David McElroy

I’ve been falling in love with the same woman my entire life.

She’s had different names over the years. She’s had different faces. There have even been very real differences between her incarnations. But at the core, she’s always been my latest and most mature understanding of “the Ideal Woman.”

The ideal woman doesn’t exist any more than the ideal man exists. I know that. But it’s the best phrase I have for this abstract idea. I don’t know where I’m going with this, but it’s constantly been on my mind for the last week. I need to talk about it. Maybe I’ll have a point. Maybe not.

Think about a product that goes through generations of change over years, but it’s still recognizable as the same product each time. If you compare the first iPhone from 2007 with the current model, it would seem radically different. But if you compared the first iPhone to the second, then the second to the third — and so on, including last year’s model to this year’s — you recognize the same idea and same product. But the latest is radically different from the very first.

If you compared my first Ideal Woman with my most recent, you would see differences, but the core elements — the ideal parts in each of them — are startlingly similar.

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What if you discovered something life-changing — something that could improve life for everyone — but nobody wanted to hear about it?

About 12 years ago, I discovered the germ of an idea that was astounding to me. It hit me out of the blue. It was an epiphany that I didn’t ask for and which I didn’t control. I immediately knew it was true and I knew it was important, but I couldn’t put it into words simple enough to explain it to others.

The idea was so abstract that my heart felt it more than my brain reasoned it. I knew it would change everything — for me and for others — if I could ever fully work it out. But it remains so abstract and so instinctive for me that others look at me blankly when I try to explain.

Ready? Here it is.

You do not want the real-world things you think you want.

And I don’t want the things I think I want, either. Instead, we all want — and need, require, crave, thirst for — an inner state of being which we can’t consciously understand. Our hearts know this instinctively and abstractly, but our brains completely misunderstand — and our conscious reasoning leads us astray.

Please don’t tune out. Not yet.

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I doubt you care about this, but I need to talk about it. Will you forgive me?

I’m struggling to launch DavidMcElroy.TV. In the early stages, I was struggling with technical and creative issues, but I’m past enough of those to get started. For the last few weeks, the issues have been more fundamental.

What do I want this channel to be? And what will convince you to watch?

When I worked in politics, I had a simple goal that drove every decision I made. If my client won, that’s all that mattered. I felt that I understood how to manipulate voters, so if you gave me an appropriate budget — in a district where I understood the demographics — I knew how to achieve the goal.

I wasn’t concerned with my personal beliefs. I wasn’t trying to make great art. I didn’t care whether voters liked me. In the words of legendary Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis, “Just win, baby!”

Today, I’m trying to build a commercial audience, so I have to care what the audience thinks. But I want to make something I’m proud of — something that represents my view of the world — so I’m struggling to figure out what will achieve both of those goals.

Am I here to explain complicated philosophical ideas that matter to me — and few others — even if I try to avoid seeming nerdy about it? Am I here to entertain and amuse a passive audience, even if it means dumbing the ideas down?

And can I set aside my ego enough to find a compromise between my intellectual integrity and my need to run a business?

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