SIVACRACY.NET

I don’t have time for this. Honestly, I don’t. There are about a thousand other things I can and should be doing, mostly having to do with my professional and personal life. So why I am spending time saying goodbye on Sivacracy, when almost every fiber of my being is telling me that my attention would be better spent elsewhere?

Sivacracy has long meant something special for me. It was the first blog I read with any regularity, and it was the one that first inspired me to blog over at my own site, Differences & Repetitions. Like BoingBoing and perhaps a few other venues, it seemed like a place where young, hip intellectuals could circulate provocative ideas about and commentary on the world. I appreciated Sivacracy’s spirit and insight as a reader for many years and so was thrilled when Siva asked me late last year to join the Sivacracy team. It’s been a short run—too short, really—but it’s been a blast nonetheless. I say goodbye here without any regrets.

I suppose the mark of any good cultural producer is to know when to say, “enough.” Seinfeld went out on top despite NBC’s having offered Jerry Seinfeld something like $100 million to stick around for one more season. On the flip side, most producers allow their work to hang on well beyond its prime. Take Happy Days, for example, which essentially became a parody of itself in its later years. Desperate to hold on to its waning audience, producer Gary Marshall concocted a sequence in which the Fonz would perform a death-defying leap over a shark tank on water skis. Whenever such gimmickry rears its head in popular culture, people refer to it as “jumping the shark.”

It’s taken me awhile to reconcile myself to Sivacracy’s shutdown, but I realize now it’s probably for the best. I’m tired, and I’ve only been at it here for a scant 10 months. I can only imagine how exhausted those who’ve been with Sivacracy longer than I must feel. Most importantly, I’m pleased that Siva and the whole lot of us have had the good sense not to let Sivacracy jump the shark. Better to let it go than to allow it to become a shadow of what it once was or, worse yet, a sad joke.

So thank you, Siva, for having the integrity not to ask me or anyone else to don our water skis. Thank you Sivacracy team for welcoming me into the fold. And thank you readers for listening and responding to my opinions about the world.

Later, yo.