Field Note 21 of 22

Tel Aviv, Israel

“The drive in the people was obvious almost immediately. So was how unremarkable the security around them had become.”

This was around 2004, a very different visit from the kibbutz years earlier. I was in Tel Aviv, where an Israeli company was in discussions to acquire a US startup, and the Israel I encountered this time had little in common with the one I remembered.

The people I met at the company had a kind of drive that showed itself almost immediately, the sense of people building something and expecting it to matter. And everywhere around that energy sat something else: security, present in the ordinary rhythms of daily life, checked bags, watchful entrances, a level of vigilance that the people living there seemed to have long since stopped noticing.

Two visits, one country, a generation apart. A kibbutz built around shared purpose, and a tech sector built around individual ambition, both, in their own way, adapting to what the moment required of them.

Field Note 21