Sunday Essays #16: Polarity.

it's a beautiful thing, and you've got it.

The majority of us run our errands on the weekends.

Grab a coffee, food shopping, CVS, get gas, maybe a workout.

How often do we see the same recurring characters?

It’s as if our daily interactions in the world have become an exercise in central casting with the same 10-12 archetypes.

Drive to the store, wait at the crosswalk for the Sunday AM Run Club, each member a slightly different font than the other, Garmins affixed to the arms, HOKA’s pounding the pavement.

Get to the coffee shop, Super Individual Barista A makes your coffee and hands it to Super Individual Barista B, who rings you up.

(Even the most apolitical of us can guess their personal viewpoints with 99.99% accuracy)

Now it’s time for the gym, where a small group of Cool Mustache Gym Cowboys are performing a bizarre dominance hierarchy meets mating ritual type thing that could only exist in this modern world as they try to “out-angle” one another doing curls in the mirror.

You might have some “societal fatigue” at this point, which explains why the flowery dress type at the grocery store who clearly just came from Church irks you when she makes a display of asking if the organic peanut butter is “truly seed oil free”.

She’d be commendable and endearing if all this wasn’t on her IG story, step by step….but it is.

It’s all a perfectly curated game of digitally keeping up appearances.

If nothing else, it’s extremely fascinating.

Polarity Pollen

Look, I get the allergy to showing your shadow side.

It’s as if there’s a collective fear that showing any sort of chink in the armor of whatever social media persona you picked off the shelf in the mid-2020’s will result in your exile from said in-group.

Digital identities and groups are the new tribes.

The social media landscape and it de facto gatekeepers have become something of a digital doorman to whatever club you want to enter.

It’s why those in fitness circles won’t dare story that cute $20 Thursday night post-work cocktail.

(Performative alcohol-phobia is a whole ‘nother essay..)

Brooklyn service worker types would rather die than admit publicly that they bitch about the taxes taken out of their paychecks.

Optics have become our new gods.

The Irony of Shadow Side Suppression

What makes this phenomenon the most amusing is the top of the totem pole.

Look at who each group has as their North Star.

The Riley Green cosplay muscle brigade?

They’ll repost Arnold lifting videos with motivational narration played over it.

The Run Club crew will post similar content, this time with Michael Jordan highlights and anecdotes about his discipline.

Our organic-only Church girlie?

IG stories galore about “His Grace” and being so blessed, with a lethal dose of passive-aggressive “I wasn’t out last night like you, you godless heathen” layered on top.

This is where it gets tragically funny.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was an immigrant with a funny name who barely spoke English, and blazed a trail from lifting to Hollywood to politics nobody ever had before.

MJ was not doing breathwork while wearing compression leg sleeves when he had tip-off against the Lakers at 7:05 that night; he was playing 36 holes with his friends (and gambling on each one).

Jesus Christ wouldn’t shame you for having a good time- He quite literally is notorious for forgiving prostitutes and outcasts and sinners of all kinds.

We seem to chase being seen as these smooth, optimized avatars, all the while we hold textured, polarized humans as our ideal.

The Good News? We All Have Polarity Inside

Whether you’ve got the guts to display it, that’s a different story.

What makes people magnetic isn’t the absence of contradiction, rather it’s the willingness to own it.

Embracing your shadow side (aka what makes you, you) is an effort that can come with maximal rewards.

There’s also the stress-free ease of moving with authenticity- no facade to keep up, no digital footprint to obsess over.

Do you risk rolling the metaphorical dice?

Sure.

You run the risk of not fitting in cookie-cutter style into whatever digital in-group your heart desires.

But if said group would repel signals of individuality, is that really somewhere you’d want to be?

The funny thing is that most people can sense authenticity almost immediately.

It’s endearing and alluring in ways optimization and “perfection” are not.

The guy who admits he occasionally screws up is often trusted more than the one trying to convince you he bats 1000% in every realm of human endeavor.

The girl with quirks is far more attractive than the one obsessively curating every square inch of her image.

Performing in a way that’s truly in the top percentile while not entirely optimizing for it is not only impressive, it’s sexy.

Human beings were never meant to be squeaky clean, 100% HR-approved brands.

We were meant to be people….messy, contradictory, imperfect people.

The Intellectual Elite and Their Colorful Followings

I’ve been more active on Substack Notes lately.

It’s literally a digital social experiment, and a fun way to express yourself.

You end up interacting with some pretty unique people.

Ivy League types, Doctors, people with considerable followings.

I’m not above doing my fair share of stalking, so I’ve checked who these people read and follow.

It wasn’t a perfectly curated “Following” list like you’d expect.

There were lots of curveballs in there- niche creators, “off-brand” content, Substackers who would seem to have diametrically opposed viewpoints.

It didn’t make sense at first.

Then, it dawned on me.

It seems as if our best and brightest understand polarity intuitively.

Founders didn’t only consume content about scaling or leadership.

Medical professionals weren’t siloed into their niche.

Finance guys read Substacks about skateboarding and mommy blogger Substackers are devouring content about trading crypto.

There’s an underlying current of curiosity flowing at the top.

The results?

They speak for themselves.

The people building interesting lives rarely fit neatly into one category.

They’re not about fitting into a box, they’re trying to figure out how to expand it.

Who would want to bet against that?

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Enjoy the day (and the fights tonight)

-John Abbate

6/14/2026