Last month, in an opinion essay for Arizona State University’s State Press, reporter Sam Troester took issue with what he views as an epidemic of nonchalance.
Troester has strong feelings about what’s necessary to counter what he calls an alarming trend, and joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: Sam, I want to start actually with the last two lines of your piece, which “are start dreaming, start chalanting.” What is, what is chanting for you?
SAM TROESTER: I mean, it is just not being nonchalant. It is taking down that facade of, you know, not caring for the sake of looking cool and just kind of unashamedly being yourself and doing what you want to do for the sake of doing it.
DINGMAN: And so the idea for this piece came from watching an awards acceptance speech. What was that speech?
TROESTER: Yeah. Timothée Chalamet received, I believe it was the SAG award for actor and for his role as Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.” And he said in the speech, he took a pretty distinct route. He says, I know people don't usually say this.
TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET: I know the classiest thing would be to downplay the effort that went into this role. And how much this means to me, but the truth is this was 5.5 years of my life. I poured everything I I had into playing this incomparable artist, Mr. Bob Dylan,.
TROESTER: And then he goes to say, hey, I know people really don't usually say this, but …
CHALAMET: The truth is I'm really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don't usually talk like that, but I wanna be one of the greats. I'm inspired by the greats. I'm inspired by the greats here tonight. I'm as inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando and Viola Davis, as I am by Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, and I wanna be up there. So I'm deeply grateful to that. This, this doesn't signify that, but it's a little more fuel, it's a little more ammo to keep going. Thank you so much.
DINGMAN: I, I remember being really struck by that, too, and that it was so refreshing.
TROESTER: Yeah, yeah, that's the word I was exactly gonna use to describe it.
DINGMAN: Why was it so refreshing for you?
TROESTER: I don't really enjoy like the, like the fake humble act. It's, I think it's nice to see people really see, hey, I'm capable of this. I went out and put in work and I did it. I think that's really refreshing, and I think people having that confidence with themselves, it's what we need a lot more of.
DINGMAN: Yeah, I, I think there is really something to the idea that he wasn't pretending that it wasn't hard. And you talk in the piece also about how this is sort of a classic American archetype, this idea that like, I'm not affected by it. I, you know, I'm, I'm cool, I'm cool.
And it made me want to ask you, like, what's your relationship with that? Do you feel like your relationship with ambition is challenging?
TROESTER: I mean, I want to work in the, in the civil rights field. I want to make a positive impact on the world, knowing that, you know, like 70 years down the line when I, you know, I'm not here anymore, I want to know that I made a substantial difference in the people in my lives and the people who I don't know yet.
So at least in my case, I've always had ambitions, you know, go out and change stuff for the better. It's a lot more gratifying to see people, you know, authentically go out there and just be loud and be good.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, the authenticity thing is interesting, and I wonder if it's related to another line from your piece that I really liked, which is, and this is a quote, you say, “there is latent cringiness in trying to seem dark and mysterious.”
What, what is that cringe for you? What do you think it touches on?
TROESTER: It's inherently not nonchalant to seem nonchalant to, you know, put on the spot. It's, I think that someone kind of like press themselves and trying to like, you know, maybe just be in the corner at the function or, you know, like, just vague and, you know, like, like darker and mysterious than you actually are. I think there's just a lot of cringes in that because it's, it's not you. It's you're trying very hard to put on this mask.
DINGMAN: Right. And it's like people who are doing that think that we can't see them pretending, that they don't care about something that they obviously care about tremendously.
TROESTER: I mean, if you talk to someone who puts on this guise, I found it very boring. I don't want to talk to a brick wall. I want to talk to someone who, you know, has, you know, taken their time on this world and has accumulated so many experiences and who wants to talk about them, wants to see what gets them going.
I don't want to talk to someone who responds and, you know, terse one liners that, you know, they think they seem cool by saying. Why not be authentic? It, it's the only way to make a human connection.
Because if you don't have this, if you make this connection with someone when you're putting on this facade, you're going to live with this insecurity that, hey, if you know, I really, you know, take this mask off, become like and like be like the corner, like the real you, there is that worry that they're not going to accept it.
And so I, I worry that the nonchalance thing, it, it runs this risk of you having to keep this facade going forever and ever.
DINGMAN: Right, right. Well, not to ask you to be a spokesperson for your entire generation, but people of my generation, I'm a millennial, a lot of us have heard this narrative that Gen Z, the generation that came along after us. It was gonna be the generation that saved the world cause they were gonna care so much about climate change. They were gonna be more politically engaged than we were because they were from a generation of school shootings and things like this.
And as we saw in the most recent presidential election, a lot of Gen Z folks didn't vote, at least in the numbers that some might have thought they would have. What do you make of that? I mean, do you see any of that in your life as a Gen Z person?
TROESTER: I can't stress how glad I am you asked that question. I personally, the Gen Z apathy in regards to politics is an incredibly real and an incredibly dangerous phenomenon. You watch and then you, you read more about the world, and it punches you and crushes you down. But people tend to take all these, all this bad news and then they use, and then they use this thing, the appeal of nonchalance to just repress it.
So, the nonchalance thing has very much not just emerged as, you know, a way to pick up girls or a way to seem dark and mysterious, but a way for many of my compatriots to just seem less worried by all the noise of the world.
DINGMAN: Interesting. So, it's almost like, rather than give in to the despair of all of these terrible things that you see piling up all around you, you affect this air of not caring about any of it. Because to do anything else might be overwhelming.
TROESTER: Exactly. I think that the apathy thing has certainly emerged as a way for people to just not stay involved and therefore they won't stay overwhelmed.
DINGMAN: But in the spirit of your piece, it seems like in spite of all that, you're still choosing to engage, you're still choosing to care. Tell me more about that, that voice inside of you that doesn't want to give up on chalance.
TROESTER: Yeah, I kind of have to. I, I have to stay involved. I mean, I am a straight, white passing guy from Scottsdale, Arizona. I have grown up, I've had the luxury of having a lot of things that not a lot of people have had the ability to, you know, either partake in or the I don't have the worries that the people have.
So it's, you're kind of called to use your voice and use the, and, and I know this is very buzzword, that use the privilege you have in order to ensure that others can have the same outcomes that that that I myself have had and hopefully will have. You kind of have to stay chalant. You have to stay, you know, active and always putting out a voice, making sure that you can use your platform to, you know, change other people's minds.
DINGMAN: Is there anybody in culture that you look to besides Chalamet as an example of this?
TROESTER: Right now, I can't think of anyone, and I think that's the problem. I think the fact that there is no central figure that can easily come to mind for me as some example of raw and unbridled chalance, the fact that there's no one there that I can easily know, I think that's the problem.
