Chosen Gravity

I want to share a quick note about the book Chosen Gravity: Meaning After Work (download links at the end of this post).

I didn’t write this book. I do, however, have permission to share it freely with visitors to this site. Like most interesting things, it’s not something I agree with entirely – but it contains enough insight to be worth spending some time with. If nothing else, its citations alone can lead you toward some genuinely helpful resources.

The book is practical, but also a little unsettling. It frames modern life like a physics problem: as the external gravity of necessity (work, money, survival) weakens, you have to decide what gives your days weight – and then build it deliberately. It points to mastery (voluntary difficulty), connection (intentional human relationships), and independence (a varied set of personal identity sources) as the raw materials. At times it reads like a manifesto, at others like a research paper. Throughout, it assumes AI ushers in an era of bounty beyond our current imagination (i.e. not resolving to doom by default) – and offers a clear admonition: don’t dissolve into the simulation. Be a real person on purpose.

Over the next year or two, I suspect some of its questions (and perhaps several of its claims) will only become more relevant. From time to time, I may write short posts that reference a passage or idea from the book – sometimes to build on it, sometimes to push back on it a bit.

There are two download options available: a PDF, or an EPUB format optimized for eReaders like the Kindle.

Enjoy.