The Cage of Casualness

I.

I still remember how shocked I was when I realized that virtually no one at university was serious about studying physics.

No one wanted to talk about physics beyond what was required to solve homework problems.

Mind you, these were all people that signed up voluntarily to spend at least the next 3 years of their life studying physics.

But everyone acted like this was just a random hobby they picked up yesterday and it didn’t mean anything to them.

People had signed up because society and their parents expected them to do something legible. They didn’t hate physics at school so that seemed like a good option to buy themselves some time.

It certainly didn’t get better the longer I stayed at university.

PhD students, post-docs, and even professors weren’t any more serious about figuring out nature’s secrets.

No one was randomly bringing up insights from papers they just read during lunch breaks. No professor was inviting students to discussions about fundamental questions. If there were ever any discussions, they were about technical details required to finish a specific paper. No one displayed any serious curiosity.

I’m not sure where I got the impression this would be any different. Probably from reading Richard Feynman’s books. But I certainly didn’t feel like this extreme casualness about what should be your life’s work, your craft, was normal or healthy.

II.

Now that I’ve left the academic world behind me for a bit, I’ve realized that this is a much broader societal development.

It’s maybe most obvious in the way people dress now.

No one dresses up for anything anymore except maybe for weddings. Everyone dresses like a slob.

People can’t even fathom why anyone would wear anything that isn’t casual.

When did everyone become so weirdly casual about their life, about their work, about their education, about how they spend their time, about everything?

No one reads serious books anymore.

No one is serious about their hobbies anymore. People’s hobbies nowadays are doomscrolling or watching other people play video games since playing yourself would be too serious.

No one seriously listens to albums anymore. Music is just background noise now. It’s all just AI-curated slob playlists that perfectly blend into the background.

No one seriously watches movies anymore. Netflix is telling writers to dumb down shows since viewers aren’t paying attention. Cinemas are only showing casual fun like Marvel reboots and sequels.

Dating is a cesspool of casualness now.

Serious friendships are becoming increasingly rare.

And just like I’ve discovered in the physics department, no one is serious about their work anymore.

Work consumes a significant part of your life. It defines who you are whether you like it or not. Acting like it doesn’t matter is just weird.

So maybe it’s not surprising that one of the weirdest manifestations of casualness I’ve seen is among entrepreneurs.

Just like with physics, I expected people to be serious, either about solving real problems or at least making a ton of money.

But nope.

Many entrepreneurs nowadays are just “indie hacking”.

They launch little projects, never fully committing to anything, never finding the confidence to truly tell the world what they are building.

No real ambition. No obsession.

III.

If someone watched you for a week, would they think you’re serious about anything?

Why not?

We’ve been sold the idea that casualness is freedom. That not really caring is cool. That commitment is dumb. That keeping everything loose and uncommitted means keeping your options open, staying flexible, remaining free.

It’s of course an oversimplistic explanation but I do think that sitcoms played a major role here. For ten seasons, 52.5 million people watched Ross get mocked every time he tried to share something he cared about. Mid-sentence, his friends would groan, the laugh track would roll, and we all learned: enthusiasm is annoying, intelligence is boring, caring too much makes you the punchline.

That’s brainwashing: the constant reinforcement that earnestness deserves ridicule, packaged as entertainment and beamed into living rooms every Thursday night.

Collectively we’ve learned to keep everything casual as a defensive posture.

But casualness is a cage.

While it keeps you safe, it makes you numb. Watch what happens to people who live this way. They drift through a fog of perpetual optionality, trapped in a diffuse, low-grade anxiety. A nagging sense that nothing really matters, that life is slipping away in an endless scroll of uncommitted half-gestures.

The cage keeps you protected from commitment, from failure, from the vulnerability of actually caring. But that safety is itself a prison.

You’re protected from everything, including living a meaningful life.

The opposite of casualness is seriousness.

Seriousness doesn’t mean you are not having fun.

It just means you actually care. It means prioritizing long-term satisfaction over short-term dopamine.

Real freedom comes from commitment, not from keeping your options open.

The people I know who seem most alive are the ones who take something seriously.

Their work, their craft, their friendships, their hobbies. They’re willing to look uncool, to seem try-hard, to risk actually giving a damn.

They’ve just decided that something is allowed to matter to them.