| name | value |
| date | 2025-01-28 |
| location | Playa del Carmen, MX |
| author | Anton |
There is one episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza pitches his sitcom to Russell Darlymple who is the president of NBC.
Proposed sitcom is the show about nothing. Basically it’s a show where nothing happens and characters just do their everyday chores.
Perplexed Dalrymple asks: Well, why am I watching it? George: It’s on TV. Dalrymple: Not yet.
Not yet. Such a powerful phrase. I wish we used it more.
It reminds me of Ukrainian anthem - “Ukraine is not dead yet.”
You see “not yet” allows us to refocus.
In Seinfeld Dalrymple takes George from future that is not there to the present moment.
In case of Ukraine the anthem can say “Ukraine exists now and is free now”, but that is not the point. The point is to exist and be free in the future.
So “not yet” allows us to snap from rosy future back to reality or from reality to the negative version of the future.
In both cases it allows us to understand situation better and focus on the priorities.
It feels like we don’t use “not yet” enough in our modern Western world.
Think about it. We called United Nations organization - United Nations. What a terrible name. All those nations are not really united. There are so many disagreements and vetos and rarely do nations agree on something and act.
“Not yet United Nations” would be a better way to call that organization. It would imply that we have aspiration for the future and we didn’t achieve it yet.
We do the same a lot with products. Think about TurboTax or something. Is it really “turbo” at this moment - not really, since you will still spend hours trying to report your taxes in the US.
Wishful thinking is good but at some point if the future never comes wishful thinking becomes almost like a parody at best and a lie at worst.
PS I just realized that Ukrainian anthem reminds me of Paul Graham essay Default Dead or Default Alive? Default Dead and “is not dead” are powerful tools to see the current state of things a bit differently.