the only war that matters is the war

against the imagination

the only war that matters is the war

against the imagination

the only war that matters is the war

against the imagination

all other wars are subsumed in it

There is no way out of the spiritual battle

There is no way to avoid taking sides

Rant, Diane di Prima

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“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people

themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control

with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to

inform their discretion by education.“

Thomas Jefferson

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“The world may be going to hell but there’s lots of really neat stuff you can buy.”

Wired magazine 1993

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• Preface:

1. this is a draft so it may be a bit bumpy in places and repetitive throughout,
2. as I note every time I criticize capitalism, I am only seeking a better version of capitalism, which I believe exists, not get rid of capitalism.

================

Today I am suggesting capitalism stifles the type of imagination necessary to envision a better version of capitalism. I will also suggest a reinvigorated imagination is the needed weapon to attack the present-day capitalistic system and its issues.

That said. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest capitalism is at the root of business’s lack of employee’ engagement’ issue as well as a number of other societal social engagement issues. While wealth has been created, I believe it is useful to step back and consider the dehumanizing effects of the economic system. Beyond the system’s tendency to default to a ‘treat humans like machines’ mentality, the set’s objectives increases apathy, sapping jobs of meaning and mattering, imbue overall ethical decay, all of which lead to an inability to take the right action, in the right situation, at the right time by a person. I imagine the question becomes can we use our imagination to see how we can work as free and responsible human beings and still be enmeshed within a global economic system, i.e., encouraging system objectives that humanize rather than dehumanize. Let’s be clear. The institutions and businesses within the capitalistic system, spanning local communities (financially and attitudinally) to global arenas, dominate to such an all-encompassing complex and embedded level that it may feel like resistance through this imagination I am suggesting seems futile. To many people it feels like our fate is sealed, there is a sense of powerlessness, therefore, since there seems to be no hope for a better way of doing things people become apathetic, escapist or just materialistic – all of which the capitalistic system actually encourages. Today I will suggest that rather than resign ourselves to the apathy, helplessness, and despair, it seems to me that if we were to reengage our imagination, we could easily envision the hope of a better version of a capitalistic system – and make it a reality.

Which leads me to imagination versus innovation.

I would argue, and will, the biggest casualty in a capitalistic zero-sum world, and of a populace accepting of a zero-sum belief, is imagination. We have lots of stuff and we are constantly encouraged to have stuff (and make stuff), but that orientation creates an unhealthy objective blindness in which imagination becomes subservient to the system of infinite growth. To be clear, I am suggesting imagination is different than innovation. Innovation, in capitalism, is mostly an incremental affair. The existing economic system is one in which innovations occur to further the strategies, objectives, and profits of a business; not the to the profit of society. In many cases the innovation – and the R&D investment dollars – a firm wants done is aligned against its own product and process systems, its strategy for getting and staying ahead, and its self-identified needs. this is an extremely pragmatic, competitive, orientation albeit a business will most likely cloak it in ‘possibilities’ terminology. Imagination, on the other hand, creates the great leaps. The ideas and thinking that can reshape systems and the ways things are done. I would suggest that innovations simply increase the velocity of infinite growth (the capitalism ideology) which only increases the speed in which we crash into the finite resource wall. Imagination is what we need to redesign the systems in order to optimize the finite world, not the growth objective. That doesn’t mean there will be no growth, just that the growth is in prosperity and quality of life and not wealth and, well, just growth. Even Schumpeter (Creative Destruction Schumpeter) recognized most innovation was wasteful and that this type of capitalistic competition is inherently wasteful. So why do we agree to waste the imagination which could possibly envision a new better way to generate the prosperity that everybody wants while optimizing the finite resources available to us from the world? I propose the pathway to the better way is a reimagined imagination which will not eliminate capitalism, ** but rather create a better version.

• ** note: capitalism is not an ideology like socialism, therefore, socialism is not an alternative economic system. In addition, a capitalistic society will have social programs, i.e., features of socialism.

Look. I am not attempting to create radicals, but often I attempt to prompt some radical thinking. Why?

I don’t know exactly when it started creeping into the society mindset, but at some point we inched away from a simple social contract and began to think the world was too complex and decided that the social aspects should become financial, capitalistic, and transactions based all measured by money and ‘growth’ measures just like business. It gives us a sense that we had some control in a world where everything seems out of control. The problem with that was we began to believe everything is uncontrollable and it feels like the only people and businesses that DO have any control are the ones focusing on “more” – growth, wealth, profits, etc. As a consequence, the “how” was subservient to ‘more’ and the ‘more people’ felt like they were not only winning, but controlled their own fate in this uncertain world. There was a general sense if we focused on ‘growth is good’, ‘more is better’ and ‘their more means less more for me (so it’s a war over a finite more)’, society would prosper and, in particular, our society would prosper more than ‘theirs.’ That’s, uhm, rationalizing a fairly unhealthy system and mindset, i.e., rationalizing a fairly dystopian view.

Which leads me to the struggle in-between imagination and rational.

As society careens between dystopia and optimism it seems like many people believe our only hope of being saved is found in capitalism. Although today’s capitalists and their relentless pursuit of power and profit seem to set society’s standard for rationality, I would argue most everyday people are driven by dreams, hopes and a desire for some type of, uhm, redemption. What I mean by redemption is that living in a capitalistic society forces many people to compromise a shitload of moral and ethical things. At some point I imagine many people would like the system to offer some redemption, or salvation, for those slippery slope decisions. To that end, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that capitalism and religion have evolved together and that business is permeated with aspects of religious concepts (and vice versa). We routinely expect far more from capitalistic output than convenience and comfort. We demand deliverance. Deliverance for something better as well as deliverance from the problems that we have. That deliverance is grounded in myths forged by the system itself. In fact, this is just one aspect of how the capitalistic system manipulates/controls society. People have always constructed collective myths in order to give a sense of meaning, and rationale, to their shared experience. These capitalistic myths guide us and inspire us and enable us to live in an increasing uncertain, uncontrollable, world. But if myths help us, over time they can harm us by blinding us to real and urgent (if you take into consideration environmental finite challenges) needs. On occasion we should step back in the hope that we might learn to correct ourselves of some of the myths at the core of the capitalistic worldview in order to begin to redirect our imagination toward more world and human ends without sacrificing some of the prosperity we have gained or even desire.

As a consequence, maybe we would stop having to seek redemption for the lives we live.

Maybe a better direction is found within continuous and cumulative progress; not growth.

Maybe we should reflect a bit about how the system has reduced our innate nature as humans. Humans are not natural exploiters of the environments they live within, they are nurterers, yet, industrial capitalism reversed the relation between humans and nature by making humans extractors and exploiters through machines and technology.

Maybe we should reflect a bit on our obsession with reductionism and our increased valuing of the concrete over the abstract.

My guess is that all my ‘maybes’ are driven by my desire to inject imagination in a system increasingly bereft of anything but a “more” objective blindness. My guess is that capitalism actually encourages us to feel powerless to do anything other than what the system propagates.

Yeah. I would argue our sense of powerlessness is actually created by our lack of imagination. To be clear our lack of imagination is encouraged by the institutions themselves. The system is designed for the results it’s getting and the system attempts to design our minds to encourage us to believe that these are the results we should be getting. I say that because if we want to create different results, we will not only have to redesign the system, but we will have to redesign our imaginations. I won’t deny that the task ahead may appear daunting, but if you look ahead, gather your imagination, it doesn’t become difficult to be able to envision a better way of doing things. That doesn’t mean the better way is a radical difference for the sake of radicalness (i.e., disruption), but the only way to redesign the system is to actually break it before it collapses in on itself. Just stating it that way suggests it’s not radical thinking. It’s certainly not radical to head off what is impending; that’s reasonable and logical. Once again, I circle back to imagination. Imagination which is the ultimate power. More than money, more than authority, more than even the existing system, the most powerful thing in the world is imagination. I say that just to remind everybody (1) this is concrete, not abstract, and (2) why the institutions fear it. The struggle isn’t against the rulers. I would even argue it’s not even against authority in the system. I would suggest that the struggle is against ourselves – our despair or lack of hope and our lack of imagination. Those are the things that we are struggling against. Once we win that struggle, we’ve crossed the bridge where we can create the system that is best for us and the planet – a version of capitalism which recognizes it’s not a zero-sum world and progress is not always dependent upon growth. I believe empowered imagination will usurp the original purpose for which the original capitalistic system was created and I would argue even those of us who benefit from the existing system we will cease contributing to the problems of the existing system and simply through envisioning what could be better we’ll begin addressing the underlying flaws of the existing system little by little. If that’s radical, so be it.

Which leads me to control.

Control comes in a variety of forms, but the most pervasive type of control is the capitalism narrative – and myths. Those of us who have become dependent upon the modern capitalistic society, which is offers us goods and services and conveniences, can’t imagine living without them. We can’t imagine a world where all of these amenities, which we no longer see as amenities but as givens, uhm, given to us by capitalism are not only available, but actually have. Of course, there is a partial truth to this, but simply because capitalism was the economic game we played to get here, doesn’t mean it is the only game in town or that another game could have gotten us to this same place – without all the waste and destruction. To that point. The ideology that supports capitalism requires the belief that limitless economic growth is both possible and desirable and will lead to a higher standard of living for everyone (rich and poor). It certainly can, and has a history of doing so (sort of), yet, that claim includes a number of serious flaws. While the tide has certainly risen higher for almost everyone in some form or fashion the wealth and prosperity has not been shared equitably. Indeed, any claim that economic growth brings benefits to everyone can be challenged simply by looking at the actual effects and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Yes, a lot of wealth has been created, however, the inequities are extreme. Anyway. I believe we all know that we live on a finite planet with limited resources, what I believe that we struggle to imagine is that the economy can’t grow indefinitely. As Kenneth Lux said:

“We live in a finite planet. Human beings are defined as being made up of infinite wants, and the task of an economic system is to fulfill that infinity, then such a system will go on endlessly churning out goods in an attempt to reach what is from the beginning an impossible goal. When the infinite production of goods meets up with the finite planet there is bound to be a collision.”

This is the illusion of unlimited economic growth. The goal of most national economies is to achieve unlimited growth of GDP through the continuing accumulation of material goods. Since human needs are finite, but human consumption is not, economic growth can usually be maintained through the artificial creation of needs through capitalism, i.e., materialism. The goods that are produced and sold in this way are often unneeded and thus are essentially waste. The continuing illusion of unlimited growth on a finite planet is the fundamental dilemma we need to resolve. Yet. Businesses fed by globalization continue to grow bigger and bigger, and faster and faster, using up resources while pushing governments to gear everything towards economic growth and decrease regulations. The businesses make ever greater profits under the guise of keeping the global economic system growing and growing and going on and on. Our lack of imagination keeps us from seeing where we are headed. Economic globalization is often presented as benign as simply a matter of trade development, complex global interactions (and cooperation) and financial flows. While functionally true, in reality power and control permeates the global system at every level. That isn’t to say that the appeal of this capitalism that promotes consumption as desirable isn’t beneficial because it is beneficial enough to keep the system of corporate globalization going and, people, generally speaking, satisfied. But could it be a better system? It is that question that is at the core of imaginative needs. In the end I imagine the worst thing about all of this is our lack of imagination keeps us from seeing any logical place to make it all stop.

“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.”

Thomas Friedman

Which leads me to say capitalism exploits all communications techniques to manipulate emotion and control reason and imagination of any other system (or way of living).

Yeah. In some sense I am suggesting a sly bit of mind control. To be clear, mind control, or ‘brainwashing’ at its worst, has much subtler techniques than the Chinese water torture. In fact, technology has become an increasingly effective tool for mind control and affecting what people think. This is best articulated by Jaron Lanier (Who Owns the Future) and how technology constantly nudges the mind in small degrees every day until it achieves the larger effect. Anyway. My point here is capitalism has a narrative and it uses all tools available to further that narrative. One could argue capitalism’s greatest communication victory has been its ability to define the conditions, and related narratives, of the social realm. Economic activity has increasingly provided the north star desires for people’s fantasies. Capitalism and consumerism have provided the attitudes which frame the questions and answers of grander discussions of human need and desires and paradoxically, as a consequence, also frame a restriction of possibilities. This, I would argue, is the meta narrative of industrial capitalism – a version of social control. I will admit that I am suggesting a coercive power. And it’s not just narratives. Economic power is a control mechanism that encourages everyone to believe pursuing profits at the cost of people’s mental lives and ecological destruction is okay if we are benefiting from the system (note: most people do not recognize the mental harm cause). The ultimate consequence of this narrative is it encourages society, people, to leave the system as is. To be clear, the capitalism narrative is a means of control in and of itself by making clear that those who cannot or will not play by the system’s game, and its rules, are expendable. What do I mean? Part of the insidious aspect of the capitalism narrative is that in order for capitalism to work wealth must be accumulated in economies must grow and if you are not accumulating or growing you are part of the problem. Oh. And it always encourages you to feel like the game is ALWAYS being played so if you are not playing, someone else is. This is a subtle encouragement of a zero-sum baseline mindset, and is the basis for the hamster wheel metaphor and it is also the basis for general apathy and despair – it is an infinite game in which we only have finite resources as humans.

One could argue this unsustainable cognitive warfare (mind control war) creates a general breakdown in society and the social contracts within which people interact. Paradoxically, there’s an underlying encouragement to not put constraints on this capitalistic system because it has convinced us to believe it is the only path to “more” than what we have today.

Which leads me to dissonance.

Beyond the apathy and the despair, I would suggest we actually feel dissonance. What I mean by that is dissonance occurs when everything you have been told crashes into what is reality. The easiest example I can offer is what we are told abut a foreign country, maybe Russia and somewhere in the middle east or even Latin America (if you are American), but then when you actually meet someone from there or maybe visit you see they are actually people just like you, the cities are a lot like the cities in your own country and, well, they really aren’t anymore a shithole than some of the places in your own country.

The story within the story, creates an identity crisis WITH capitalism. Capitalism tells narratives that conflict day in and day out with reality. And while capitalism argues at a meta level, the arc of history, people live in the mesa level and see how capitalism actually works. This dissonance is a version of mental anguish and the story we should be paying attention to is the capitalism attacks on our mental state. I would argue using our imagination will throw off the mental shackles of the existing capitalistic narratives and myths.

Which leads me to the game <a derivative of gamification>.

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

Marshall McLuhan

We need to stop thinking of economics and the system we make money as a game because it is the first step to stop being played by the capitalistic game. Games are contrived and controlled extensions of group awareness. The more seeming /perceived autonomy a player has (context) the less they notice how contrived/controlled the game actually is. This game, materialism (or accumulation of wealth), contains no limiting principles, yet, the resources necessary to maintain, and fulfill, materialism is limited. But the capitalism game invades the private lives of people, communities, and business. It meddles in the politics of life and certainly is wielded as power by those in power to control mindsets, attitudes and behaviors. But the control is clever. The memories of what we are told ‘is best’ are fuzzy at best, yet, the objectives of best are clear. The capitalism control shapes ideas into familiar and meaningful contexts clearly outlining the punishment, threats, and rewards for the e minimum necessities of life which, in a capitalistic society, are the stepping stones to maximum comfort of life. There is no imagination necessary because capitalism has drawn the color by numbers world to success and wealth. But that is the capitalism game. And when we are in the game, we become mentally apathetic and more prone to simplistic capitalism narratives (solutions) in order to navigate the game. What that means is we use capitalism in order to relate to meta problems. This is exactly the wrong direction to go.  The combination of certain social forces grounded in capitalistic thinking ranged against the mind will inevitably lead to the destruction of the democratic way of life and the planet itself.

Our largest most powerful weapon against this is imagination.

Full of hope, we need to use our imagination to attack the system-wide narratives which have corrupted the better angels of business and how we think. We need imagination to bring about the most fundamental and far-reaching changes, in terms of restoring basic honesty and integrity, and dignity to each other and to the world’s resources. As Vaclav Havel said. “We still don’t know how to put morality ahead of politics science and economics. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of our actions if they are to be moral is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success.” What he is saying is that it is not enough for a nation to liberate itself from a flawed ideology or a theory, but rather if you can liberate yourself from a bad idea, it is necessary to find another good idea. we need imagination to identify that idea.

To be clear. Industrial capitalism is flawed. Innovations have certainly made the existing system more efficient in production, but less so with resources. capitalism is associated with considerable waste. That said. The system is designed for the results it is getting and it is paying off for those for whom it is designed. In order to be able to redesign the system resistance needs to be organized by the people and for the people. And by resistance, I mean something William Stringfellow said:

“Persons live most humanly. To death means yes to life.”

If that is radicalism so be it.

All I can really say is “bring on the imagination.” The system will shout their argument that capitalism “can’t be beat,” but the persons who seek to live most humanly should be imagining ‘what are the alternatives?’ We can all see the wastefulness of capitalism, but currently appear to lack the imaginative strength to envision a better way. Surely there is a better way to enable a healthy system where there is real competition among people with different ideas, where there is widespread access to knowledge in order to develop the smartest possibilities, where there are incentives to meet market needs not just wants, and where we cut losses when it is clear we should.

We should acknowledge the existing system doesn’t actually determine winners and losers in any meaningful or efficient way.

We should acknowledge this engine of progress has generated remarkable results, but also acknowledge those results, and the pursuit of those results, changed the nature of the capitalism engine itself and, therefore, the results objectives may need to be changed.

I imagine we should also acknowledge that in response to the changing nature of the capitalistic system, some in business have attempted to change – with new kinds of organizations, new ways of doing things, new ways of connecting and new ways of thinking about work itself AND we should be paying a bit more attention to this.

We should acknowledge this is more a social process, not just a business capitalistic process, and, inevitably, a cultural evolutionary process.

We should acknowledge that businesses watch other businesses, workers watch other workers, communities watch other communities and, yes, even nations watch other nations – and learn.

We should also acknowledge that the capitalistic system itself will be watching it all and will hold on to its power with ragged claws encouraging everyone to believe that the zero-sum narrative is more important to everyone’s survival, and thriving, than anything they could learn in this new imaginative space.

And with that we should acknowledge the reality is there are few absolute zero-sum economic situations (even though people see them everywhere and it negatively effects economics) and if capitalism is done well, economic growth – not through extracting and exploiting – makes everyone better off.

If that is radicalism, so be it. Bring on the radical imagination.

Ponder.

“In society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation

of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the

reach of magnetic and attractive personalities effectively exploiting the latest

communication techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor

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“Do you admire men of principle? That would depend, I suppose, upon what set of principles you’re speaking of.” Well. Don’t you find that principles inject an almost moribund inflexibility in the people who subscribe to them?”

The Hollow Men

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“People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I know optimists, pessimists, utopians, dystopians, skeptical, cynical and everything in-between. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that the bleak in the world seems more appealing to far more people than the hopeful. Regardless. Ralph has a point. Your opinion of the world is a glimpse into your character, or at least, how you go about your own business of the business of living life. And maybe that is something to reflect upon a bit. If you buy into the thought of an indifferent but bleakish, more unkind than kind, world, more than even thinking about doing or not doing, we should be thinking about the world in which WE reside, exist, survive or get the life sucked out of us. In other words, how we control our environment, i.e., the context in which we will have to make all those 30,000 daily choices. Uhm. In this case context is mindset.

So, the thought here is if the world is indifferent than it is also malleable to context – not the overall arc. In other words, you can shape, in some form or fashion, your situation. Not everything, but some things. In fact. I would argue that this is also a sliding scale in that in some situations you can control a shitload and in others you are hanging on for dear life to the few things you can control. But. Control is control and, especially if the world in indifferent, controlling some shit is better than controlling no shit.

Which leads me to controlling your attitude.

Here is a weird thought. Many people find the thought of the world being indifferent, well, an uncomfortable thought. So, they actively seek out narratives to explain the world in some weird ways. While the truth is that the world is increasingly complex and increasingly difficult to ‘see’ causes while there are hurricanes of effects buffeting us, we seek simplicity and simple answers. Its natural. But if your ‘simplicity’ is always zero-sum world, dystopia, greed, all the bad stuff, your simplicity is like exponential gravity and the arc of your world resides in a pretty dark place. I am not suggesting you immediately swing into some Pollyannish head space, but if you don’t believe things can be better, well, it is unlikely to get better.

“because of you the days to come will be better than the days before this one.”

Which leads me to failing.

In my mind, having an opinion of the world and your opinion of failing, or failure, has a direct connection. In Choose the Right Word by Hayakawa (almost my bible of word descriptions) “failing” fell under Flaw <wow … I could write an entire book over that little insight>. Flaw has a variety of aspects: blemish, defect, failing, fault, foible, imperfection, mar, shortcoming.

Regardless. Failure is a reflection of a flaw.

An imperfection (which seems okay).

A defect (which seems not okay).

Is failure a reflection of a defective product <product being, well, us – human, person>?

That seems harsh. Ok.  Maybe extreme. But. Maybe a bit true with regard to the context of opinion of the world. Yeah. In terms of “truth to oneself and how you shape your opinion of the world” think about this:

‘imperfection’ points more often to a lack that may be a matter of opinion

(Hayakawa)

Failure, on the other and, suggests a more severe shortcoming that has more severe consequences.

How ‘bout that? That kind of suggests if you have a failure in seeing the world in a positive way it will, well, have some severe consequences. That said. I do believe we should be better at understanding we have failings and they have consequences.

Now. Notice. Hayakawa never, anywhere, attached “negative” or “bad” adjectives to consequences. He simply points out that failures suggest shortcomings leading to consequences.

And that, my friends, is a Life truth.

We fail. The world fails.

It does not mean you are a failure nor does it mean the world is a failure.

And that is where I will end because I tend to believe if your opinion of the world is grounded in that last sentence, I tend to believe not only your own character will be just a bit less bleak but the world will inevitably be a little less bleak place to live. Ponder.

————————————

“every one of us stands alone on the heart of the earth,

Transfixed by a beam of sun;

And suddenly it is evening.”

Salvatore Quasimodo

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“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken

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 “Voters are basically lazy. Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand…. When we argue with him, we…seek to engage his intellect…. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable.”

1968, media advisor Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon

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“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
H.L. Mencken

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This is about social intellect and, I imagine, the question of whether the majority of the general public is, well, stupid. This is written with United States in mind, but I imagine many countries have a version of this issue. The issue is one of an ideological split; that isn’t really an ideological split. What I mean by that is that it is ideological in name only: democrats/republicans, liberal/conservative. And I say in name only because the labels confuse the issue which is actually about social intellect or differently said ‘the mental ability to engage in civic issues intelligently.’ That said. Beyond the labels, one ideology embraces policies, thoughts, and some ideas while the other simply embraces the belief that they are against everything I just said simply because the other ‘side’ is evil, the enemy, or all those things will destroy some mythical vague outline of what the country is (or isn’t). Consequently, the first group sees the second group as incapable, of, well, thinking. Consequently, in thinking they are incapable of thinking through the seemingly obvious foibles in their mythical vague narratives, they call them stupid. So. We end up with a country where a large segment of the population sees one side as having evil ideas and the other side as incapable of thinking, or stupid. To put it mildly, that simplistic concept is not very helpful.

Which leads me to the idea of social intellect inequality.

To be clear, social intellect is not about intelligence. Social intellect is the ability to assess the dimensions and nuance of civic responsibilities, and concepts, in order to contribute in an intelligent way with societal discussions if not actually participating in the decision-making. Just to begin making people feel uncomfortable today, I could argue that the primary contributors to societal system failures are the people who did not have the desire to develop their social intellect. This made them less-than-capable of effectively navigating through most complex issues throughout life. Once again, to be clear, this same person could be incredibly skilled in a profession and be grounded socially in a community, but, is less-than-capable of grasping the intricacies of how an entire society, country and system works. I remind everyone of that because then the real issue within a society is ‘what the intellectual level of the society is compared to the complexity of the economic and political environment in which it needs to survive’ and ‘is it effectively matched up.’ To be clear, today’s situation is a bit different than if we asked these questions in the past. Typically, a societal intellectual level will rise as the education systems get better and wealth is distributed among a larger group of people. In the past, wealth and education have tended to align with increased social intellect. I would argue the wealth and education aspects have diverged, i.e., in today’s world you can become pretty wealthy even while being ‘less-than-educated.’ From a social narrative aspect this becomes really really important because, as John Kenneth Galbraith said, ‘the relationship between wealth and intelligence is specious at best.’ Said differently, you can be stupid and still have money. Yet. Society has a nasty tendency to connect intelligence to wealth. Regardless. Setting aside wealth and education, if the complexity in the economic and political environment is rising faster than the increase in the intellectual level of society then the social intellect of the society is actually falling in relative terms. This is where inequality comes in. Because while education has improved and wealth is a bit more ubiquitous** (certainly to the extent that the majority of the American middle class is fairly comfortable in their homes and their lives):

• one portion of the population has intellectually risen to the complexity of the economic and political world or at least as close enough to be able to discern some of the proper actions that are needed
• one portion of the population, while possibly intellectually rising, has not risen to the same level.

** note: the reality is that in the United States most middle-class households have a comfortable lifestyle, albeit they may not feel like they have enough as they look at the higher income hhlds, and hhld wealth appears to have ‘de-linked’ from social intellect. Many, many, comfortable households simply skate on the superficial surface of social intellect most typically under the (a) common sense banner or (b) the patriotism banner or (c) a combination thereof.

That latter group is certainly not stupid and in fact it’s silly to suggest that anyone in the population can fully understand all the complexities of society in the world today. All I’m suggesting is that a segment of the population has fallen to an intellectual level where they are overwhelmed by the complexities in the world. For this group, in particular, if the speed and the strength of both technological advancements and global integration remains far above the speed of their intellectual development then both the total size of the incoming overlapping mental stimuli and the time required to assimilate and assess will increase. Uhm. And, yet, people seem to be actually embracing ‘speedy thinking’ more and more as they also embrace a ‘time starved’ narrative. To be clear, both are nuts. And bad. This social intellect challenge not only creates a continuously unstable societal, economic and political environment, but increases the risk of destroying the whole system as the asymmetry between the intellectually capable and the intellectually less-than-capable get farther and farther apart. As a defense mechanism to this cognitive onslaught, this intellectually-less-than-capable group may believe they can insulate their life paths/fates/communities from other areas of society, other communities, and even other countries. Unfortunately, for them, an interconnected world it is not only about the intellect of a country or a population within a country, but within a global scope.

Regardless. Democracy implies some version of intellect equality. Democracy suggests because everyone can be involved, they are all equal intellectually.  I would argue this is why democracy feels shaky as the intellect inequality tugs at the foundation of the democratic system. Look. Having the right to decide one’s own future in a democracy is a great feeling, however, if done without having the necessary social intellect it ends up in selecting the wrong future or, let’s say, selecting the paths which offer lower probabilities of a better future.

Which leads me to highlight the simple solution trap.

The objective should be to increase the overall intellectual level of not just the entire society, but of specific groups and populations who may be slightly less intellectually capable. A society, or half of society, cannot simply discard a significant portion of society as ‘stupid.’ In fact, I would suggest the intellectually less-than-capable provide a larger risk to society in totality and cannot be ignored. Why? Well. When overwhelmed by the complexity this group can most effectively be reached through someone promoting irrational patriotism as the simplest ‘objective’ and consequently intentionally imagining patriotism as sacrificing one’s own interests to a country for the potential welfare of society in total. Intellectually, the argument comes down to some simplistic “what is best for the country is best for everyone.’” It’s kind of a warped hollowed out intellectual rationale. I say ‘hollowed out’ because there are many things that are best for the country AND best for everyone; just not as a blanket carte blanche on all things to be done. That said. This asymmetrical relationship between intellect levels, which is not a difference between smart and stupid, is actually more about socially aware versus socially unaware. This becomes a dangerous issue to navigate because every society and their social system needs to balance the personal interests of the individuals versus the interests of the society and the short-term interests of both versus the long-term interests of both. A successful society navigates the contradictory objectives. I say that because the truth is that a society typically resides somewhere in the shade of gray versus the extremes. But with intellect inequality the less-than-intellectually-capable inevitably reside in some simplistic extreme while the intellectually-capable typically reside in the more nuanced complex space. Ponder what I just said because this is a nuanced view of ideologies. One that may seem foreign in today’s world where simplistic labels are misused to identify ideological leanings.

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“The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.”

Robert Heinlein

Which leads me to ideologies.

The less-thoughtful, the ones who for good reasons or bad reasons, do not pursue some observational critical thinking, end up crafting a simplistic ideology which is crafted in a way that it is more an attitude with loose behaviors attached to it rather than ideas with actions. The easiest one to point to is patriotism or some version of elevating country over anything else. Regardless. It becomes a loose ideology which, intellectually, a lot of shit can be placed within. Once again, this is not stupidity, it is more just intellect laziness. While it may seem like ideology is the intellectual basis of societies, ideological expressions tend to represent distorted perceptions of realities which, in turn can produce some real distorting efforts. In today’s world the distorted realities have taken on some concreteness through measurement and productivity and actual production. Through these somewhat dubious concrete ‘numbered’ things, social reality and identity definitions get molded into, well, a ‘reality’ shaped in the form of the ideological attitude. Yeah. Once ideology, the abstract, becomes concrete it is legitimized as an effective illusion for a society even though that illusion is of some alternative society to real reality. At that point ideology takes on sort of a flat preciseness in that they no longer represent choices but instead declarations of undeniable facts.

“One, they cherry-pick evidence. Two, they take the information out of context and misrepresent what happened. They disregard the truth that’s in front of them. They downplay and dismiss it. And finally, they flat out lie.”

Herbert Marcuse suggested it all creates ‘the one dimensional man.’ As I’ve written about before increased complexity encourages many people to increase simplicity. So as the world becomes more multidimensional, if not even to a quantum level, interconnected complexity there will always be a group of people, sometimes a significant amount of people, who become more and more one dimensional in many of their thoughts and ideas. To be clear this complexity is perception and reality. What I mean by that is while the world is getting a bit more complex, if you listen to enough ordinary people describing life, it quickly moves from chess to The Matrix and you are being asked to take a red pill or blue pill or some shit like that. Let’s just say that we should be wary of ordinary people because oftentimes the ordinary people aren’t as wise as we would like. And by ‘not as wise’ I mean that they reject many of the thoughts that would actually be helpful to improving their mindsets and their mental models. Suffice it to say rejection is bad. Denial and contempt are typically for little people with nasty minds who typically think they have made themselves all on their own and they owe nothing to anyone about what came before. Well, from there this version of a faux ideology takes on some real psychological trappings.

Which leads me to becoming bigger people.

As Jerome Scott and R. P. Lynton put it: “Every man requires emotional and intellectual satisfactions which alone secure for him his belonging to a community.” The path from little people to bigger people seems to be narrowing day by day. Maybe it’s because once an abstract ideology becomes concrete it becomes a club, not a community. I say that because if belonging is important, belong to ‘the club’ is exponentially important in terms of social identity. And THAT is important because when this need is suppressed, anything from psychological maladjustment to mental derangement can occur. Yeah. I just said that. Some experts suggest the most obsessive psychosis arise from a failure of social adaptation and from the suppression of community relations. When that happens, a person tends to seek substitutions – through social media and ‘clubs.’ And, yeah, this is where technology – social media – can begin to play a massive role. Technology is an alternative reality in and of itself as it portrays a wide variety of illusory realities. These faux realities outline criteria for a version of life that some people will find social identity within and be able to clearly point to who Is ‘without.’ This sociological structure is forged by technological forces and economic perceptions beyond what lies immediately outside the front door. The illusion exists as an attractive alternative to anything seen on the street outside. They are not the result of thought, doctrine, discourse, well, they partially are, but all within, ‘the club.’ Uhm.  A club of (sometimes nasty) little people. Anyway. From that point on the illusions become a condition of fact. From there all social beliefs, all social reforms (or reductionism), all social changes, are located wholly within this condition of fact. From this condition of dubious facthood the shaping of society and social boundaries will vindicate it as well as exploit it. It is a little world where “us” reside and “them” do not. The problem is the “us” gets littler and littler as they become more unchanged, paranoid, and actually inefficient in the larger world, i.e., reality. This little world insidiously mutates the larger, bigger, thinking world as it pushes and shoves and punches and stabs that which wants to expand. But let’s get back to becoming bigger people. Head, heart and wallet. The pathway is always found in calming fears, keeping scepticism and cynicism in check, reshape the brain and offering the vision of a more prosperous future (either for the individual or future generations). It is as Claude Munson suggested: “It is a question of strengthening the environment in such a way that, in practice, all subjects come more or less quickly under its influence.” People need to be placed in a positive social environment where they can thrive, emotional and intellectual satisfaction, or be encouraged to adapt in positive ways.

Which leads me to end with cultural despair.

While both ends of the social intellect despair for greater society they do so in different ways. There is intellectual passivity and intellectual activity. And in our upside down world today often the passive believe they are the active and believe that the intellectual active are the well passive sheep. They see passivity in following science, data, logic, reason, real knowledge-based experience, and associate their own intellectual activity to be found in the nebulous common sense. What this means is in an upside down world of logic and realities where ultimately cultural despair is created through every corner of society.

Rejecting the discipline of the mind as well as the overall corruption of the entire concept of education, a concept which had actually elevated the ‘ordinary person’ to some intellectual rigor of thought, a passive intellectual group then goes forth and corrupts the social mind and social fabric. It all creates an almost willful disregard for common knowledge replacing it with the oft mis-placed and oft-misused common sense. If we are truly honest, a significant swath of society lacks the observational critical intellect needed to pierce some of the complex issues we face. So those in despair then run after every person in power offering a simple solution hoping for well something other than despair. Everything is questioned – what is success, what is equality, faith in scientific method, what is progress. All the ideas and concepts which grounded us as we grew up get questioned. There is a grand clash of idealism, realism, and some form of materialism, from which cultural despair arises.

Maybe this version of cultural despair is best captured by Philip Tetlock.

Regardless of what side of the social intellect scale you reside on what you think isn’t really based on the level of Education or even actual experience instead it comes down to the way someone thinks. The ones who typically do amazingly badly with regard to how they think about things were those who believed that there was a big idea which explained everything world was simple and could be understood simply and that they could just stamp their big idea unto every situation. The ones who do well thinking through things were those who had no such big idea, who regarded the world as complex took their information from many different sources and were willing to be self-critical and learn from mistakes. The key inevitably comes down to checking whether you were right or wrong. And even that is tricky because the majority of people seek out proof for what they predicted or thought rather than broad based information to check against it.

I believe it was Jonathan Haidt who said when we are presented with evidence for or against a hypothesis, we ask ourselves one of two questions.

• When we want to believe something, we ask ourselves can I believe it? Then we search for supporting evidence and if we find even a single piece of pseudo evidence we can stop thinking. We now have permission to believe.
• When we don’t want to believe something, we ask ourselves must I believe it? Then we search for contrary evidence and if we find a single reason to doubt the claim, we can dismiss it.

I believe this is called motivated credulity and motivated skepticism. And maybe that’s where I will end this piece with credulity and skepticism. Social intellect balances itself on what is credible enough to overcome the skepticism. A good healthy skepticism should force better observational critical thinking until we can arrive at a point where there is a credible conclusion. We seem to have lost that balance. Somehow some way we must arrive back here as a society in order to engage in civic issues intelligently. I would argue continuing to engage in civic issues unintelligently is the path to ruin. Well. About this? Not solving this means we will fail to secure the emotional and intellectual satisfaction required to maintain a healthy community and society. Ponder.

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“To satisfy one habit of the reader, to keep his mind diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him: much as the imaginary burglar is always provided with a bit of nice meat for the house dog.”

TS Eliot

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I imagine this metaphor summarizes much of our current public narrative. As we all argue over what we deem the practical questions of the day, it is like we are the house dog munching peacefully on the meat while the entire house is looted. Much of this discussion centers around the role that the computer and technology play in our lives. That is the wrong discussion. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, the reality of how we think, our values and, ultimately, how we shape our views of reality. The truth is technology alters the structure of all – our interests as well as the things that we think about. But maybe most importantly is that they alter the structure of how we actually think and what we value.

While I clearly believe that humans control their own destiny in terms of shaping how we think and how to cognitively manage ourselves, the truth is that everything must give way in some degree to the technological onslaught. And this onslaught not only changes the shapes of our thoughts, but it also brings a scalpel to culture. Oh. I am not suggesting that technology affects culture with precision, but rather as technological tools are embedded into culture, they will methodically begin slicing and dicing culture’s substructures. These tools have no ideology, no real bias for truth, and no solid objective except that which the tools are designed for – engagement, activity, usage. That is their mindless bid to become the culture so that they can thrive. I say that to suggest everything that we think will be forced to either fight or defend itself if we do not want these tools to ‘work upon us.’  And when is say ‘everything we think’ I include traditions, politics, norms, values, religious beliefs, social ethics, myths .. everything. If you don’t actively evaluate what is important to you, I can guarantee you will not be able to fend off technology. Maybe it would behoove all of us to think about physicist James Prescott Joule who suggested nature is very parsimonious with energy and that energy is neither created nor destroyed but merely converted from one form into another. I say that because technology is an energy user in search of, well, energy to convert TO ITSELF. I imagine my point here is that if we continue to feed it our energy and it keeps on sucking up more and more of human energy, well, what’s left of us after it has done all its work upon us?

In the end. The problem is that we, people, end up serving technology rather than technology serving us and our needs. And I imagine that goes for all the technology tools, not just algorithms. Little by little they work upon us, we munching on the meat the burglar gave is while our minds are being looted. Ponder

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“An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark – that is critical genius.”

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“The turning point really is just knowing you’re an imbecile.”

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I almost called this the ugly underbelly of simplicity, but heuristic imbeciles was more fun. To be clear. I am not smart enough to come up with ‘heuristic imbecile.’ Someone must have said it or written it somewhere because it was scribbled in one of my notebooks. So, what is a heuristic imbecile? I would bet we all have one or more people in our sphere. They forward some meme or a snapshot of some simplistic shit (sometimes a quote) that either (a) ignores context or history or (b) maddeningly actually makes the opposite pint they believe it does (but in an upside-down alternative universe down looks up). What they are doing is adopting complex beliefs based on incorrect, or less-than-correct, simplistic bites of information. Let’s call it the allure of the ‘satisfactory partial.’ Pieces and parts become the quick and dirty heuristics to navigating the less-than-rational path. Yeah. Heuristic imbeciles cannot be agents of rational thoughts. The imbecile use of heuristics basically means always being caught in-between rational and irrational even though someone may think of themselves as ‘the rational one’. The satisfactory partial process seems to make sense and, yet, it arrives at outcomes that don’t really make sense. That’s because the ‘process’ understanding isn’t really understanding but rather, well, satisfactory partials. And from there, well, we are screwed.

Anyway. Remember that a thinker must collect and remember enough available information to be rational or implement ‘reason.’ Ignorance is no excuse because there is more than enough information available, so the test is what I knew or should have known. This is stressful. This creates cognitive dissonance. This makes us dependent on some heuristic thinking. The problem, that imbecile thing, occurs with the question of what we conveniently adopt, which creates in some sense an unsound inference, in order to make a choice/decision or even form an opinion. We demand a reasonable requirement of collection of available information and yet many do not have the ability to gather all of it. the reality is we must implement some reasonable care in the gathering as well as the assessment.  This is sometimes called a ‘finite predicament.’ In this predicament our finite minds mean we are unlikely to have entirely correct and complete theories therefore our cognitive biases may cause us to accept some falsehoods and reject some truths. To be clear, generally speaking, we should be cool with this. The reality is complete theories are likely to be too complex for many of us to understand. We are always in a finite predicament of having fixed finite limits on our cognitive resources. In fact we should accept the possibility that any human being let alone any computational entity to be able to perform some relatively simple reasoning tasks in ways that are guaranteed to be correct. This doesn’t mean that we should abandon reason in the pursuit of rational thinking, but rather understand the limitations of what we call reason and rational. It is the understanding that almost every single action that we choose will fall somewhere between randomness and perfection and an understanding that our best logical ability simply must satisfy the minimal inference condition. Uhm. The heuristic imbeciles do none of this.

Part of their issue is they use simplistic heuristics as ‘obvious inferences’ which are supposed to represent understanding of logical truths involved in those inferences. To be clear. The question of adopting convenient, but in some sense unsound inference rules, is how a human’s deduction system works. And while not completely rational it is not a complete rejection of ideal rational conditions because if it did it would encourage us to adopt and anything goes thinking. We just grab onto satisfactory partials, but, the truth is almost always found in the drama of the details. Heuristic imbeciles hate details.

Which leads me to the imbeciles God – technology.

I will not even begin with ChatGPT, suffice it to say the reality is that humans and technology are intertwined and in fact technology becomes a mechanism of some version of a technological moral change. What I mean by that is technology affects moral beliefs and practices through decisions, how we make morally embedded decisions related to others and their decisions, how we relate to others, and perceptually how we perceive situations. And when technology is embedded in those ways they’re constantly nudging against our morality by adding options, by changing decision making utility and costs, by enabling new relationships, by altering the burdens and expectations within those relationships, altering existing balance of power in relationships, and ultimately changing the perceptions through information altering mental models and, of course, heuristics.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out an additional consequence of imbecile heuristics is it permits a sense of distance. What I mean by that is the heuristic provides a sense of anonymous expertise which creates a physical, mental, and moral distance which reduces any consequences to actually being wrong. Ultimately, though, this imbecile runs on reductive, exclusionary ideals of the world which, over time, begins to tear the fabric of the societal contracts. This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of heuristic thinking rejecting the misguided ideals, but the imbeciles can be overwhelming and exhausting.

What we would like is for technology and our heuristics to provide us with mental models and analogies for understanding the world. Heuristics do this in a simple and direct way by giving us new images which we use to interpret and understand the world usually by helping us develop theories about the world. Often it happens in a very abstract way (I believe this is called the tools-to-theories heuristic). Once again, generally speaking, all of us do this. All I’m suggesting is that the heuristic imbeciles do this in such a simplistic and affirming way it is unhealthy for society and, practically speaking, useless for the individual. And it can even become slightly dangerous in that new mental models and heuristics inevitably change our moral perceptions.

Which leads me back to heuristics themselves.

Heuristics are constantly evolving and adapting as we are provided new data, imagery, and information. And as the heuristics change the mental models adapt. And while most of human reasoning about the world is done through simplified mental models of how the world works, reasoning is dependent on crafting models by comparing them with other models. But heuristic imbecile mental models are typically, uhm, heuristics, not models. So, uhm, yeah, their heuristics are being shaped by other heuristics. It gets worse. The heuristic imbeciles simplify this even more so not by degrees, but by multiple degrees. So, while models typically generate insightful thinking and practical guidance, heuristic imbeciles don’t truly compare mental models (and new data, imagery, information) for insightful thinking and practical guidance, they simply generate nonsense and useless guidance. Look. We all compartmentalize information to manage cognitive resources. But extreme compartmentalization, which is basically what heuristic imbecile do, tends to exclude a belief system from the things it needs to optimize reasoning and rationality. What I mean by that is if a belief system is organized into too many sharply defined small compartments, cognitively it all disintegrates into unrelated fragments of too many of the beliefs. The consequence of this is it decreases the likelihood to activate any coherence between them because the mental model only sees too many inconsistencies so useful inferences cannot be recognized.  Here is where things go really awry. Without the linkage the simplistic sense making becomes grounded in flawed logic which, while possibly being okay in the present, will inevitably guarantee the future will at some point no longer make sense. It is generally recognized in the philosophy of psychology that although consistency may be the hobgoblin of small minds consistency is a condition for having any mind at all and if the heuristic imbecile cannot even make sense of the present; the future is fucked.

Which leads me to not all finites are created equal.

The reality is a very fundamental feature of human beings is the finite predicament of having fixed limits on their cognitive capacities and the time available to them. This actually demands minimal heuristic requirements as a default mechanism to get us mentally from here to there. The finite predicament we find ourselves in is within our fixed finite limits on our cognitive resources. We may be unable to grasp complete theories because some of the most interesting important theories are likely to be too complex for us to understand and this, inevitably, leads everyone to , in some form or fashion, to agree on some ‘satisfactory partials’. Unfortunately, this contributes to the innate cognitive biases necessary to navigate life and decision making and sensemaking, yet, may also cause us to accept some falsehoods and reject some truths. But just as not all finites are created equal, not all heuristic use is created equal. While much of what I have said today we all do, the heuristic imbeciles are just bad at all of this. they could be lazy, they could be purposefully ignorant, they could be happy with their mental bias, but in the end they are imbeciles who use heuristics to simplify the world in dangerously misguided ways.

Anyway.

Rejection of an ideal rationality condition will never translate into rationalism (a minimal normative condition as a descriptive condition is a dangerous path to wander). And being a heuristic imbecile will never translate into rationalism (although it may feel rational to the heuristic imbecile). Look. In the daily onslaught of new data, a sane human will settle on some vanity metric to point to. Vanity metrics are simplistic heuristics for complex situations. The problem in being sane is in this world we become heuristic imbeciles defining success and failure and picking winners and losers off these simplistic heuristics, memes and information. So, well, maybe I am suggesting in order to avoid being a heuristic imbecile you have to approach the world in a slightly less sane way. Well. That’s a point to ponder.

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“And I want to believe that I’ve made the right choice and that I’m on the right path and there’s still time to fix the mistakes that I’ve made. And I guess I want hope.”

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“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”

Margaret Mead

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Let’s talk personal accountability for our behavior. Let me begin in an odd place – government. Almost every person hates government involvement in life, society and communities because, well, while we claim infringement into our lives, the deeper discomfort is someone is forcing us to conform to certain behaviors. No one likes that. That said. In almost every situation we, the people, seem to disregard our role in that involvement. If we did, we may see that our imperfections, in terms of flawed behavior, often demand government to put themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to regulate actions and behaviors. Yeah. If people or business institutions fail to regulate their own behavior, the government will.

Which leads me to regulating our own behavior (without laws).

Moulton, in Law and Manners, examined the three great domains of human action.

• the domain of positive law where our actions are prescribed by laws which must be obeyed.
• the domain of free choice which includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy
• between those two and the largest and important domain, where neither positive law nor absolute freedom exists. In that domain there is no law which explicitly determines our course of action and yet we feel that we are not free to choose as we would.

I would suggest that last domain could be considered social norms and our behavior within this space outlines the social contract. Moulton called this the domain of obedience to the unenforceable. This is where the person, the individual, enforces laws of behavior on themselves. It’s kind of our ‘do the right thing’ compass and, therefore bounded or constrained by not only our own morals and ethics, but also by what society accepts or defines unacceptable or distasteful. While it would be impossible to construct laws for all circumstances, more importantly, we would not prefer laws to dictate in all circumstances. Consequently, this means most of our life is found in the infinite ‘no-law dictated’ situations where free choice is bounded not by law, and not by ‘I can do’ freedom, but rather ‘should I do’ principles. Yeah. We are expected to dictate our own behavior. Ah. Therein lies the danger to society and to, well, greatness.

Which leads me to greatness.

In Moulton’s mind the real greatness of the nation is measured by people’s behavior in the obedience to the unenforceable domain. It is within that behavioral space in which we can evaluate the extent to which a nation trusts people and the way people actually behave in response to that trust. To be clear. Mere obedience to law does not measure the greatness of a nation, i.e., the law will never tell you the right thing to do, it just outlines the wrong things.

Nor is the behavior under the guise of freedom within the absence of law a proof of greatness. True greatness is found in individual behavior obeying self-imposed law. Circling back to the beginning, what this means is that a society of peoples must assume some responsibility, some accountability, with regard to their actions. What I mean by that is there can be a weird belief that just because someone can do something means they may do it. The problem is between can do and may do there exists the wretched hollow in-between containing duty, fairness, sympathy, empathy, and all the other things that make life not The Hunger Games and creates a healthy social contract. It is within the space in-between can do and may do because it is within that space greatness can be attained and greatness can be lost. This means the participants within a society need to be able to recognize that the increase of their freedom of action brings with it not unfettered choice but the corresponding responsibility, and accountability, of using that freedom. We would wish that society feels the obedience to the unenforceable so strongly that in even the worst moments they all behaved as if when reflective on the behavior we behaved to our better angels. Unfortunately, in a zero-sum world one isn’t encouraged to be an angel, but rather constantly seek some angle.

“It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral.”
Saul Alinsky

And if we play the angles long enough, they become the norms.

Which leads me to the shifting baseline.

Angles, and angling, ultimately shifts the baseline of behavior. The shifting baseline is grounded in the fact that once something is gone, people forget they ever had it and, from a broader perspective, whatever conditions people grow up with are the ones they generally consider normal (normal is defined as any initial environmental context experience which establishes a baseline perspective). This means we tend to take for granted things, i.e., lost things are lost and the existing should be the norm and our baseline for what is right, or even good, shifts accordingly.

This phenomenon, known as “shifting baseline syndrome.”

Fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly researching the drastic reduction in the size of catch off the eastern seaboard of North America, which had declined by 97% since written records began found the fishermen remained strangely unconcerned. He realized that each generation viewed the baseline as whatever they caught at the beginning of their career, regardless of how much smaller it was than the previous generation, leading to what he called “the gradual accommodation of the creeping disappearance” of fish populations.

• *** note: accumulation of studies around the world measuring the declines of species and ecosystems indicates that overall, we’ve lost around 90% of nature’s profusion. We live in a “10% world.”

So while that is about fish, it’s not really just about fish.

Shifting baseline syndrome has since been shown to be pervasive everywhere in the world and today I’m suggesting it has to do with norms and in particular the largest domain of behavior the obedience to the unenforceable. Our current path is dismantling an earlier world weakening the mechanisms on which the spirit of society – economic, social cohesion, freedom – permitted progress. Defying existing norms creates a new axis mundus of injustice and exploitation. It is now with the things which had never been formally identified and categorized we’re increasing economic and social difficulties are now big being constructed. It would be remiss if I didn’t point out all of these all of this diminishes the greatness or the potential for of countries and societies. This is a new type of exploitation even different than the notion that marks offered us. This exploitation is not a class construct, but a classless construct. And, yes, pun intended. Regardless. This all creates social negativity compounded by the fact the only way to curb this societal dysfunction is inevitably through laws. Well, a law will never tell anyone the right thing to do, just highlight the most wrong. And, once again, no sane person wants a law to dictate behavior in all circumstances.

Which leads me to renormalizing norms.

Normativity pervades our daily lives, influencing our decisions, behaviors, and societal structures. It encompasses a range of principles, standards, and values that guide human actions and shape our understanding of what’s considered right or wrong, good or bad. Over time, societal norms evolve, reflecting shifts in normative perspectives (cultural, social, and philosophical), i.e., shifting the baseline. Often, we see shifting social norms culminating in the changing of outdated laws to better align with the acceptable, and unacceptable normative behaviors of the day. While it’s ethically significant that norms shift over time and adapt to their context, it’s important to note that these changes often happen slowly. Eventually, changes in norms influence changes in laws if the middle domain if behavior doesn’t accommodate the new norms.  Once again, norms, and acceptable behavior, can be explicit or implicit, originating from various sources like cultural traditions, social institutions, religious beliefs, or philosophical frameworks. But. often, the most important norms are implicit because they are unspoken expectations that people absorb as they experience the world around them. but when these norms loosen up, well, significantly, as in they become untethered to any real manners, we will inevitably shift our baseline. It is happening in the present. We need to re-tether norms to acceptable behavior and make some of them a bit more specific. Make the past vague outlines of what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable, a bit more concrete. We need to be a bit more explicit in order to constrain some behavioral bad actors into a clear unacceptable category and reject a shifting baseline that is shifting downwards into hellish behavior. Ponder.

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“the ends justifies the means”.

motto of the Illuminati

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“Money decides how it wants to live.”

Ryan Gravel, City Designer

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“soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”

John Maynard Keynes

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perfectibilist

<The Century Dictionary>

Noun: One who believes in the perfectibility of human nature in this life; a perfectionist

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Small groups of people, with the thought they are better, smarter, more intelligent, more whatever, have gathered together since the dawn of time. It would be silly to suggest this is always bad because sometimes the scientists, the doctors, the engineers, the geniuses, even the kindhearted, have gathered together to address some of the most critical issues of humankind. And sometimes they get it right (thank god).

But then there is the small group gathering underbelly.

The wealthy seeking to maintain their wealth and power or even just those with power seeking to get a tighter grip on power. Please note I never used the word “intelligence” anywhere in there. While they may deem themselves smarter, more intelligent, and knowing what is best for everyone else, as John Kenneth Galbraith famously noted: “the connection between intelligence and wealth is specious at best.”

Which leads me to the Illuminati.

I bring in the Illuminati, or the Order of the Perfectibilists, for two reasons (1) it is reflective of small groups of people – usually men – with power and money who seek to maintain their power and money … by any means possible & (2) their motto, ‘the ends justify the means.’ To be clear. It is highly typical to have those two things inextricably linked. Power and wealth use any means to maintain their ends, i.e., power and wealth.

• *** note: I also thought about the Illuminati as I finished the horrifying book “Moneyland.” Basically, the wealthy do not need cabals or small ‘societies’ intent on some wacky ideology, they now simply access small groups of financial brokers to do whatever ‘ends that justify the means’ jobs.

Anyway. The Illuminati. In 1776 a group called ‘Perfektibilisten’ was formed in Bavaria. It became famous as the “Ordo Illuminati Bavarensis”, or the Illuminati for short (illuminati means ‘the enlightened ones’ in Latin). Only five people were present at the first meeting of the order, but it grew rapidly and only a few years later it had chapterhouses all over Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Hungary and Switzerland. It soon established a network of agents around Europe that infiltrated courts and other places of power and reported back useful gossip and information to the group leaders. The primary mission of the Illuminati was to establish a New World Order through the use of science, technology and business, while abolishing all monarchical governments and the Vatican. Despite being banned in 1784, today there are fictitious conspiracy urban myths which build on the name ‘Illuminati’ simply because it sounds impressive. In the end, my point is the point. A small group of opportunistic wealthy people who believed they were smarter, more enlightened, than everyone else seeking to maintain their wealth and power by any means possible.

Which leads me to perfectibilist.

Far, far, too often the uber wealthy feel like they are special and ‘better than.’ A perfectibilist as it were.

A perfectibilist is someone who believes that human beings are capable of achieving perfection through education and the improvement of society. The term was first coined by the philosopher and social reformer, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in the late 18th century. Perfectibilists believe that by perfecting the individual, society can be perfected, and that this process can be achieved through the cultivation of reason, morality, and virtue. Ultimately, they believe that human nature is perfectible and that society can be improved through education and rationalism. While perfectibilist was always intended to portray the possibility of human perfection, the order suggested they had attained perfectibilist status therefore were better and could ‘enlighten’ the rest of the world. This is some nutso stuff. That said. Many of the uberwealthy are a bit nutso and absolutely believe they are superior. They believe they are not only the guides to an ideal society, but also they embody what society should aspire to.

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“We live under a system by which the many are exploited by the few”

Harold Laski

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In short, you cannot escape power, regardless of your station in life.

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Which leads me to the inevitableness of the purview of the few.

We are nuts if we don’t think that most decisions of any consequence are in the purview of the few. I don’t mean some deep state or some cabal, but CEOs make big decisions for businesses, politicians make big governing decisions for countries/regions/cities, Union leaders make big decisions for workers and even school boards make big decisions effecting our youth. Democracy doesn’t really mean everyone can make a decision. It simply means we have a voice, but the decisions are in the purview of the few. The danger to democracy always lies in whether the few also see themselves as Perfectibles.

Which leads me to the main tool of the Perfectibilist: math.

Reason is math. Or let’s say math is reasonable reasoning to the Perfectibles. They quantify everything; even people. Oh, sure, the Perfectibilist will be clever with regard to the mathification, but we have mathematized humanities, creativity has been mathematized, performance and meaning has been mathematized, well, let’s say that this mathematical obsession has deformed the intangible good (and value structure). Math reduces everything it touches while actually expanding the power and wealth of the ‘few’. And while I will later point out how this absolves the few, the Perfectibles, of any moral restraint, this mathematization only encourages society to strip moral restraints from everyday attitudes and behaviors. The ‘few’ become pseudo-intellectual social philosopher bullies who bludgeon the public with math in order to forge a ‘perfect society.’  The problem is this dull axe of math fundamentally empties society of moral or empathetic stances. When attacked for this hollowness the ‘few’ will stubbornly defend their vision from a stance of pseudo-math as the way to navigate an increasingly, seemingly, unstructured, and uncertain world. Today’s Perfectibilist has been actively indoctrinated in a structured methodology of mathematical measurement. It’s a warped vision of even the warped Taylorism that got us to where we are today. It is almost like we are being led by a morally-illiterate group of people. Illiterate in that they are unable to recognize the necessary relationship between power and morality essential for healthy, meaningful, progress. The truth is mathematical knowledge is actually hampering the actions necessary to create and sustain a substantive healthy society. Why? Well. While we talk endlessly about individual freedom and individual empowerment, there has never before been such pressure for conformity – through math. This math world is simply an illusion. What I mean by that it is a healthy, robust, expansive, intangible world reduced to a simplistic hollowed world of math becomes one in which the Perfectibilist can not only reduce what success is into some number, but reduces the power of a society in order to increase the power they have OVER that society. Yeah. Math is the prison the ‘few’ put society in so they become the wardens.

Which leads me to math’s biggest number: money.

Power and money; money and power. They are inextricably linked. And this is important because, well, it makes you think about who owns the future – the ones with the money, the ones aspiring to have the money, or the ones who do not have the money <and even whether it should matter>. And THAT is important because, well, “money decides how it wants to live.” I believe if we continue on the path we are currently on we run the risk of money determinism, not human determinism. What I mean by that is money becomes the design, and designer, of human society not a tool used by humans to implement the human-designed design of human society. That said. I would be naïve to suggest humans have the power, because they do and they don’t. They do own the future because they can be the architects of fate and the future as well as architects of what money should be, yet, money will always be power until the world, itself, decides to change. Money is power and power is money. That is the world we have today and that is the world we need to deal with.

So, I circle back to who owns the future, who owns the power, who owns the money? And whoever does, can they handle the power and the money they have? Those are important questions because power subverts the intentions of a free market. Today’s marketplace is a system of competing powers (players) each of whom are seeking an advantage, but, the few – the perfectibles – assume the most power in this power game. We should note market advantage is information <knowledge, wisdom>, money buys information (see opening note on Illuminati and information gathering across Europe). I say that because if the world, the market, isn’t sane <power distorts traditional view of sanity> and willing to define its own fate, technology – or any tool – will not solve it and money is simply power to eliminate things that are obstacles to more money and growth. To the Perfectibilist, more is never enough and there are no rules when it comes to maintaining or protecting one’s wealth and power. If you buy into that thought, or thoughts, then we need to become concerned when the institutions of money <people with money> rule the world. We should be concerned because when those people begin to talk about fairness or shared prosperity they do so with a catch. The catch is “as long as it does not infringe upon my pursuit of my money and my wealth.” Without context, that is a fine and dandy thought. But in a zero-sum mindset it suggests HOW I got my money and wealth was fair and equitable and the system of money rewards those who deserve it. The Perfectibles will tend to guide decisions toward their own worldview which is most likely not even close to reality.

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“We’ve made it really easy for good people to do the wrong things.”

Josh Tetrick

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Which leads me to the Few’s go-to philosophy: growth.

The few spends a lot of time telling us that growth is the pathway to increased wealth equality (or better balanced between the Few and the Many). Here’s the rub. Its bullshit. Chasing the limitless is both dangerous and freeing in general, but in a zero-sum world it is just corrosive. The truth is chasing limitless piles of money and limitless growth debases its actual value because then the only value is more and each additional dollar placed on the large stack diminishes in actual value to its owner <it is simply a prize, not prized>. Chasing anything with no limit can be a freeing feeling, but what I would suggest, in this case, is the no limit actually represents a soulless cage. I could go on and on about how zero-sum capitalism attitude begets zero-sum behavior which begets lousy extremes <because ‘winners’ increase probability of more winning not because of skill/better, but because they have, well, more money>. I don’t begrudge people money, but, zero-sum doesn’t create a fair game for all players. Oh. Yeah. “Fair game for all players.” The few, the Perfectibles, have no interest in the fairness of all players. They embrace a zero-sum attitude and only seek to increase the quality of the game players so that their money, growth and power increases (or is maintained).

Which leads me back to “the ends justify the means”

Growth, money and power are the ends. In a Perfectibilist purview let’s call it ‘winning.’ Winning is simply the outcome of any means to achieve that trifecta.  Yeah. Winning justifies the means regardless of the means. The Perfectibilist says “the path to better comes at a cost and one of the costs is if the weak can’t keep up they need to make room for the strong.”

Don’t get me wrong. I like growth and money. But not all growth is the same nor is all money the same. Some money fills your soul and some empties your soul and by soul I mean your inner value compass.

People who are defined solely by money, growth and power can argue this until they are blue in the face. In fact they do. But at what price? And does the end justify the means? And, obviously, WHICH end justifies the means? That is what I mean by emptying your soul or filling your soul. Because in the end (whether that be mid life or at ‘the big finish’) you are judging your actions not by tangible things, but the intangible balance of self-worth (I purposefully chose ‘worth’ because it is some combination of fruits of labor and self-esteem). It is interesting because I have seen a variety of ways people justify how they sell their soul but one word continues to stand up as the face of behavior over & over again:

“winning”

To the Perfectibilists it’s all about winning. Winning at any cost. Or just being able to say “I won.” But (here is the news) winning is not always good.  There IS such a thing as a bad win. Unfortunately, the people who define their soul by winning don’t see that (or they may, but justify their actions based on “we won”). Am I suggesting this aspect should be about fair play? No. Not really. This is about playing by your moral compass; an attitude as it were.

“money”

The thought that everything leads to some magical pot of money that will erase not only all of their problems, but the world’s problems. The Perfectibilists may try to balance it with some philanthropic aspect (typically toward the end of their lives – see Andrew Carnegie as prime example) or balance it with some argument that “their way is the way to a perfect society,” but if we examine their behaviors, we see they are consistently willing to ignore any moral compass within their pursuit for money, growth, and power.

“The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.”

William James

There are a variety of ways they justify optimal Perfectibilist, but suffice it to say far and away the number one way is “end justifies the means.” All the while ignoring the carnage left behind.

Which leads me to end where I began: “money decides how it wants to live.”

Ryan Gravel said this years ago and it has stuck in my brain. It has a stark truth to it. But building on that starkness is the inevitability of the desires of the ‘few.’ The Perfectibilists as it were. We may not have the Illuminati now, but we certainly have small groups of people attempting to nudge society, people, communities into ‘living’ the way they believe the world should live. They may exist in some small local community and they may exist in a larger global view. It doesn’t matter. Far, far, too many of them simply seek money, growth and power and the communities, neighborhoods, businesses, society are simply means to attain their ends. Ponder.

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“And the dangerous thing about excuses is that if we recite them enough times, we actually come to believe they are true.”

Robin Sharma

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“There are moments when one can neither think nor feel, she thought, and if one can neither feel nor think, where’s one?”

Virginia Woolf

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Well. Making excuses is natural.

We all do it.

Sometime big excuses and sometimes the little shrug of shoulders type excuses. And, regardless of the shape & size of the excuse, we all hate it afterwards <at least those people who accept responsibility>. I sometimes think of excuses like I do the slippery slope of mediocrity.

What do I mean?

Once you step on to the ‘excuse slope’ it is a slippery one. It is tough to get off. And while most of us make an excuse with good intentions of ‘just this once’, excuses are quite tasty in the mouth once we have tasted one that worked.

Okay. Maybe I didn’t get that right.

Maybe what makes excuses so horrible is that the more time you chew on one the less taste is has … getting to a point where you taste nothing, think nothing of it and feel nothing. What that means is you start popping them like breath fresheners. All the while in your mind you are taking personal responsibility, but in reality … over time … the common theme in your Life becomes something outside of your control is always being blamed.

I actually did some research on this and you can go back several thousand years to get some insight. It was Aristotle who identified the seven reasons people do things <4 are voluntary, and have moral implications, and 3 of them are involuntary, and do not>.

‘Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.’

Aristotle further stated that all actions are due either to emotion or reason and either seek pleasure or act to reduce pain as compulsion for our actions.  Well. You may not buy everything in the model, but, our “excuse muscle” fits right into this decision framework. That said. While you may not be able to control circumstances and control what other people do, or not do, and you may claim you actually have no control over your own actions <yeah, sometimes we can be manipulated> you have control over something big — you can certainly control your attitude.

And that is where excuses have gone a little off the rails.

The thing about excuses in today’s world is how we have this nasty tendency to mitigate the excuses themselves <not just our actions>. Yeah. We make excuses for our excuses.

This is a change from the past. In the past we all pretty much knew that we should assume personal responsibility for our actions and results of our actions <or non-actions> and we battled against the recognition that much of what happens is based on extenuating circumstances and things beyond our control. That is reality. We see it, understand it … and yet suck it up and say we are responsible.

No excuses.

We apologize. We move on and try the best we can to say it will not happen again, sometimes even promising <albeit knowing that promising some shit is silly because … well … the reality truly is that we are the victim of  shitload of circumstances we have no control over>.

Regardless. We assumed responsibility because that is what the honorable thing to do is and you just do the best you can moving forward.

But today? Today the excuse part of our brains seem to be dipping into a different segment of ‘mitigating circumstances’ – addiction, childhood, physical urges that cannot be controlled and crap like that. Our excuses get tinged with an aspect of ‘things we just cannot control’ versus ‘things out of my control.’

This is bad. Really bad.

So bad it permits me to circle back to both of my opening quotes. If you say these excuses enough, it becomes reality — whether it is reality or not. If it becomes reality to you, then it makes it extremely difficult for someone on the outside to point out that it is not reality. And finally … this means you really do not think or feel anything because you have ‘excused yourself’ into a place in which you have no responsibility for not only what you did, but how you may truly feel and think about it.

In this scenario you have purposefully placed yourself outside of not only what happened but, uhm, you.

Yeah. The ‘you’ who did whatever is not the real ‘you’ who would have wanted to do something else if permitted. That’s kind of screwed up.

The mind then warps Aristotle’s thoughts into a universe in which there are no real rational choices. In this universe almost anything can be excused as a ‘non rational choice’ because, well, it is driven by some subconscious irrational ‘thing’ inside you.

Maybe worse?

This also puts people in a really dangerous spot. Dangerous in that you can also attribute ‘rational thought’ to only the good things and not the bad things.

Look.

We all make excuses. It is unfortunate attribute of humanness. In addition. We all live in an ‘excuse enabled world”. One in which so much shit is truly out of our control that there is a readymade excuse within reach at any time – and many of these excuses are truly viable ones.

But that said we all need to stay off the slippery excuse slope and purposefully, rationally, accept responsibility if not all the time — 99% of the time. And we need to hold people accountable for their actions and not accept excuses.

Yeah.

That last part, other people, can be tough in today’s world because that demands you discern between a real rational excuse <real addiction, real psychological challenges, etc.> and a made up excuse.

Even with that said. I do believe we need a good strong injection of personal responsibility into how we all live our lives these days. The past “did something wrong or not right” – “assume responsibility” – apologize <unequivocally> – “promise to do better/not do again” formula doesn’t really seem to be used as often today. And it should.

We use too many excuses — even the valid ones.

In the end.

Why does it matter? If we completely abandon this formula we may not only start believing our excuses, the real and non-real, but worse: and if one can neither feel nor think, where’s one?”

One ends up making so many excuses you lose touch with life. You simply become a balloon being blown here & there by Life accepting that is just the way it is. Well. That sounds horrible to me and it should to you. Stop making excuses and seize Life by the throat <Beethoven>. Ponder.

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“I’ve never enjoyed being fully present, a muted reality has been the landscape I’ve preferred and mainly inhabited forever. Sure, feeling is good, but not too much.”
Mark Lanegan

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“Numbness keeps us from becoming.”

Glennon Doyle Melton

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While ‘increasingly short attention spans’ is a bullshit narrative it is not bullshit to say it is becoming more difficult to figure out what to pay attention to. While the internet has offered the joys of any and all knowledge at your fingertips, it has also offered the despair of being bludgeoned with a steady hailstorm of any and all knowledge (real knowledge, false knowledge, made up knowledge). This bludgeoning has either numbed us or forced us to hide our attention in smaller spaces where we only see the things we want to see.  So. Cognitively we are overloaded (and I only believe it is increasing). McLuhan outlined the issue maybe the best – ‘we ratio.’  We always ratio our attention and technology has simply re-ratioed things for us. In the process of ratioing us we are getting squeezed and, well, being suffocated.  In fact, I believe every one of us runs into a very complex Big Squeeze only amplified by technology. Ok. Let me be a bit more specific. Technology is an equal opportunity distributor of any and all content – true, untrue, useful, useless, and everything in-between. As we get squeezed by all of this we become, well, numb. This isn’t an excuse for people to be derelict in their duty to sift through the garbage to find the non garbage. It is simply a point. People are pattern seeking and within all this stuff it becomes next to impossible to discern real patterns – it is easy to become numb. This gets even trickier because AI systems are designed to recognise patterns, but, contrary to human beings, they do not understand the meaning of these patterns. So we get presented with patterns that, well, don’t exactly align with the meaning, or meaning in general, with what we understand as humans. Faced with enough of that we become numb.

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“Feeling must have rendered her numb.”

Mary Lawson

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‘.. striking a balance between humans and machines … on one side biased and arbitrary human organizations and on the other, soulless technocracy based on unfeeling machines. There is a path.”

Mike Walsh

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I would suggest we do not talk enough about overstimulation, how we numb ourselves to certain things (as a personal defense mechanism and not under some lazy reason) and the fact that the sheer amount of information we are bombarded with forces us to ‘self-ratio’ what we take in and what we assess and how we do both.

Which leads me to how we start parsing out segments & aspects of what could be construed as part of the ‘overstimulation totality.” Here is the deal. Overstimulation, while we want to blame technology, is the combination of the medium, words, pictures, movement, symbols, associations, tone of voice, etc. received in totality. Individual elements, while interesting to debate, have no real meaning on their own. It is the totality in which we begin to re-ratio our attention, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and thoughts. This is compounded by the fact technology is so pervasive it is impossible to turn off – either directly (our own use/input stimuli) or indirectly (we are interacting with people who have extended their senses to link with technology). Reality gets distorted in both the incoming stimulation and the outgoing beliefs (conclusions). This is important because many worthy ideas have been sacrificed at the altar of overstimulation. This makes me a bit uncomfortable to write, but maybe numb is a natural state for many people within the current context.

• In 1964 Marshal McLuhan (Understanding media: Extensions of Man) suggested the idea of numbness associated with the advent of a pervasive technology/media. The idea that as media propagated and became an extension of people it would impact our ‘ratio of things.’ In other words, we would have to choose to reorder what we thought about, how we thought about things and what we would do. Ultimately, should technology infringe too far as part of ‘extension’ we would purposefully numb ourselves simply as part of survival (cognitively, attention, default, etc.).

• In 1970 Alvin Toffler suggested the advent of technology and the rapid changes it would inject into our lives would inevitably create a sense of overstimulation. In other words, so much would be occurring in a finite amount of time we would cognitively go into overload.

What hath technology wrought? Numbness. I am not suggesting it is the sole culprit, but it has amplified less visible issues to visible, small issues to big issues, big issues to existential issues, and our brains have a cognitive issue with all of that. Here is what I believe (and have some research proof):

• The world is not any less, or more, linear (causal relationships exist).
• The world is not moving faster (a minute is still a minute)
• Attention spans have not decreased.
• People have not become stupider.
• Curiosity has not diminished.
• Purposeful ignorance has not increased.

What I will say is that the consequences of numbness veer widely between an inability to say “yes or no” to a steadfast “yes or no.” On one end we retreat and on the other end we become dogmatic. That is the polarization of numbness. Yeah. Even numbness has consequences. Ponder.

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“We continuously make promises and create agreements with ourselves and others. Some of these agreements are mutually beneficial. However, when you realize that things you agreed to in the past are no longer helpful, possible, or relevant, renegotiate. Be invested enough in your situations or relationships for renegotiation to take place.”
Susan C. Young

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“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
Shirley Jackson

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I have written a number of pieces on fantasy realities and the alternative universe thinking strewn throughout today’s society. Today is more about each of us, individually, and how I believe all of us are assessing our grip on reality. This isn’t about creating a fantasy thinking space, but rather assessing what we believed was reality and some of its underpinnings. Yes. Today let’s all agree on reality.

In fantasy thinking reality is an inconvenience, but in a world in which you truly see, and understand reality as it exists, you begin to noodle the inconveniences a bit more. In other words, we all begin renegotiating reality. What I mean by that is as we look around us, we note some specific aspects of reality and begin negotiating with them in our minds even with some that could be considered traditionally sacrosanct. I tend to believe we do this all the time, but the pandemic drove the thinking a bit deeper in breadth and depth. What may make this unique is that, generally speaking, everyone is doing this at the same time individually making decisions in their own minds with their own formula Life remix .. and because of that changing some of their attitudes. This doesn’t mean that most people are flipping 180 degrees on specific aspects of reality, but what it does mean is that many many people are shifting their views maybe 2 to 5 degrees. They begin seeing reality from a slightly different point of view. And not everybody is stepping to the same side or to the same degree. I say that because I know that a lot of people want to sell books and futurists want to design a future based on what they see, but not to be ironic society all the people are actually in the middle of the renegotiation process. All the books and all the futurist experts are simply guessing. They’re guessing not only how individuals are renegotiating, but they’re guessing that there will be enough renegotiations coalescing into the view that they are projecting. Once again that is a guess.

Which leads me to the renegotiation.

Questions and questioning. The depth and breadth of the questioning is mind-numbing. Does how I work make sense? Does how I live my life make sense? Do some of the decisions I have made in the past makes sense, i.e., did society truly offer paths that were in my best interest? In fact, what is in my best interest? Whom can I believe let alone trust? It doesn’t help that with 24/7 access technology it’s no longer just our eyes and ears, it’s the rise of misinformation and disinformation and lies and selective facts often leaving us feeling distant or detached from not only reality, but from ourselves mentally and physically.  Each person has both, simultaneously, a reduced and expanded sense of reality. I would suggest we are revolting. Maybe not physically, but socially and culturally. The pandemic certainly gave us significant opportunities to be able to look pretty closely at our lives, how we interact with business and society, and rethink all aspects of our lives from our jobs, lifestyles, family, priorities, to how we actually would like the world around us to function. The pandemic simplistically bared all the pain points that maybe we had just ignored or were just niggling underneath the surface of life. I would suggest that all of this makes almost every single person push back in some form or fashion against the existing balances of power and rethinking the cornerstones of society and how it works. Basically, we are questioning everything and, hence, renegotiating reality here and there. The problem, at least for those in power (institutions, businesses, politicians) is that each of us are questioning in our own way, about our own aspects that bother us, and are individually arriving at answers. This is an extremely untidy thing happening across communities and societies in general. This doesn’t mean that at some point we won’t coalesce into some fairly agreeable version of how society, business and life should work, but for awhile its going to be a jumble of jagged edges. But, to be clear, institutions, businesses, the system in general, and the power structure will be resistant to losing any control and any power and will relentlessly attempt to impose its will on the people.

Which leads me, specifically, to business and capitalism.

The idea that a worker should devote their life to some institution and powering profits of a business, rewarding the executives and investors, is increasingly unpalatable to most workers. This has a cascading effect. What I mean by that is, if you start questioning climbing the corporate ladder, then you begin questioning the value of the things that in the past have been deemed important to climbing that ladder. That includes college. And if that begins happening, then the cascading questioning falls all the way down to looking at the entire system and the things that underpin the economy, work, and capitalism. We start questioning the economic system, where we belong in that system, and how that system rewards or penalizes us. Certainly, research is showing that while people may not have a positive view of capitalism, they aren’t interested in completely ditching capitalism, just questioning it and whether it does more harm than good in the world. This also has repercussions. For example, different political ideologies articulate how that comes to life in different ways Conservatives suggest that Progressives are seeking solutions in Marxism, socialism, and Communism. That’s not necessarily true. They’re just seeking solutions to what they deem as an unacceptable version of capitalism, but not seek to create a new ideology. Liberals suggest that conservatives are seeking solutions in authoritarianism to hammer down what they view as successful in the past (hence: conserving). Its kind of a hyper conservative culture version of a system of governing in society. This is actually happening. I imagine my larger point is that as we, individuals, cast about with our criticism of what exists, HOW we criticize is used as a tool to divide us. I think we need to be careful in discerning between questioning and criticizing. I say that because across the scope of liberals, conservatives, men, women, all races, we’re not only seeing questioning of the facets of life which were once considered sacrosanct, in many cases we’re actually seeing repudiation of facets of life once considered sacrosanct. We are, well, renegotiating reality.

Which leads me to say each person is plucking out aspects of the existing reality and challenging them.

This isn’t fantasy thinking and it only creates the appearances of ‘alternative universe thinking’, but, its reality. This renegotiation process COULD affect reality and society in a whole cloth way, or it could simply be renegotiation of aspects within a larger framework of a social contract. But none of this is fantasy, none of this is alternative universe stuff, all of it is true renegotiation. It may be confusing when viewed from a meta standpoint because it is all happening at a mesa standpoint – one person at a time. Businesses hate that because they want some standardization. Institutions hate that because they want some standardization. Governments hate that because they want some standardization. And, if we are honest, communities hate that because they want some standardization. Renegotiation is a flow state and I am fairly sure no one knows where society will flow to. It’s going to be weird and fairly uncomfortable for awhile with no clear answers. But, well, that is reality. Ponder.