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“At the end of the year 1492 most men in western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future.”

Samuel Eliot Morison

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“Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations.”

John von Neumann

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“Technology no longer serves as a tool to improve human life, but is a prostitute to the drive for profits. Greed drives technology as businesses compete to develop new technologies in order to generate more profits.”

Dorothee Soelle

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While Marshall McLuhan tried to tell us how technology would shape us, it was Toffler who pointed out that technology was going to be the tool which would push our cognitive limits. In Future Shock predicted that environmental overstimulation would not only impact our physical and social worlds, but also our psyche.

Which leads me to say we should be talking more about the asymmetry between technology and the human brain particularly in reference to our overall sense of doom and gloom.

To be fair. People have been consistently gloomy about the present and the future since the dawn of time. But I would argue the present, say the 2020’s version is a bit different and maybe a little more uncomfortable. I do point my finger at technology and social media. The invention of the computer, software and, consequently, the worldwide web marked the end of a shitload of familiar, comfortable, features in everyone’s life. It was at that point where, Jurgen Moltmann said “we are setting developments afoot that are getting out of control. We are making free decisions through which we lose our own freedom. If the decisions are final, irrevocable, and unrepeatable, then we are not dealing with experiments anymore. This is a point of no return: all or nothing.”

The wierdish thing about it as technology becomes more ubiquitous, we begin to use it in what I would call ‘symmetrical sounding narratives” which are actually asymmetrical in consequences. globalization is a perfect example of this. if globalization sounds inevitable it then suggests technology will somehow determine our future. Let me be clear. This does not mean technology somehow progresses on its own in a vague process over which humans have no control. Technology does not create itself and humans participate in the decision making, and crafting, from which technologies are developed. But the idea technology is equitable and consequences are symmetrical is fairly absurd, therefore, believing the idea that technology itself is moving civilization forward in an inevitable process is fairly absurd. To give technology the power to determine the future of society not only ignores human responsibility in forming and shaping technology but also ignores the limits of the human minds.

Which leads me to suggest technology has impacted by not only its ubiquitous nature, breadth and depth of usage/connectivity, but also by its inherent exponential nature.

As Marshall McLuhan pointed out it has created impact as a medium and a message/messenger. It has shaped us, but by nature, technology is not additive, can be multiplicative, but arcs toward exponential. And therein lies the subcurrent issue – exponential against finite.

Generally speaking exponential growth rates cause serious problems. In fact, in business, exponential growth cannot be sustained, let alone maintained, for any meaningful length of time. Sure. Some technology companies have navigated this (under the guise of ‘scale’), but at any time humans or real resources are involved (not technology feeding on itself) exponential growth will outrun or even exhaust finite resources.

It is true that technology did affect the existing social organization, where few figured out ways to eliminate the never-ending grind of labor and create the possibilities of a thriving connectivity of workers, but it also, simultaneously, empowered a small class of people to inordinately benefit from technology. While technology became ubiquitous, its effects were not. Technology offered us possibilities and then took them away from many of us almost immediately. I would love to say technology has transformed civilization and society, but it really hasn’t. The embedded aspects of traditional civilization remain and elements have been amplified and other elements have been tamped down. And while it would be easy to suggest civilization is information (usually transferred through stories and narratives) the truth is that civilization is small amounts of information, within an almost infinite pool of information, plodding along the progress highway. Simplistically, the world invented on-demand information and people were wired with insufficient wiring. Unfortunately, this remains basically true decades into the technology revolution.

Where an information revolution should have occurred, it didn’t. and maybe this is where we need to be a bit harsher on, well, us – humans. The explosion of information should have expanded the minds and mindsets and critical thought of humankind, instead it ran face first into a humankind incapable of using the information. As a consequence, the small minds gathered up the portion of the big information that (a) they were capable of absorbing and (b) they wanted to absorb (it appealed to what they already thought).

“Because of the digital revolution, our lives are being transformed by three grand bargains. The intellectual bargain: we have more knowledge, but less capacity to concentrate and focus. The social bargain: we are much more available, but much less attentive. The emotional bargain: we are much more connected, but much less empathetic. When we trade away skills for power, attention for availability, empathy for connectivity, and quality for quantity of relationships, we sign up to a Faustian pact that we do not even know exists – one that gives us more control over the outside world, but less control over our inner world.”

Our Technology Sickness

What I will suggest is that computer technology actually gave us some idea of the scale and sheer magnitude of the information universe. I do not need a calculator to estimate how many books/printed items people had typically read to know it is significantly, maybe even exponentially, less than what the computer technology information blizzard drops on us. The brain isn’t built to accommodate this tsunami of information. This is not to suggest people are stupid, just that even the most normal, critical thinking human being, has to choose what to ‘experience’ in the infinite pool of information computer technology offers. Think about print. The way we grasped the magnitude of information before was maybe the Sunday New York Times newspaper (who could work their way through that?) or even the largest town library. But it was graspable knowable, i.e., there is information and I can’t absorb it all but I can selectively choose what I can, or want, to assimilate. Computer technology put an infinite sized library with dozens of Sunday NYTs every day in front of everyone. The ability to assimilate didn’t change, but now we couldn’t ignore the sheer magnitude of the information universe – it became real. It would be silly to ignore the truth that most minds are staggered, if not frozen, by this new reality. It isn’t that people cannot assimilate information, but the sheer amount bombarding everyone from the totality of the universe is simply too much to assimilate. I state it that way to emphasize this is not one thing to be fixed, but rather the universe needs to be rearranged.

Which leads me to the future.

We are just now exploring the limits of the mind and what our limits are, or are not, regarding learning and unlearning and reeducation. What we humans are capable of is, well, not quite in focus yet. Sure. There are futurists and prognosticators espousing what the future will be, but they are guessing. We have to accept the fact that some of the most far reaching consequences of this technology revolution are next to impossible to foresee at the moment – or in the near future. Many of the features that may appear inconsequential in today’s world could have drastic implications, and consequences, long term. That said. Once again, the future isn’t technology, but humans. Computer technology represents a level of power which is hard to not want to wield at some point – for good or bad. Combine that with the fact some people will simply be better at tapping into the infinite information world with highly qualified finite brains. This is where it all gets a bit tricky (but quite human in nature). The best thinking, developed for the best of the world, will fall into the laps of someone who can use it in a ‘power’ fashion. I explain all of that because, once again, people are not stupid. They may not know the mechanics of how technology power is wielded, but they do know the information universe is too fast for their minds and they seek to wield some power of their own. How? By NOT traveling the infinite information universe, but rather seeking to find a planet (a bounded world) they can plop their mind on and know as much as anyone on that particular planet – all the other planets be damned.

• ** note: part of the problem with the information universe is it is too easy to actually create an alternative universe planet for someone people to plop their minds down on and inhabit).

“Thus the difficulty is not just that nonlinear problems are more difficult to solve. Nor does it reflect our lack of cleverness in finding solutions. The problem does not lie in limitations to our technical and intellectual capabilities, but rather in the characteristic properties of the solutions themselves.”

But let me end on a hopeful note.

While human minds are finite, the world’s resources are finite, and, for the most part, our skills are finite, we are nowhere close to tapping into the full potential of any and all those things.

While the education system has been incredibly effective in the past, its biggest shortcoming is it truly only develops an insignificant fraction of the abilities of almost every person. The objective should be to optimize each person’s potential and abilities and discover how ‘full’ it can become when fully tapped. In other words, expand our finiteness to limits we can only envision.

The world’s resources are finite, but we are nowhere close to untapping the true potential of all our resources – to date we have extracted & exploited resources and in the future, we should be seeking to expand resources.

And technology is also attempting to help. There are increasing amounts of new technologies that could help us contextualize all the information coming in. for example, Are.na is an online platform for bookmarking items you find online and making connections across them. It describes itself as ‘Tumblr meets Wikipedia.’ Roam Research is a similar platform, a notetaking app that allows complex interlinking between pieces of content, creating dynamic networks and hierarchies of information.

I would suggest, societally, these types of technologies should be standard for everyone. I would even suggest that these types of technologies should be embedded into social media platforms. My point on technology here is that there are people attempting to craft solutions to the issues technology begets. I would suggest it is within this relationship that many people feel gloomy about the future because while I believe we all know there is no ‘going back’ (to whatever you envision ‘back’ is) we also do not know what the future will be and the present feels a bit overwhelming. Anyway. Technology is here and , as Toffler said, the great growling engine of change (technology) will continue to growl on. But. Humans and humanity will also growl on. Ponder.

Business, as well as Life, demands participation. Someone may choose to be indifferent, but all that means is that someone else is not only making decisions for you, they are affecting the arc of your life and, consequently, your destiny. To be clear. This is a fact. The affect may not be direct, but the point is that even if you work hard, are persistent, have clear objectives, if you are indifferent all the external factors will increase the gravity of the environment you are doing all of those things within. In other words, unless you are at your best everyday, maybe a little lucky on occasion, the arc of your destiny is going to get dragged down to all the things you were indifferent to. And while all of that matters if your own life and destiny matters to you, if you participate in the deadweight of indifference you may actually be facilitating the twisting of society’s fate. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out, again, this is not just true of Life, but business. And while I do believe this discussion gets warped in some incredibly unhealthy ways, business should not ignore the discussion and being indifferent really isn’t an option.

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“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.
The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?
I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them.
I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.”
Antonio Gramsci

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In today’s current political environment, which bleeds into society as some fairly absurd niche arguments about what is right or wrong and important or unimportant, the people become more and more distant to traditional parties or traditional ‘community break lines.’ This impacts business whether you like it or not; whether you want it or not. Being indifferent to this, acting like you are detached from this, simply means an already ‘delicate and dangerous’ situation becomes even more fraught with peril – for your business.

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“At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in that particular organisational form, with the particular men who constitute, represent and lead them, are no longer recognised by their class (or fraction of a class) as its expression. When such crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, because the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic “men of destiny”.”
Antonio Gramsci

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I have argued for years a business cannot detach itself from society, responsibility to societal issues and much of the larger narratives and discussions taking place. Detaching yourself from it under the guise of “my job is insure my business makes a profit and offers people employment” is not a sustainable stance nor strategy. I hate indifference. Inevitably a business needs to pick a side. To be clear. That sometimes simply means taking a stand on what you are not, not saying what you are. If you don’t believe it is your job to carry the flag ON an issue, that’s okay. But you do have to make it your job to say “but I will not stand by THAT flag.” Ponder.

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“Some conversations are not about what they’re about.”

Anne Carson

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“Instead of seeking new landscapes, develop new eyes.”

Marcel Proust

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Sight is not always about the eyes, often its about thoughts and thinking. What I mean by that is we see what we want to see before any words are spoken and then we place the words we hear into that view. This is dangerous. It is dangerous because framing creates blindness and we ignore the fact experiences are personal <unless there is enough similar critical mass to make it quasi-universal>.

The reality is most personal experiences are 360degree universal and:

• Research of one is not research.
• The odds that the person relating the experience <in business management> actually reflects mainstream American <or any mainstream consumer> is so low that, well, even Las Vegas wouldn’t take them odds.

Bottom line?

In order to have real vision, the type of vision that permits you to see people as they truly are and to see a future which is truly possible, you need to realize that your experience is most likely not universal. This may seem like a no brainer, but I can’t tell you how often this basic rule is ignored. WE, even the most savviest behavioral people in business, ignore it all the time <albeit in degrees; not wholesale>. I think a large part of it is that is because people personalize their experience <or their wife/husband’s/group of friends> that they cannot fathom that no one else feels exactly the same way.

Which leads me to some consequences from poor sight.

We are all connected by invisible glass in one window called the Life window. When we hurt someone or when we pass judgment on someone, we are affected as well. Sorry. Life, for some reason, just likes to keep everything balanced. What that means is you are probably better off (or more likely to be happy) if you attach what you care about (and Life objectives) with good intentions for other people. If you look at it selfishly, when your objectives benefit other people there is less difficulty in achieving them. Oh. And others will assist you. If you don’t look at it selfishly, well, just assume more good shit will happen in your life if you do good shit (and think good shit about other people). This is a semi-important thought in that we wander into conversations more worried about what “they want” and “what is their angle” and it inevitably skews our sight. I am not suggesting naivete, simply suggesting that you are more likely to have a mutually beneficial conversation if you don’t pass judgement and act with honest good intentions.

Which leads me to a conversation with yourself about desires.

Desires sometime have a weird filter that makes things not look as they really are. What I mean by that is not everything we go after is what we truly want. Sometimes we only think we know what we want and sometimes we don’t know what we want until we get it. Maddening? You bet. But everyone has this sight. Unfortunately, this sight is most typically found in the main room of your mental house so you look through it a lot. I would suggest this sight is always a bit smudged and makes your own horizon vision a bit fuzzier. The consequence of this fuzziness is you begin to get tempted to go to other people’s mental houses and look thru their “desire sight” and hope for some guidance. Sorry. No can do. Your Desire sight is your Desire sight.  I kind of think they are like snowflakes; no 2 the same. You will probably not have a more aggravating thing to deal with. Too bad. Everyone has it.

So. There you go. I would suggest some conversations are not what you think is universal, and yet individual in different ways. At best you should try and wipe each conversation as clean as you can because, well, the prize is that a conversation clears someone else’s vision enough to see you as the person you wish you were.

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“It’s a very powerful thing when someone sees you as the person you wish you were.”

Veronica Mars

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That is a powerful insight. The conversations in which we get glimpses of the best version of ourselves. And maybe that is my point today. If you develop new eyes, maybe you see your best self. Ponder.

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“Only a few find the way, some don’t recognize it when they do – some… don’t ever want to.”

Cheshire Cat

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Finding your way is most likely one of the most desired, and elusive, things in business and life. Now. We talk about this a lot, like a shitload of a lot, but truthfully very few truly find “the way.” That doesn’t stop us from proclaiming we have, or we are on our way (our journey) or even suggest the search for finding the way is actually finding the way, but the grander point the Cheshire Cat makes is many of us probably actually do, but don’t recognize it (for whatever reason).

Uhm. I was tempted to use “most of us” rather than ‘many of us’ in that last sentence.

Finding the way is tough. Not because we don’t have goals and objectives and even dreams. Mostly because things in life are rarely black or white and the outlines of what we really “want” are often a bit vague. What this means is not only is the way winding, but every frickin’ day is a winding road (to quote Sheryl Crow). Many of us know there is ‘something better’ out there, but finding THE way to that betterness is difficult mostly because ‘winding’ don’t permit you the luxury to see that far ahead, certainty is situational and the horizon often is blocked by a forest or hill.

Which leads me to where I believe the Cheshire cat really knew his shit.

Some ‘don’t ever want to’ for fear of the unknown. On a personal note, despite all the things that I have done that may appear risky I can develop as long a list, if not longer, of things I didn’t do — for whatever reason (some good, some bad). It reminds me of something:

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Sometimes I think about why there aren’t more people running, sprinting towards greatness. Why there aren’t more people continually evolving into something better, stronger, and happier. I wonder this a lot as I read or listen to stories about miserable jobs and unsatisfying home lives and dreams that have been left to decompose. And, I think I’m starting to understand why some people just stay, as they are, and stop aspiring for betterment. I think I get it. I think I see why it’s not a matter of capability, but rather a matter of personal choice.

–

Look. Some people start hurling themselves down drastically different paths, but most people just aren’t that hasty. In fact many people just don’t want to because hurling yourself can be scary. Sprinting towards greatness would be easy if “the way” was a straight track instead of a winding way.

So what we do is try and make ourselves comfortable. Lists. Milestones. Quarterly goals. We convince ourselves these are way stations on our way to getting somewhere. They are not. they are simply parking benches along some path someone else has built where they suggest you sit and rest and think about how you’ve attained something (but, if you look closely, you’re not really sure it was something you wanted to attain in the first place or if it is even representative of progress you truly value).

Anyway. I am not suggesting anyone hurl themselves anywhere. And I am also not suggesting you should be incredibly frustrated if you don’t find the way. Maybe the ones who do should just feel very fortunate and the rest of us should restlessly pursue A way. However. I would say everyone should be a little reflective of the whole ‘parking benches/milestones’ thing I mentioned. It becomes incredibly easy to use deadlines as some tangible proof of progress. This is a mistake. More often than not that is simply, in Farnam Street words, speed versus velocity. You may not know if you are on your way somewhere or not but you should always be sure you have some velocity, not just some speed.

Which leads me to pursuing ‘the way.’

—

Alice: would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here.

Cheshire cat: that depends a good deal on where you want to go,

Alice: I don’t much care.

Cheshire cat: then it doesn’t matter which way to go.

Alice: so long as I get somewhere.

Cheshire cat: oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk for enough.”

—

I will admit I am not a linear “from here to there” type of person excepting if it eliminates something that could get in the way of restlessness. For example, I would gladly pay extra for a bullet train to get me from one city to the next so I could wander more in a destination. I would gladly do a short sprint building a ‘good enough’ website so I could focus resources on something else. I believe in complexity theory these may be fractals (linear moments linking some things within multidimensional complex systems). I don’t really care about the overall direction as long as I get somewhere and the linear shit is simply a means to an end. I would imagine this restlessness can sometimes be ‘purposeless’ (or directionless) restlessness. This suggests that even if you don’t have an objective, or a direction, or a purpose being restless will get you somewhere someday. In other words, moving increases the likelihood you will get somewhere rather than standing still or being stagnant.

Okay. Simple when you think about it that way, huh? Look, as noted earlier, you may not find your way in your roaming restlessness. And you may actually fall in love with just being restless. But you may find yourself overwhelmingly happy wherever you end up (even though you may not have been specifically aiming there). Now. Some business people reading this may think “this guy is nuts.” And they may be right. But I would argue most business leaders, the good ones, may not be able to specifically articulate where they want to go, but they have a general sense of the scenario they envision their business in that would equate success (this could be called defining a Vision). It not a specific destination. It’s not a specific road or way. It’s just a specific thought. In that definition restlessness is significantly more productive than investing gobs of energy & time trying to make that thought into some road map to some destination.

• *** note: that logic works in Life too.

Ok. I guess the point of this is that sometimes finding your way isn’t necessarily a specific ‘way.’

Or maybe even a well defined way.

Or even the ‘way’ you were thinking was the one you wanted.

But. If you keep going, you are more likely to find ‘the way’ then if you become frozen worrying or thinking about which road to take. Ponder.

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“Consent yourself to be an organ of your highest thought, and lo! suddenly you put all men in your debt, and are the fountain of an energy that goes pulsing on with waves of benefit to the borders of society, to the circumference of things.”

Emerson

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“Work, when its right, is a chance to collect the best sides of ourselves into something that is slightly more solid than the more fragile parts of our lives.”

Alain de Botton

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Let me tell you what’s on my mind as we head into 2023 and whether we, as people and a society, have any chance of “pulsing on with waves of benefit to the borders of society.”

Which leads me to say I worry the world is getting stupider on a daily basis.

Ok. Not really. I imagine we are actually getting smarter every day, yet, the overarching public narrative just seems stupider every day – I mean that on a macro and micro level. It sometimes feels like smartness is whispering and dumbness is shouting. All of this dumbing down seems to center around real feelings of uncertainty, lack of answers, a cacophony of opinions suffocating facts and a general tension, and conflict, between the reality of complexity and the desire for simplicity. The consequence of all that is while the world is complex and dynamic and confusingly interconnected, we have become convinced simplicity is the key to, well, everything. We wield “simplicity is elegance” like a dull axe in a world demanding a scalpel. The truth is almost all hope, and possibilities, resides in managing complexity (if not the complicated) while fear and misguided action (including non-risk taking) thrives on simplicity. Within the wretched hollow in between resides much of the current narrative, and thinking, conflict. At this rate we have zero, null, nothing, maybe even less-than-zero chance of contributing any meaningful benefit to society.

Which leads me to my hope for 2023.

We should have more hope and possibilities than we could ever imagine. The more complex, the more uncertain, the more opportunity to not only imagine, but hope that what we imagine may truly be, is actually possible. Yes. Increased connectivity and interdependence actually increases the likelihood that we can shape a future we desire. We should be striving to inject more hope and possibilities into life, lives and society. We should be stripping away the fear infringing upon the possibilities.

The answer to this challenge, at least to me, resides in some intellectual aspects, i.e., what is going on in within mindsets, how we think and how we approach these things. So let me share what I believe would help us moving forward in 2023 to improve upon our hope and possibilities.

• Issue one. over-simplification

Suffice it to say we have devolved into a society of sound bites, binaries, memes and over simplification.

In business it seems to be all about simplicity.

In everyday Life it is ‘summarize it for me’ or ‘it’s simple <insert some explanation here>.’

In leadership it is just, well, dumb. Say some dumb unnuanced shit about things that truly demand some smart thinking and nuance.

In the end I can’t figure out if should be pointing the finger at us or them.

• Them because they think we are not capable of understanding some form of complexity and therefore they only offer up simplified versions of what needs to be done.
• Us because we either <a> demand a sound bite under the guise of ‘we only have time for the headline’ or <b> we only latch on to the fragment of the whole which we convince ourselves summarizes the whole.

Pick your superficial poison because I will point the finger at all of us and them.

Here is a Truth everyone really knows <albeit hesitant to admit>. Most things are just not that simple. An effect can have multiple causes and a cause can have multiple effects. I say this despite the fact naturally we would like all the dominoes to line up one after another and when one falls the next naturally is impacted and falls. We like linear “if this, then that” stuff and in today’s world if it doesn’t equate to that we begin thinking someone is hiding something from us and we begin to get suspicious about everything. Add in that we have convinced ourselves that we need to start by doing one thing and just do that one thing well. All of that is not only absurd, but unhealthy for a working society.

Life and things don’t really work that way. Maybe in a controlled test environment, but, in real Life, events are typically bombarded from a variety of directions and while not all ’causes’ are created equal <some can impact more than others> most things are too complex to be simplified into ‘one thing’ and I can unequivocally state no solutions can be simplified into ‘one thing.’

• Over simplifying simply means ignoring complexities.
• Over simplifying simply means being consciously, or choicefully, ignorant.
• Over simplifying simply means trouble in the long run.

Heuristically this simplistic bullshit (often just some fortune cookie wisdom) eases you through the moment only to have to doubly (or exponentially) invest energy later on to deal with the mess you ignored in the past. Instead of dumbing things down to some simplistic sound bite we need to raise the level of general understanding & knowledge (sensemaking) to the level of complexity of the ideas & systems and <frankly> the world in which we live within. I mean, seriously, Life isn’t simple so what makes us think over simplifying will offer solutions?

Anyway. Factually, seconds of involvement <sound bites> versus minutes of involvement <deeper complex discussion> has a direct relationship to degrees of real knowledge,  i.e., seconds leads to shallow knowledge or let’s call it ‘less knowledgeable’ and minutes lead to something deeper. This suggests our love of oversimplification is a direct result of our ongoing belief there is not enough time to do everything we want to do. This is crazy. Nuts in fact. Oversimplification only gives us the appearance of effective time management and certainly doesn’t translate into effective progress. Why? Oversimplification under-assesses complexity, rarely demystifies uncertainty and is not particularly helpful in creating a foundation so that we can successfully rethink that which ‘is’ to find a path to “what we would like to be” (which is kind of a version of ‘future-proofing’ your Life).

Look. What I am suggesting is difficult, but it is certainly more effective in creating a better world. This means less ‘The Secret’ philosophy and more real thinking. Less positive attitude inspiration and more hard work behavior aspiration.

The fate of hope and possibilities lies in balance if we don’t invest in the hard work of ‘non over simplification’ because I can guarantee we will not solve any of the problems through simplicity.

“A game is a machine that can get into action only if the players consent to become puppets for a time.”

Marshall McLuhan

• Issue two. being intellectually insightful is about hard work.

Generally speaking, I don’t think people – including the younger generations – dislike working let alone hard work. Most people know work demands, well, working hard (at least occasionally). The issue we begin to run into is “doing the work” (rote, replication, doing what is asked) and “thinking through the work” (being smarter about what we do). Thinking and ideas are a dime a dozen, but good thinking & good ideas take hard work. I would suggest that good ideas cannot be decided by number of tweet votes in favor of.

Life and ideas is not American Idol or even some twitter poll. We are not all judges <and probably shouldn’t be on American Idol either>. Good ideas are rarely popular. In fact, as Howard Aiken said: “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If its original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” This really means that being intellectually insightful requires more than a surface ‘this is what I think’ tweet popular vote. If we really want to do what needs to be done to maximize hope and possibilities, we have to hunker down and work hard. Work hard in that we need to reassemble the present (knowledge) & rethink things by using all aspects including economic thought and philosophy and the past – all of which means dealing with ambiguity and contradiction. To be clear. I am not suggesting using what worked in the past. I am suggesting the future is yet to be designed and it will take all of our knowledge – past, present, possibilities/imagination – to create the future we desire.

And while you may balk at something like ‘intellectual insightfulness’ as too far reaching, suffice it to say, we just need to be smarter, less ignorant, more enlightened <open to additional thoughts> and more involved in the difficult and uncertain work of demystification of things and, well, just plain rethinking shit.

• Simply talking about world-changing ideas will not make the world change. Changing the world takes work, really really hard work.
• Simply having a positive attitude ain’t gonna work. Hard work will work. And in this case, I mean hard thinking.
• Simply ‘doing’ aint gonna cut it. We need to be smarter. And whether you think about thinking this way or not, it ain’t about staring off into space doing nothing, thinking is a blue collar job. It’s about work.

Issue three. innovation is not <just> technology.

Innovation is the lifeblood of not only business, but society & Life. It is the path to bettering lives. Period. Therefore, it demands we ‘consent to the highest thought.’ That said. For some reason we seem to be associating innovation with technology and just technology. Maybe worse we have begun thinking technology will solve everything <in some distant future>.

This type of thinking is lazy, not consenting to the highest thought.

This type of thinking leads us to possibly believe technology innovations will eventually solve all problems and maximize everyone’s Life as some point.

This type of thinking is called “technological determinism” and it is a very very dangerous path to walk on.

It’s a very dangerous idea because in reality if we focus just on technology as the solution, we may be preventing the real change we need and are certainly subjugating people, and human needs, to something – technology – that has no emotional investment in us as a human race.

Minds need to innovate too. Thinking and attitudes need to evolve and innovate.

New thought systems, economic systems and systems in which people live, eat and breath all need to evolve and, yes, that happens through innovation <whether technology is involved or not>.

Technology is simply a path that runs parallel to culture <or society> and each needs to be run at the same pace <or at least be run side by side on occasion>.

A truth is that technology outpacing society simply exacerbates the flaws and limits of the slower runner. If a problem is endemic to a system, then we run the risk that technology simply amplifies the problems. Technology and culture are entangled. Technology and people are entangled.

Technologies may enable new ways of doing things (not just doing but thinking) and this effects culture. I would suggest we flip that equation and say if we want to maximize technological innovation, we should innovate cultural/society structure and seek to augment it, to maximize its potential, through technological innovation.

At the moment it seems like we respond to technology rather than proactively drive technology.

Technology has certainly dramatically improved the overall quality of life. The paradox is that the system we have now may make amazing new technology possible, but at same time is creating such cultural conflict that maximizing technology toward a societal ‘what could be’ seems impossible.

We need to innovate the systems in which technology exists: economically, culturally, and philosophically. We need to intellectually innovate as a human race.

“Their most hopeful vision of the future is centred around compassion not convenience, emotional not artificial intelligence. The path towards this vision seems to require little technical innovation; it demands simply that people care about people – an idea so laughably naïve, yet so radically transformative.”

Kai

So. 2023.

Businesswoman changing reality of drought to spring season

Look. Hope and possibilities abound in today’s world, but they are rarely just given; they need to be earned and they demand consenting to our highest level of thought.

We need to begin rebelling against simplistic binaries and embrace the complex and nuanced truths that will move us forward. We cannot afford to be lazy thinkers. For in this type of laziness lurks ignorance and it is ignorance we should fear — not any ideological argument or technological innovation which inserts itself into our daily lives. And maybe that would be my hope of a cultural resolution for the new year: consent to avoid lazy thinking. For somewhere within that maybe we begin to create the fountain of energy that pulses on with waves of benefit to the borders of society. Ponder.

——-

“Consent yourself to be an organ of your highest thought, and lo! suddenly you put all men in your debt, and are the fountain of an energy that goes pulsing on with waves of benefit to the borders of society, to the circumference of things.”

———

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“Aim above morality.

Be not simply good, be good for something. “

Henry David Thoreau

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Well. Its New Year’s Eve and I thought I would take a minute and discuss happiness. Generally speaking, I am an optimist (maybe really a skeptical optimist), believe we should do more utopian thinking and believe, for the most part, humans are kind and like to coexist in a healthy collaborative way.

Which leads me to say If I read one more “how to be happy” article to guide someone into the New Year I am gonna not only be unhappy, but pretty grumpy.

First. I have a feeling that anyone who has to be told how to be happy is unlikely ever to actually be happy.

Second. I am fairly sure happiness is not a task; it is an outcome of actions not an action in and of itself.

Anyway. I would suggest the perfect formula for just about anything good in life, and business, is when you can inextricably tie strategy to tactics and tactics to strategy within a healthy mindset. Basically, if you can embed your strategy into each and every task or action that means everything you do is contributing to the objective you aspire to and provide some tangible substance to your mindset.

The problem with most new year resolutions or ‘things to do’ lists are (a) the objective is so frickin’ big that it makes the success probability % so low it’s depressing to even think about <after the initial elation of ‘thinking big’> (b) the tactics are so pedantic and uninspiring <declutter your Life, call a friend, make time for yourself, etc.> it diminishes the bigness goals, dreams & objectives could, and should, be.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that if you go into all of this with a positive, hopeful, mindset both A & B deflate optimism and inflate pessimism bit by bit.

Which leads me to where Thoreau offers us the perfect New Year’s resolution.

• The objective is to aim above morality.
• The strategy is to be the best you can be <all the time>.
• The tactic, the task, is doing the right thing <all the time>.

These are real actions someone can take. No ‘steps to success’, but rather simply steps which embrace and embody your objective AND mindset.

Look.

If you are aspiring to be happy or happier then you surely should, maybe even need, to ask yourself some very serious questions about your Life and what steps you are taking each and every day.

Once again, not milestones, but actual behavioral type steps.

But maybe even more importantly is to better understand WHY we are taking the steps. In other words, reflect upon your mindset and how it fits into not just a ‘better you’, but a ‘better us world.’ I imagine I suggest this because it is the mindset that will keep you going on those days that things aren’t going so well. And, I promise you, not all days will go well.

Oddly, I think of something Nixon said in one of his speeches in 1970 as I think about HOW we should meet the challenges of a new year.

He said that the United States could no longer “conceive all the plans, design all the programs, execute all the decisions, and undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world”.

He noted that other nations had to do more too.

He also noted that we needed to “discipline our occasional impetuosity.”

You just cannot conceive all plans, design all the programs and undertake all the actions and be successful. Unfortunately, its not that simple. Not only is it not possible for the ‘self’ in that many things are dependent upon context and environment and others, but it certainly isn’t possible as a ‘grand strategy’, i.e., the world in totality.

That said. Life offers us a very difficult assignment, but rarely a unique one. In carrying out our assignments we will do some things well, others not so well, and, well, others just badly. In addition, we sometimes encounter some occasional impetuosity <which requires discipline>.

And even if you do get some things right, later on in Life, years after this year passes, with the perspective that time affords, both the calamity of the bad and the praise we drown ourselves in for the things done well will inevitably seem obviously excessive and extreme.

I can guarantee in the next year we will all sometimes be brilliant, sometimes be foolish, sometimes be lucky and sometimes be terribly unlucky.

But all of the things I just typed are things. Tactics implemented in everyday Life which will be successful & unsuccessful in and of itself.

Which brings me back to suggest if we were to aim above morality within each tactic we will be successful.

SONY DSC

I would also suggest to aim above morality means you set aside the societal norms of measurement of success & failure. Maybe even set aside measurement at all. This means you no longer hesitate with prejudice, ignorance, selfishness or any societal pressure placed upon you. You, all alone, take actions with the objective to aim above morality. And in taking actions with this objective in mind we are capable of our best each & every moment. We become a powerful force for what is good & right.

And I also imagine you become a powerful force with regard to your own health & wellbeing.

All I know is that once I saw Thoreau’s quote I knew what I would be doing in 2023 – aiming above morality in all that I do. Generally speaking, this seems like a good objective. And, to end where I began, I imagine happiness can be found within this particular objective and more likely to be found if you, well, pursue happiness as an objective. Ponder.

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“In spite of the prejudice, ignorance, selfishness and all the other impediments that drag us downwards, there are billions of people who want a better, brighter life for themselves and their descendants – who want to be free from fear and want.

When combined with the foresight and ingenuity we’re capable of in our best moments, this is a powerful force for good that congenital pessimists are far too hasty to dismiss.”

Adam Lee

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“The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for a free and independent life.”

Claude Bernard

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“The accumulation of machines transforms the economy.”

Jean Marchal

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Losing access to water for 3 ½ days because of a burst pipe reminds you of how dependent one’s life is to many structural things of what we may call “the machine of life”. It also is a harsh reminder of the fragility of the everyday structure of life. Yeah. I have clearly understood that everything is connected with everything and is kind of banal to suggest everything is reciprocally dependent, but when it becomes reality it makes you reflect a bit more about the dependence of ‘things,’. You ponder just a bit more that everything is a piece, of a piece, and consequently, when one piece slips everything is modified and can actually threaten the whole structure and activities.

It was Marx who stated the more we advance into the new world, the more is economic life dependent on technical development. Life has almost become dependent upon the machines of life; kind of an insane skunkworks of progress. This gets exacerbated with the uncomfortable truth that as we, humans, derive our lives through increasing independence (skills associated with our economic progress) that farther our skills, focus and understanding draw AWAY from the machines of life. Our lives have become almost completely independent of the machines which, cruelly, are the origins of our independence. Yeah. Our own power and success and growth has no direct relationship with use of the machines. In an odd way machines offer the structural value from which we leverage our ‘transactional value’, but as we pursue our Life’s transactions, we have devalued the structure in place – until the structure is gone or broken. It is at that point that many of us, useless participants in the fixing or running of the structural machine, realize our value creation is threatened or modified and we are dependent upon (a) the machines and (b) the managers of the machines. Our relation with the machines of the world comes into a harsh light of reality and, well, its not pretty.

Everyday social and economic applications are made possible by technology, which is part of the machine structure, as well as the machine infrastructure in totality which makes life chug along. The machine is the most important unspectacular aspect of all of human’s activities including, but not exclusively, productive activity.

The machines, and the mechanization of life, are maybe not only the enablers of existence, but I imagine one could argue every advancement in the machine structure is existence itself – at least in most modern societies. Everything the machine structure touches transforms the humans and the human world. Machines and the machine structure have become a social necessity. but they also structure labor and has economic repercussions. The water flowing into every home and every apartment and every business is, well, planned, therefore, its lack of flow has become unplanned. Human freedom to pursue wealth and their lives really has no existence except to the degree that we are subject to the degree that machine conditions permit the means to be discovered. Which leads me back that ‘unplanned’ thought. To neglect the machine context of humanity is to live in a dreamworld, yet, we do so – all the time. Freedom is a condition of the machines. Yeah. Me. The guy who talks about humancentric and humans driving progress just said that. It is a bit humbling to be reminded that while many of us espouse that humans are at the center of all progress, that humans are often not the dominant variable in that progress and the reality is much of or existence can exist only in relation to not only other people, but the machine infrastructure. And maybe that is my point today. Water, computers, the internet, electricity … they provide us certain degrees of freedom to pursue many of the things in life. Let’s call them “the condition for a free and independent life.”  When they get modified, even maybe in some smallish ways, everything else gets modified – even us, even daily life. Ponder.

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“It is pure utopian abstraction to say that nothing prevents the existence of individual needs. On the contrary, human nature does.”

Jacque Ellul

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“If today industrial civilization seems to us something less than Utopian—if it appears, in fact, to be oppressive, dreary, ecologically precarious, war-prone, and psychologically repressive—we need to

understand why.”

Alvin Toffler, third wave, 1980

===

Today I will argue that an increasingly complex dynamic world is a good argument for revisiting Utopian thinking. Complexity, and its close cousin uncertainty, tend to encourage some rational, more conservative, thinking. In other words, you will hear “we need to be pragmatic” a shitload more often the more dynamic and complex a business environment may be. But here is the truth. Connectivity and interdependence have possibly made things a bit more complex, yet, it has also opened up opportunities to, well, possibilities. The interdependence, from a pragmatic view, makes almost any utopian thinking somewhere within several degrees of a grasp. Yes. I just said Utopian thinking and pragmatism together (wrap your head around that contradiction). Personally, I believe Utopian thinking is an underrated aspect of humanity – a hopeful belief for not just better, but some best version of something.  And I say that as a clearly pragmatic person. And when I bring up Utopia, I remind everyone the word “utopia” means “no place” so utopias are not necessarily meant to design specific paths to a desired space, they are meant to show us what’s wrong with the present state and strive toward possibilities. Now. The danger of the possibilities of Utopia, of course, are the false choices found within spectacular abundance of possibilities found within an everchanging dynamic environment. But recognizing that danger shouldn’t translate into acceptance of limitations, but rather see limitations as dynamic themselves.

Which leads me to suggest any utopian thinking, even when grounded in reality, are utopian insofar as they ignore the perceived gravity of history and its struggles. What I mean by that is if you look a little too closely at history, the past appears to have an inevitable arc dotted with failures deemed inevitable (in hindsight). This taints future thinking in application. So, while utopian thinking, and Utopia, actually demands some pragmatism and certainly some real actions it also demands the ability to see new arcs, new patterns and new possibilities within new contexts (a failure in the past is a failure n a context and utopia is found within new contexts).

I say this not to suggest your Utopia fate is tied to the destiny designs of contexts, but rather that contexts are meant to be actively engaged. A “laissez faire” business is about as realistic as a “laissez faire” society; it’s a lazy idea which the strong or the lucky will exploit to establish unquestioned authority over others. Or, as Jaron Lanier suggests, “power will exploit flaws/gaps even in Utopia.”

 

“I await with patience a catastrophe that is slow in coming.”

Albert Camus

Prying apart dystopia.

One of the arguments for thinking about a Utopia is that you need to pry apart dystopia to get there. Pragmatically speaking the current system is made-up of three distinct parts that are connected: there is the machine of production, the distribution of that production to the people including transportation, and finally humans themselves. Today, distribution is not of the machine, but for the machine. This becomes important as more and more humans become part of the machine itself. What this means is that distribution, simultaneously, becomes in service to a machine-human world looping inextricably survival of both to both. Obviously, that doesn’t sound utopian even if it is not dystopian. As a consequence of this Borg-like system where humans gathered around machines was it actually forced humans to come to the machine – what I mean by this is an outcome was big cities. That continued to close the system thereby only emphasizing the dystopian features even while the machine encouraged everyone to think it was the path to Utopia. I could go on and on about other characteristics of what has become a dystopian, even if somewhat effective, world. here is where I circle back to the beginning of this segment – the three components. If we seek to not only envision, but create, a Utopia we must pry apart what appears to be inextricably linked and create a new world. Hopefully a better world.

Utopian thinking is all about hope.

It used to be science fiction was filled with Utopian adventures using the imagination to wonder of the possibilities for humankind. Now, even science fiction, has veered into the bitter, pessimistic, universe of dystopia. In many of these scenarios technology, instead of being portrayed as the engine of progress, increasingly appeared as an unstoppable force of destruction – of human freedom, human joy and human sense of meaning. These mental scenarios have bled into the psyche of society, and business, and has convinced a lot of people hoping is useless. In fact, today you can be trapped in between a futuristic world view of dystopian nature fed from an uncontrolled growth attitude and a present in which a number of loud voices are decrying growth (degrowth, Limits to Growth, etc.). it creates a sense everything is going wrong and the dystopian future, and catastrophe, is a fait accompli so why hope, let alone work, for something better.

And then there is work itself. Prior to the industrial revolution work wasn’t particularly great, but at least there was a sense of self extension, i.e., ‘I produced with my own hands’.  From there industrialization created the machine/human system leading to unemployment, to grinding monotony on the job, to overspecialization, to the indifferent, if not unempathetic, treatment of the individual, to low wages. All of which appear to be unresolvable within the framework of the current system. What I mean is that if those problems have remained for 200 years, under capitalist/socialist/communist constructs, there is cause to think they may be inherent in the mode of production. This breeds hopelessness and a sense of futility. I say all of that to circle back to the first sentence in this segment – this truly can all be resolved with imagination of possibilities. Yeah. Imagine Utopia. Yeah. It is as simple, and complex, as that.

“In order to create a smoothly running society, we need to both protect the here and now, and problem-solve and look effectively into the future. So it’s a good idea to have that in balance across society.”
Hannah Critchlow

Pragmatically addressing the possibilities within Utopia.

It really is this simple:

• What is your utopia? What is the utopia?
• What is keeping us from that utopia?
• What are the probabilities of these things changing?
• What could change each probability?
• What are your fears and hopes with regard to those probabilities?
• What can we do to impact our specific fears and hopes?

Where can you poke the world to increase the chances of creating the utopia you envision?

I like this “Time Machine” idea from Tom Kerwin, the creator of Pivot Triggers:

• Take a trip to the great future

  • Set the scene: “We get in a time machine. When the door opens, it’s <date> (whenever you’d see the results of your initiative) and it’s gone better than we ever dreamed! What’s it like?”

  • Ask people to write down what it’s like on stickies.

  • Together, cluster similarly themed descriptions and add a green sticky to summarize each cluster.

Or try this example. Maybe in some additive manufacturing conference room the largest obstacle, with a low probability of changing in the short and medium term, is sunk traditional machinery costs in manufacturing plants. Maybe they create a division that buys machines. It’s a not-for-profit division created solely to remove an obstacle, it becomes a business (and I imagine there is some accounting voodoo that comes along with purchasing depreciated machinery) and they go into business as a parts reseller, or use the metals for something, or lease the machines to smaller businesses, or whatever not-for-profit business model necessary to make their business utopia a bit closer, and feed a positive loop with purchases within the business world.

Anyway.

If the choice is between dystopian and utopian, we would be fools to not choose Utopia.

“There are only so many ways one can be told that the future is going to be dark. At some point, there has to be concrete imaginaries readily available for anyone who wishes to cancel the apocalypse.”

Joey Ayoub

As we move beyond the present and seek some future Utopia, we are doing more than shifting from one digital transformation to the next, but rather revolutionizing the space within which we exist – decision by decision, choice by choice and step by step. If our assumptions are even partially correct, individuals will vary more tomorrow than they do today, and business will vary more tomorrow than they do today. Why wouldn’t we seek to place individuals and businesses in a Utopia in that tomorrow if there was even a sliver of a chance?

In the end, there are pessimists and optimists. There are cynics and idealists. There are believers and non-believers. There are heroes and cowards. There are truth tellers and liars. There are resistors and collaborators. They come in all shapes and sizes. But if we sincerely seek Utopia maybe, just maybe, we will find a space in which the Utopia for our business resides within a space which both the business and humans thrive.

Think about this when you ponder Utopian thinking. Not to get too wonky, but, try this: quantum business. There are multiple planes of reality, you just choose one. And maybe that is why seeking Utopia is more important, and possible, than ever. The more complexity, the more dynamism, the more interconnectedness, the more quantum features business portrays, the more likely Utopia is attainable if you are savvy, show some agility (in action and thinking) and not get stuck on a “plan.” Utopian thinking should be undergirded by Amara’s three laws of futures:

• (1) the future is not predetermined
• (2) the future is not predictable
• (3) the future outcomes can be influenced by our choices in the present

What I will say is that there is no hope for a Utopian outcome, nor hope for a safe transition to a decent space is possible until we address the need for institutional transformation. This is a big ask, is terrifying, is exhilarating, and is the way beyond both entropy and dystopia. The attitude of the future must be matched by a changed attitude for what the business of the future could be. Which leads me to end with James Carse: “Only that which can change can continue: this is the principle by which infinite players live.” We play to continue the play. That is the way to Utopia. Ponder.

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“Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward.”

Abraham Verghese

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“It’s the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.”

Barbara Kingsolver

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Thinking about what legacy you want to leave behind can make you start thinking a little bit about what you may want to stubbornly stand for and demand of Life and what you may decide to compromise with Life to insure you have something, i.e., some progress to show at the end. A significant part of this grand bargain we negotiate with Life is how we decide to compromise with those around us and those who affect the arc of our lives.

Ah.

That word “compromise.”

Therein lies maybe one of the most difficult topics of the current generation.

The topic is that the concept of compromise, meeting someone half way, giving something up and getting something back, is now a nebulous concept.

Why? Because I am not sure I know where the hell half way is.

And I tend to believe a shitload of people are standing with me, on one side or the other, not really sure where the hell half way is.

And if you cannot even see the middle ground how the hell can you figure out how to make a stand on it?

This gets compounded by a massive online communal world in which we all live side by side where even the marginalized people <real or perceived>, nutjobs & experts, now have a place to gather into likeminded groups and share as much a space as mainstream views. For good, or for bad, online any group of people can organize & mobilize & challenge the status quo … or pick & choose which status quo fits their view. The internet amplifies discourses critical of, well, any status quo you can think of.  And, as anyone could expect, all the critical discourse triggers a corresponding equal backlash from those who fear an uprooting of their beliefs <and the self identities that are inevitably attached to these beliefs>. Needless to say much of that backlash is a bit unhealthy and a lot unmoored to accepted reality.

It just becomes one huge mosh pit of criticism and cocooning of likeminded people.

Likeminded people – all who are angry.

Within all of this situation & anger civil discourse tends to be tossed in the trashheap. And maybe worse is the fact there is this ‘digging in’ aspect where we refuse to see any merit in other people’s opinions. Sadly, I can only conclude that we have lost the ability to converse, discuss, debate and have a dialogue with one another.

It seems obvious <at least to me>, but if we could figure out how to come together and compromise, that we could go a long way toward not only creating a better version of society in general, but it may give me, and all of us, at least a fighting chance with regard to where we make our own personal stand and where we compromise and how we attain the future that we contain.

As long as people cling to unbending attitudes & beliefs, the divides between us will not deepen, but will remain an unbridgeable divide.

I tend to believe most of us want better that that.

I tend to believe most of us would be willing to work to make this a better and more civil world to live in.

And if you do not embrace this thinking?

I would remind everyone that America is representative of a great compromise. The U.S. Constitution is possibly the greatest Compromise ever negotiated <it created a nation>.

But as a first step to bettering this entire situation we need to figure out how to better define Compromise.

Far too many loudmouthed people have ripped the meaning out of the word, twisted the value of the word making it seem valueless, and ultimately created an environment in which  we demonize the entire process of trying to reach compromise.

Compromise no longer means understanding your differences and working together toward a common goal, but now it seems to represent weakness, losing and not being strong enough to get what you want. This attitude and unwillingness to work together creates a dysfinctional society where the unwavering stance seems to be “don’t compromise, stick to your guns, don’t give in to the other side”.

Sigh.

Look.

I find it hard to believe that the majority of America is really that selfish and that stubborn. Sure. I know the people most passionate about any issue tend to be the ones less willing to compromise on them. And, yeah, I would guess most of us are fairly passionate about ourselves – what we decide to stand for … as well as what we will decide to sacrifice within compromise to attain some progress. But within this wacky world where no one seems to want to compromise anything on anything … well … shit … some of us are trying to think a little bit about what you may want to stubbornly stand for and demand of Life, and what you may decide to compromise with Life, to insure you have something – some progress to show at the end.

It seems like the situation we are in has arisen because we have permitted the stubborn voices of the radical marginalized <real and perceived> to drown out the pragmatic voices, the majority, of realistic positive compromise. If we want society to start working again we need to embrace compromise — and let it retain the positive definition which has served it well through time.

To end this I will go back to the beginning.

The “I” aspect.

I tend to believe all of us, with the intent of finding the best version of ourselves from which our ultimate legacy will be defined, will seek to find the balance of being stubborn and demand that Life bend to us and our principles and compromise where we make a grand bargain with Life in order to continue progressing.

Uhm.

If we believe this, then why wouldn’t we want this in Life and in business and in politics and in … well … everything.

There was a book that discussed this. In The Spirit of Compromise <Amy Gutsman and Dennis Thomson> they note that Americans support general compromise as an idea and like the idea of ‘other people’ working together to get stuff done <statistics support this in a variety of studies & polls>.

However. The authors then note that support for compromise breaks down when it addresses specific issues <Americans are much less likely to support a compromise on a specific issue>. What this means is that, as with most things in Life, we enthusiastically embrace the conceptual behavior and balk at the actual behavior.

I shared that to say compromise is complex and simple.

What I do know is that we contain our own future and building that future demands that we will have to make some compromises.  That is simple.

Making the specific choices is complex.

And while I am mostly interested in my own future and making my own compromise choices, I tend to believe we would all find the better version of ourself contained within if the society as a whole were more willing to refind the value in compromise. Yeah. I just suggested our best version is not an “I” thing but rather when we are part of the weave of societal fabric, i.e., “We” thing. Ponder.

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“The coming struggle for power will increasingly turn into a struggle over the distribution of and access to knowledge; not just consumption. Power seekers’ will use this struggle to further their power ambitions. While mass media could have been seen as sweeping generalized manipulation of attitudes and beliefs, technology is using fragmentation to have those with power divide and conquer.”

Alvin Toffler, 1981

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It is too simplistic to suggest any society, or nation, is divided. The reality is that society, and communities, have become fragmented, each isolating into its own cocoon of mindsets, attitudes, beliefs and even performative metrics (proof). If we step back, this is a natural consequence of years of rhetoric and unhealthy narratives. What else would we do after years of businesses suggesting business was a war and the other businesses were out to get us and it was a battle of us versus them, kill or be killed. Or your church is telling you only you will go to heaven and everyone else is designated for hell (or heathens). Or some Cause suggests it is Armageddon if you do not agree with them and if you don’t you are part of the problem. Even issues like climate change, abortion and vaccinations have become battlegrounds of us versus them. And the politicians, well, they are an onslaught of ‘the other party is evil and will destroy this country” or “that country is evil and out to destroy us” or whatever us versus them derivative they can create. Each, individually, divides, and each contribute to fragmentation. There are two main consequences to all this which leads to the creation of smaller groupings, communities, of like minded people:

• –         The more dividing issues occur, the more complex the world seems and the more inept, or unable to contend with, any centralized center of power is, which leads to decentralization (of everything) which only compounds the sense of lack of coherence.
• –         From a whole cloth perspective this cacophony of dividing creates an overall sense that everything is out of control and the world is spiraling downwards into the depths of despair (this is the roots of cultural despair).

But then we get too technology.

Technology, in and of itself, is nothing. Without people, without people generating content, it is a passive tool regenerating itself to its own purposes. Yet. Once humans become involved technology begins to amplify – amplify divides, fragments, communities and tribes. It is within the fragmentation aspect in which we begin to pause on the benefits of technology with regard to society. The fragmentation, the phrasing of ideas, ideologies, values, norms and actual ideological commitments just begin to blur the greater truths associated with each. Fragments get emphasized to strengthens pieces of views all the while blurring larger issues and societal coherence. The extension of technology into our lives has only seemed to accomplish the fact that people everywhere sensing their control over their lives slipping away as the world becomes increasingly complex. With that mindset/belief people begin discerning specific scenarios within which they can find meaning, self identification & success and then go about creating a subsystem, a likeminded community, where desired actions and direction are created, further intensified by a sense of their own survival within the larger system. There is a general feeling of remoteness from the centers of decision making so they create their own decisonmaking centers. These choices are supported by a feeling (which becomes a belief) that those in power don’t care what “people like me think” which only increases an increasing sense how little capacity individuals, alone, feel they have to shape events. Individuals recognize they cannot flex power to manipulate any meaningful levers of control, they end up groping around almost desperately for ways to bring back some order and sense to their lives, and inevitably smaller likeminded communities are forged. What ends up happening is that society becomes an interaction between these likeminded communities and their changing micro boundaries at a community level all trying to exist in a macro larger system attempting to shape boundaries and pull levers itself for the collective good. The consequence of this conflict/tension tends to make the likeminded communities only double down and increase close identification with those within that particular group. This means that society has become fragmented and not divided.

To state again, a major part of the issue is that people have come to believe that whole systems are simply too complex to meet their needs or serve their wants. So, they’ve sought to regain control by turning to subsystems, in likeminded communities, less complex relatable groups, in the hope that their interests can be better served and some control is regained over the distant impersonal forces that intrude upon their daily life. Simplistically, people have simply given up on the distant big structures of power striking a “big is threatening” and “small is effective/beautiful” pose. Technology has simply taken a gentle sloping trend rising towards skepticism and doubt, laced with some conspiracy theories, and exponentially made it a steep climb.

This has become a period of cultural despair and creation of likeminded communities is an active response to fight despair. I say that because this smaller group creation is an adaptive response to the problems of complexity; not an abandonment of responsibility. The creation of likeminded communities should not be equated with indifference nor is it an expression of apathy or cynicism. Development of smaller communities is simply a search for new structures around which to organize scenarios and which the individuals’ micro needs can have macro consequences. I highlight this to make two points:

• –         This is active participation in society, not a passive reaction. These people are not retreating, they are going on the offensive toward things they actively care about. This is important if we attempt to engage with a collective future in mind. As with any self-decentralization if we seek to regain some centralization or, at minimum, coherence, the fragmented communities must be solicited with sincerity, not disdain or a belief they are not ‘smart enough’ to know better.
• –         Technology feeds on active participation. This is more a warning than it is anything else. If a likeminded community ‘feels’ something, the internet will feed that feeling until it hardens into a belief. It will also actively feed other likeminded people into that community. Contrary to opinion, technology can create blindness and will actually encourage people to go blind.

Which leads me to proof in a complex world.

In order to have some legitimacy and just survive within the larger system the likeminded communities construct scenarios, assume responsibilities, and assign analytics to everything they are involved in. In other words, likeminded communities have their own analytics, they have their own narratives and, unfortunately, sometimes they have their own facts. In fact, the larger the macro societal crisis the more likely it will involve a shift at the subgroup level performance criteria that they will attach to their own legitimacy. This expanded use of metrics may dispose people to rethink what has long been taken for granted and decide to shape their own performance criteria themselves. I would be remiss I remiss if I didn’t point out that media plays a role in subgroup performance criteria development. For example, what Fox News cites is important can often become a community criteria. This criteria becomes a measurement for the larger system – even if the larger system may not have the same criteria. So, while the larger system may actually be quite effective in totality, if not the very specific issue at hand, the performance analytics are not aligned and the conflict only creates further dissonance between the groups and the system.

Technology is the ally and the enemy.

Information should be intrinsically beneficial to society and, yet a fragmented flow of information and communication results in increased knowledge AND fragmentation. Technology plays a role in where we go from here, but first, people need to think about the future they desire which, typically, rests on the most fundamental assumptions we make about reality. In the present competitive view of the world, we often think that the most capable are those who are the most competitive, and accordingly that competition creates and secures long-term viability. On a societal level, we have essentially adopted a zero-sum dynamic behind most of the things we do. This separates everything, and everyone, into a binary 0/1, yes/no, good/bad, this way/that way design world (software, algorithms, business individuals and even countries). This current design belief has only made the divide between winners and losers constantly grow and this polarization leads to radicalization (of ideas, opinions, behavior) and, well, society does not benefit. A fragmented society is not one that will effectively build a future good for the collective whole.

We do need technological advances, but our humanity and society must develop at the same speed as technology develops. As our technological ability to impact the world is radically scaling up, our human ethical choices as to how to implement that power must scale up accordingly.

The solution resides in being able to see clearly.

It may be difficult for a likeminded community, from all views within a healthy community, to recognize that humanity – even theirs – is lagging our technology. It may be difficult for a fragmented society, specifcally the smaller communities themselves, to see beyond their loose talk about obsolescence and the rot at the core of our society and institutions and business when the existence of that community may be grounded in some apocalyptic view about every systemic crisis. It would behoove each of these smaller communities to understand it stretches credibility to extend each individual systemic indictment to the entire structure of business, government, justice, and institutions. Every debatable action does not demand some mandate to destroy the entire system and every disappointment or concern about the larger system is not a mandate to shrink away to a smaller community mindset. We need some optimism, not just in humanity, but in the grander systems and institutions. Not blind faith, but optimism. I always recommend reading Rutger Bregman’s Humankind to remind everyone about humanity. I recommend for the ‘We’, those who seek to find solutions to what seems like a dysfunctional society, we need to recognize the difference between fragmentation and divided because the solutions are different for each. Divided is about building bridges and fragmentation is about building coherence. Ponder.