Existential Optimism — Packy McCormick
Summary
McCormick argues that as society shifts from industrial to informational, individuals gain unprecedented self-sovereignty — but that freedom is a double-edged sword. Sartre’s existentialism is making a comeback. Core mental models:
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Self-Sovereignty as Double-Edged Sword. Creator economy, entrepreneurship, remote work, and web3 all push toward individual autonomy. But Sartre warned: “Man is condemned to be free.” With no institution to blame, the burden of meaning-making falls entirely on you. The richest countries have the lowest self-employment rates (US at 6.3%) — most people prefer the structure of employment.
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The Maximalist Minimalist. McCormick identifies a failure mode: fighting over whose tool/blockchain/framework is best instead of growing the overall pie. “Whenever I see maximalism or dogma, I see people who aren’t ready to handle their freedom and make their own meaning.” This applies to analytics tooling debates, programming language wars, and any domain where tribal loyalty substitutes for actual problem-solving.
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Post-Pandemic as Post-War. We’re emerging from a global catastrophe (pandemic instead of war) with a strong “we can recreate society” energy. The parallel to postwar existentialism is intentional — periods of collective disruption create windows for reinvention.
Relevance
- 06-reference/2026-04-03-how-this-all-happened — Housel describes the postwar cultural shift from the economic side; McCormick describes the current shift from the philosophical side. Same pattern, different era.
- 06-reference/2026-04-03-part-time-creator-manifesto — The creator economy is the practical expression of existential self-sovereignty. But the manifesto’s emphasis on “part-time” is a hedge against the full burden.
- 06-reference/2026-04-03-company-of-one — Jarvis’s intentional smallness is one answer to the “condemned to be free” problem: choose constraints that give structure without surrendering autonomy.
- 06-reference/2026-04-03-not-boring-one-year-retrospective — McCormick is modeling the existential optimism he preaches — building meaning through his own creator journey.
Open Questions
- Is the maximalist minimalist stance sustainable, or does picking a side (maximalism) actually produce better outcomes through focus?
- McCormick’s note about analytics: “Fighting over which tool does the job best, instead of trying to increase the quality of insights produced.” How do you keep a data team from falling into this trap?