamentally different.

Consider the endless cycle of remakes. Every iteration seems to be a diminished version of its predecessor. Every copy worse than the original. The new remake of The Office was recently announced, itself a remake of a (good) American show that was already a remake of the original (great) British series. But this one seems way worse than either ones that came before it.

I worry this economy of degraded copies is making us collectively unmoored. Essentially that’s what Artificial Intelligence will be soon. Research reports made with AI using AI written articles as their sources.

Why create a pale imitation when we can return to the source? We’d be better off re-releasing Jurassic Park in theaters than funding its next lifeless sequel. At least that would reinforce our sense of what’s great, rather than collectively eroding our taste with diminishing returns.

Stepping into the River

Heraclitus famous proverb is relevant: "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

Time moves in one direction. Attempts to reverse it create something new rather than restore something old. Once the string of continuity is broken, it cannot be perfectly rewoven.

This doesn't mean we should abandon resurrection projects, many of them are worthwhile. Like trying to bring beauty back into public life. Such as architecture.

Or nice clothes.

But we must approach them with clear eyes. In this environment, the most valuable skill we can cultivate is the ability to spot a third thing for what it is. It is a form of literacy for the 21st century. When you can distinguish the authentic thread from the manufactured replica, you protect yourself from the disappointment of false promises.

Think resurrected but not restored. You can choose, either to return to the authentic source, or to accept the third thing for what it is, without illusion. That’s third thing literacy.

The Gentrified Barbershop

I notice this every time I get my hair cut.

You almost never see the old-school barbershops in affluent, gentrified neighborhoods anymore. The kind that were community anchors, where barbers were local personalities who dispensed gossip as expertly as they gave a haircut for a few dollars. The air thick with the chemical scent of Barbicide and cheap aftershave. Customers arguing about baseball. Cash only, always.

Most of those places vanished in the eighties and nineties, pushed out by rising rents and changing times. In their place, chain salons like Supercuts and Great Clips moved into strip malls. They offered cheaper, faster, assembly-line service. Functional, but soulless. Efficient but not enjoyable. The haircuts were never great, but they were consistent.

Now, the gentrified and affluent neighborhoods that lost those institutions are filled with “classic barbershops” that resurrect the aesthetic. You see the vintage chairs, the hand-lettered signs, the whiskey carts meant to signal authenticity. But it’s different. The barbers are often hourly employees, not local characters. The conversations are polite, safe topics like the weather, not heated debates. The atmosphere is meticulously curated. And the prices, well, they’re expensive.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s objectively better than the chain salon experience. The haircuts are superior, the atmosphere more refined. But it’s not the first thing, and it’s not the second. It’s a third thing, well-crafted imitation.

The Resurrected City

Cities illustrate this perfectly. They often times do decline and come back. But it’s rarely with the same population. Often times it’s with a different population. Same city, same architecture, but not the same people. A new, third thing.

Take Brooklyn for example. It was a working-class immigrant neighborhood. Williamsburg filled with Italian and Polish families who'd lived there for generations. Corner bodegas, industrial jobs, tight-knit communities where everyone knew each other.

Then it was urban decay and abandonment. White flight to the suburbs, manufacturing jobs disappearing, crime rising. Buildings left empty, neighborhoods hollowed out. The authentic urban culture largely disappeared.

Well Brooklyn is back. And expensive to live in. Young professionals from Ohio and California move in, drawn by the aesthetic of urban authenticity but wanting artisanal coffee shops and reliable Wi-Fi. The same buildings return, sometimes renovated, sometimes rebuilt to look "authentically Brooklyn." But the population is entirely different, people seeking an urban experience rather than people whose families built the neighborhood.

This pattern plays out differently in different places. Venice shows another version. Venice, wealthy, successful, globally prominent. It generates enormous revenue and commands international attention. The same palazzos line the same canals.

@cinnamongirl6

cannaregio #venice #italy #travel

But its power source has completely transformed. Instead of controlling Mediterranean trade, it controls tourist desire. Instead of merchant ships, it hosts cruise ships. Instead of banking empires, it runs hospitality empires.

Venice is more successful than many actual functioning cities. It's not in ruins, it's thriving. But it's thriving as a completely different type of entity than what made it powerful originally. The wealth flows from being Venice rather than from doing what Venice once did. The city has become a brand of itself, monetizing its own aesthetic rather than creating new value through commerce and innovation.

The mismatch between what it originally was and what is now creates a strange feeling when you’re there. The same feeling you get with other third things.

The Pet Family

Perhaps nowhere is this pattern more intimate than in how we approach family formation.

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