“An age of extinction is coming,” the headline read. “Here’s how to survive.”

Good gawd. An age of extinction? I read the piece, a provocative essay, one that's a cry to remain who you are when so much of our inner lives—from our friendships to our romantic partnerships to, especially with AI's rise, our self-agency—gets colonized by technology and swallowed by its algorithms and presented back to us through its screens.

No: We don't need to stand for it.

We don't want to, either. That's the other point.

"...In many cases,” Ross Douthat writes in the essay, “the virtual substitutes are clearly inferior to what they’re replacing. The streaming algorithm tends to yield artistic mediocrity compared with the movies of the past, or even the golden age television shows of 20 years ago. BookTok is to literature as OnlyFans is to great romantic love. Online sources of local news are generally lousy compared with the vanished ecosystem of print newspapers. Online friendships are thinner than real-world relationships, online dating pairs fewer people off successfully than the dating markets of the prior age. Online porn — well, you get my point."

What's the remedy?

"Have the child. Practice the religion. Found the school. Support the local theater, the museum, the opera or concert hall, even if you can see it all on YouTube. Pick up the paintbrush, the ball, the instrument. Learn the language — even if there’s an app for it. Learn to drive, even if you think soon Waymo or Tesla will drive for you. Put up headstones, don’t just burn your dead. Sit with the child, open the book, and read.

"As the [digital] bottleneck tightens, all survival will depend on heeding once again the ancient admonition: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live."

It's telling that Douthat chooses a passage from Deuteronomy to end the essay. What he describes is a modern digital oppressor not unlike ancient and in-real-life ones. It is our job to show each other and our children how we want to live, and to practice that life each day.

That is how the ancient Israelites survived. Maybe it's the only way we will.

To continue what Douthat argues, it may seem unreasonable and even hard to pursue your writing projects these days. How will you be noticed amid the proliferation of AI slop and the thousands of means—millions of means—of audience distraction?

I talked with a writer just this week, an author of two critically acclaimed and wonderful books, who thought about ditching everything. Giving up on the writing life. Taking up some trade.

I get it. We all reach this fuck-it stage. But doing the unreasonable, hard thing like pursuing your writing dream is, I would argue, exactly what this moment calls for.

Let me tell you a story about how I ended up with cracked ribs.

I've been going to a boxing gym every Saturday morning for over a year.

I hit the heavy bags in a class that's the most taxing I've ever taken. We work on footwork and combinations, do pushups and jump squats. Every Saturday I leave the gym drenched in sweat.

It's a real gym. Pros train out of there, with a full ring to one side and speed bags and the aforementioned heavy ones and weights and jump ropes everywhere. I sometimes hit the heavy bags alongside the pros or the kids in statewide Golden Gloves competitions out to make a name for themselves.

At the start of this year the owners opened a sparring class to adult amateurs. I was curious to see how I'd fare against something more than a heavy bag.

I was, at 44, easily 15 years older than every other amateur who signed up. I thought to myself that first Saturday, This is crazy. Unreasonable. I should drop out.

I stuck with it. However unreasonable my curiosity, I wanted to see what sparring against grown-ass men 20 years younger than me felt like.

I punched, got punched, learned more about footwork and timing and defense and how my long arms were more than a great defense, as my coaches said. They were the best offense.

I loved it. I sparred every Saturday morning for six weeks.

Three Saturdays ago, I had my best session yet. Six full rounds in the ring. Landed good, hard punches. But as I'd improved, so had my competition and in my zest to land the big ones, I exposed myself. I got dinged real bad in the ribs and took an uppercut to the jaw that had me ask for time from my opponent.

The jaw took a few days to heal but the ribs—they're still tender as I type.

My wife called me crazy. (I didn't tell her until last week, when I scheduled an X-Ray to make sure my ribs weren't broken.)

My doctor said, "Better cracked ribs than a concussion." A fair point.

If I wanted to know what it was like to punch someone as hard as I could and to absorb a punch like that, well, reader: I know.

I don't think I'll spar any more. As a writer and entrepreneur, my livelihood and family's well-being depends on my mental acuity.

I have no regrets though. I did something hard. "Unreasonable" even for someone my age. You may call it a midlife crisis—certain friends do, and they make a good point—but I learned to breathe through the flight response and any rising anger, too.

Neither is helpful when looking for openings to attack your opponent.

Two Saturdays ago, the lead trainer at the gym, a former pro, watched us amateurs spar. "It's only ever you against you," he said.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think that's as true of boxing as it is of the writing life.

The opponent seems real. It's a distracted readership or maybe slumping book sales. It's the proof in every headline of layoffs that legacy media won't keep you around. It's the discouragement when you publish your first newsletter edition and you know it will be one of hundreds of thousands available to read at that very moment.

Pursue the dream anyway. Every opponent can be defeated. Every opponent can be ignored, frankly, because the real opponent is, like the lead trainer said, your own limiting beliefs.

I will tell you from experience that the unreasonable life is the writing life. So many days are hard.

But would you believe it if I told you that so many more are among the best you'll ever live?