I’m not going to talk much about my religious beliefs here, but if you’ve looked at my Reading List, it’s pretty obvious where I fall on the spectrum. The inevitable question that always comes up when you debate such things is: if we rid ourselves of the old system, what will take it’s places? Anarchy? Meaninglessness? Rampant immorality? These of course are questions that indicate a fear of change more than anything else.

But, anyway, I’ve been reading Hobbes lately for a class. Here we have a man who almost certainly would have been an atheist if he were alive today. An author who not by coincidence is using a biblical term in an ironic fashion as a title. A man who wrote some of the darkest philosophy–not just for his time but for all time. Who talked of man’s brutishness, tendency to do evil, etc.

And what was his ultimate rule?

Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thy selfe.

Part of being involved and branding yourself on the internet is posting comments on people’s blogs. When you read a post, comment on it. At least, that’s what I try to do. Let the writers know that you’re out there, consuming information and have something intelligent to say. But it’s a little deeper too; Aurelius said that “you cannot quench understanding unless you put out the insights that compose it.” Which means two things: 1) Knowledge must lead to action to create understanding. 2) You encourage understanding in others when you send out your own perspective.

Anyways, a few days ago I posted a comment on an excellent post by Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist. She wrote about the gender disparity in Web 2.0 and its possible implications. My comment was simply that there is no need to worry right now because the web will likely shift dramatically multiple times before it finally settles. In other words, the leaders right now are transitory and like any revolution, the original members almost never end up as the ruling party.

Today, I got this email:

Hi, Ryan. Thanks for the comment. It’s so smart. And thanks for adding me to your feed. I feel really lucky to have such smart readers 🙂

Penelope

And so I went back to her site and looked at the comments section. To my amazement, Penelope had responded to every.single.one of her commenters with a personal, appreciative message. Not a form response, but a genuine acknowledgement and address of the reader’s point and existence. That is PR 2.0.

I emailed her back about it and she responded with:

Thanks for this email. some days i think i’m nuts for responding. but then i think, what am i doing blogging if i don’t want to have a conversation? it’s a conundrum. today i am glad ot have met you. today i like dealing with the comments 🙂

She is 100% right, and I will continue to tell anyone who will listen. The internet is about good will and there is no faster way to earn it than by making it clear that you care about the audience. PR isn’t just about getting eyeballs to the site, it’s about converting the ones that are already there. Before this little exchange I was an on-the-fence fan, but now, I’m firmly in the pro-camp. If someone asks me for an interesting site I’d recommend hers in a second.

If you have a site, you can learn from this. Understand that winning fans is a constant battle. It’s responding to each comment, it’s emailing the readers that have made an effort, it’s respecting the reader above all else. I’ve seen my traffic slowly grow as I took the time each day to respond to people’s emails. I’ve tracked down book quotes, given advice, said thanks a million times, and it has paid off. But even I am inspired by Penelope and you should be to.

How to follow her example (and things I’ve learned):

• Set up Technorati RSS Feeds that monitor who links to you. Everyday, take the time to comment on those posts. Tell the writer that you appreciate them taking the time to read your work and the effort to add their own perspective. Tell them that you like their site (assuming that you do) and if they ever need a favor to drop you an email.
• If you don’t think it is intrusive, email the fans who have taken the time to leave intelligent comments on your post. At the very least respond to them in the comment section.
• If someone takes the time to email you, go ahead and respond. Even if it’s just a ‘thank you.’
• You could utilize mailing lists to keep in touch with readers, customers and contacts. ZeroBounce can help to clean and enhance your mailing list using various tools, like an email address checker.
• If a reader submits one of your pieces to a social network like Digg or Netscape, add them to your friends list and vote on their other submissions. If they’ve left contact info on their profile, make use of it.
• If a forum or messageboard uses one of your pieces as the basis for a discussion, join in. Clear up any misconceptions and above all, let them know that you appreciate what they’ve done. Leave your contact information and tell them to ask if they have any questions.

And as a final note, I predict that her blog is really going to explode in the next few months. I’ve been picking up a ton of buzz about her, and a strategy like hers does NOT go unrewarded. This kind of goodwill pays huge dividends, so you’ll be hearing a lot from her I imagine.

I finished What Makes Sammy Run last week and have been thinking about it non-stop since. If you haven’t read it then you need to–it’s very much on the level of The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald said so himself) And even if you haven’t read it, you can still understand the discussion. When Palahniuk wrote Fight Club he was emulating Fitzgerald, with the narrator telling the story of his dead hero. What Makes Sammy run is like that in some ways stylistically, but morally is a bit more ambiguous.

You can grab the basic plot on Wikipedia. Essentially, Sammy is the all-American heel. He’s your Ari Gold without the slightest bit of human decency. He rises through the ranks of Hollywood without ever writing a word. He is shadows and illusions, and the ultimate power-player. His story is told by Al Manheim, his older and only friend who is fascinated by Sammy’s drive. The title is Schulberg’s chorus line that he repeats throughout the book, and eventually answers in the final pages. Sadly, as Schulberg mentions in his introduction, the message has been perverted. Our society tends to see Sammy as a hero instead of a villain–or at least someone to pity.

So what makes Sammy run?

He’s running from self-reflection, from meaning. It’s fear knocking on the door that he’s frantically trying to block with accomplishments. He’s running because he started running and now he can’t stop–too many people are chasing. Gatsby, Durden they were all in search of purpose, Sammy was fleeing from it.

He, like most Americans–like America–was just trying to fill the hole. Not consciously, because that means admitting it exists, but subconsciously, if just to stop the wind from whistling through. Some do it with drugs, some with sex; Sammy did it with it running, with doing. Hollywood wasn’t his ‘personal legend’ so much as it was the ultimate distraction from discovering it. He’s not the American Dream but the American sexual fantasy, oversized, indulgent and wholly harmful.

Sammy is an accomplished man, but not at great man–that takes ethics, purpose and principles. The punishment for that is not failure but overwhelming success. When you base your happiness on getting everything you want you’ll get it all and never be happy.

I might want what Sammy Glick has but I don’t want to be Sammy Glick. I might want to be where Sammy Glick is, but I don’t want go the way Sammy Glick went. As Machiavelli said, you can take power with skill or luck–or thirdly, with cruelty. And there is no honor in that. There’s no glory in being a rich, 50 year old boy; the same child at the child at the end of the journey as at the beginning, only with a fatter wallet. That is a life of masturbation.

Al has that symbolic dream, where Sammy was climbing a rope that never ended. Is that the life you want? He might have been on top of us, but there never was a top for Sammy. You need to look at relative vs. absolute gains. When you do, it’s clear that he isn’t and never was in control of his own destiny–the rope was. Sammy ran because he had to, like a rat in wheel convinced he was on some eternal, endless road. Do we respect addiction when it’s in the form of a prestigious career? Is obsession no longer a weakness when it produces the things we supposedly aspire to? Can complete consumption ever really be healthy?

The world killed Gatsby, but he lived for something. Durden died so Jack could live. All Sammy did was run. I would characterize myself as ambitious–I get labeled it all the time. But I don’t think I see the world like Sammy, and the second I do, is the second I ‘reach for my revolver.’ I’d like to learn from the dichotomy of Jay and Sammy. And as Aristotle suggested, triangulate towards moderation.

Again, maybe I’m just young and maybe I’m a not-yet-broken idealist. But I think you can wretch what you please from life–both materially and spiritually. All my life people told me that what I wanted wasn’t possible, that I wasn’t playing the game enough. So far I’ve been right and my philosophy has paid its returns. Sure, I’ve gotten ahead of myself and lost control–but every time it was an err on the side of hope and never on cynicism. That was Sammy’s fatal flaw, and why he and Gatsby are tragic heroes of complete opposites. Gatsby tied his whole being on a single love and the world killed him for it. Sammy tied his whole being on never, ever loving and killed himself inside for it. Can self-awareness and dogged personal ethics navigate this chasm? My money says it can. Forget the strategy paradox here, for if I’m wrong–if we’re wrong–at least our mind’s eye was set on the ideal world and not the material.

The caveat here is the human impulse to rationalize all successful people as possessed Sammy Glick’s, deluded into chasing their tails. Is Al really the hero? Are you just jealous? Where was his self-reflection? Or was it all about Sammy?