In 2020 I was staying in our village of Ban Tha Rae in order to quarantine myself and my small family from the worst of the pandemic in Bangkok. As I was driving from my home into the city one morning, a trip of around 85 kilometers, I tuned in to a Facebook Live recording featuring my friend Dr. David Martin from M.CAM in Virginia. David is too dapper for words and devilishly astute. A performer. But under the dazzling surface, there is an intelligence that should never be taken lightly.
At that time I shared many of David’s legitimate concerns regarding the various experimental socio-economic agendas being rolled out around the world in the wake of the pandemic - though not all. David is always very focused on the US situation of course which, as a citizen and resident, is as it should be. We are both global in our perceptions and perspectives, however, and the totalitarian undertones of some of the government policies that were being rolled out, to which we had both been alluding in our different ways, seemed to be growing an undeniable momentum.
Although David’s preferred style can lean towards the instructional, on this occasion I was struck more by the intensity of inquiry he was using into the conditions we had countenanced in dealing with the pandemic. If we continue to allow the politics of fear, the repetition of dogma, and the erosion of liberty to drive isolation and compliance, he argued, we will submit to an authoritarian trait in our society, and be deprived of the individual sovereignty we take for granted. If we permit beliefs and opinions to substitute for evidence we run the risk of being controlled by unelected elites and penalized each time we state the truth.
As each question underscored uncertainties being marketed as reality, and as validated facts tumbled over each other in their struggle to illustrate untold truths, I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. This, I am sure, was intended. The case for a pause, in order to reflect on the deeper news, pushed all of my alarm buttons, in addition to letting loose personal convictions going back years. There is something going on in our society that is deeply disturbing and goes far beyond conspiracy.
Silent undercurrents point to a disorienting psychology of addiction and self-destruction (at once calculated yet also involuntary) which is at the heart of the human condition. It seems to me we are complicit actors in a tragedy whose end-game could well be extinction - unresolved tensions lurching between catastrophe and salvation. Unless we wake up and agree to recast the ending of the human story.
Whether you agree with my assertions, or simply regard them as uncritical detours, the main points are sufficiently valid to be given due consideration. Likewise, whether you agree with his contentions or not, one feature always stands out in David’s recital: a compelling finale.
So, as the broadcast was nearing its close, and I was about to switch to some music as a much-needed counterpoint, I waited. I am glad that I did. David made a fairly obvious, yet pertinent point. Irrespective of the path we choose after the dust settles and life returns to a degree of normalcy, we will always refer to 2020 as a pivotal point in our development. Rather like 9/11, this event and date will be imprinted on human consciousness for generations to come. His closing statement was particularly poignant: the future we will have is the future we will make. Let’s make it together.
Issued with such a challenge what would you choose to take with you into the future? What would you leave behind altogether? What would you target for reform? What systems would you identify for reinvention? And what new design criteria would you advocate using? In other words, if it was up to you, how would you go about redesigning the human presence on Earth?
Part of the problem in answering questions like these is that the data seem to contradict any suggestion we are living in bad times. Philanthropist Bill Gates, philosopher Stephen Pinker, and Dr. Hans Rosling who co-founded Medecins sans Frontiers, all endorse the notion that life is better today than it was even a decade ago, and far better than we think it is. We are better educated and more literate, they claim. We are also wealthier, healthier, happier, live longer, and enjoy greater freedoms. But is that really so? Yes and no.
Apart from the fact that statistics can always be found to accommodate almost any proposal, however outrageous, three factors concern me when we are exposed to such overly-positive news. First, almost every individual claiming we are better off today was either born or lives in more affluent nations where, by and large, all their needs are met. Second, comparative data being used are carefully chosen snapshots accrued on the basis of human progress as a linear function. Third, they do not take into account the complexity of evolutionary dynamics and alternative socio-economic and psychological assumptions about human advancement. More critically, none of these factors get to the core issue — the survival of homo sapiens by design.
We might be more literate, and better educated, but has it led to increased levels of empathy, tolerance, new ways of appreciating and understanding the world, an ability to step into new epistemologies or to reinvent our world from alternative ontologies? In an age when our problems are now so complicated that they can only be resolved by applying far higher levels of cognitive processing, I would suggest our educational and political systems, however advanced, are still not up to the task.
We might be wealthier too, but if that is the case why are around 22 percent of young people aged 18 and under in the world’s wealthiest nation considered to be living in relative poverty? How can just a few white men own as much as the poorest 3.8 billion?
And if we are happier and have more hope than in the past, why is it that so many people are lonely, isolated, anxious, and depressed? Why is domestic violence increasing? Suicide rates climbing? Why has narcissism become the most reported psychological condition presenting to psychologists? And why do so many young people resort to crime and substance abuse?
There is a canker eating away at the soul of society and nobody wants to venture there. This is possibly due to a combination of factors: the absence of a collective purpose within which personal meaning is shaped; a lack of intrinsic motivation; the erosion of trust in what were previously our most esteemed institutions and professions; increased levels of hatred and blame for any perceived ills; and the feeling of being trapped in an unending cycle of desire and consumption, from which there is no escape. There are undoubtedly more than these.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to evolve at an astounding pace. What will the world look and feel like, and how will it change, when we finally enter an age where human intelligence has been surpassed in all fields?
Is the silent, unseen truth, too frightening to confront? If not why we are trying to ignore it and hope that it goes away? It is far too big and too complicated for any single government, trade bloc, or corporation to tackle. It is not an issue the World Economic Forum or its ilk will ponder. When it is mentioned the wealthy turn their eyes away; advertising executives and economists express their surprise and contempt for any suggestion we should temper growth. Why this would only take us back to the dark ages, they protest.
Yet this is not an existential crisis. Simply put… If the economy to which we are wedded needs people to consume things they do not need, or even want, and to do more of that each year than the year before, simply in order to keep the whole structure from collapsing, do we not need a different, more benign, kind of economy?
The toxicity of the current system, though immensely damaging, is not going to usher in the end of the human race tomorrow. It might eventually lead to a society in which a few wealthy individuals lord it over the rest of humanity of course. But right now it is but a slight vibration arising from neoliberal theories of production within the context of economic growth that has made the entire system unhealthy. Almost all of the strategies designed to accelerate growth while lowering the costs of production — including planned obsolescence, off-shoring, energy from fossil fuels, global supply chains, just-in-time inventories, the pervasive use of synthetic materials like plastics, and industrial farming practices, for example — have joined with rapid urbanization and over-population to create a highly fragile and vulnerable global ecosystem.
So here is the crunch. Almost every civilizational challenge we see in the world today — ranging from our obsession with innovation and novelty, the need to be employed in order to earn a living, homelessness, the subsequent stress on our most-life-critical systems, the use of politics as an agent of business, and corporate corruption, to the culture of intolerance that so easily results in wars and conflicts, and the maladaptive coping practices we adopt to deal with our own individual psychoses, can be related back to a cycle of desire and consumption driven by a mixture of avarice and over-production.
Sooner or later we will need to address this dual problem. If the developed nations can rein in their desire to manufacture more and more stuff they do not really need, thus slowing the rate of consumption, in addition to recycling and using closed system manufacturing, for example, the tangible benefits will not be hard to sell. We have seen a glimpse of what these might look like in the so-called great pause occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic. Lower and slower rates of production, finding ways to curb fertility, curbing the desire for goods and services that are unnecessary, will result in our lives being filled with an abundance of activities other than work. Nature can be given time to heal. Out of the hubris of our age, a new society will take shape.
How wonderful to imagine that 2020 was the point at which we drew a line in the sand and pledged a new beginning. How amazing for our children to be able to stand in 2050 and look back at 2020, imprinted as it will be on their consciousness, pointing to the generative and empathic society we chose to create back then and the many benefits that have flowed since…
Fewer conflicts and wars. The dismantling of nuclear weapons. The elimination of poverty. A world of greater equality and justice, where anyone can choose the extent to which they work and play without penalty. A world in which the dominant desire is to help those less fortunate, rather than to horde wealth. A slower-paced world in which successive generations can be assured of happiness without the fear it might all collapse.