I think there are also certain psychological biases built in here that cloud our imagination about just how truly beautiful of a world we could build.
For most of us, we have grown up in a fairly stagnant world for our entire lives. As someone who grew up in the United States here are some examples from my own childhood - the United States was 220-something years old when I was a child (by product is forgetting the United States, the worlds most powerful nation, was once AN IDEA), for the entirety of my life schools were not segregated and women and any other American citizen had the right to vote (again, at one point NONE of those things would have true).
The point is, we tend to lose sight sight of just how much can change in any given lifetime and assume that the world is always fated to remain as it has always been (again, fallacy of stability and sameness. The world is always changing).
The first step to creating a new world is dreaming it.
It's hard to dream a new world into being though with a dysregulated nervous system and self-imposed ADHD due to social media consumption.
I am having to actively put in layers of blockers to keep myself focused on the internet - website blocking, app blocking, news feed eradicating google chrome extensions for social media sites I need to have access to but cannot afford to become lost in. And when I look around at other people my age (I'm 26), I seem to be one of the "lucky" ones who has been able to retrain my brain to focus long enough to do meaningful thinking and work.
You should check out the work of Erick Godsey in Austin Texas. He has devoted his life to trying to figure out how to help people put their fractured psyche's back together and become 'true adults,' or people who are actually capable of helping to birth a new world.
Thats it. Rant over. Fucking phenomenal post. Huge fan of what you're covering. It is one of the most pressing blatantly unaddressed issues of our time.
Haha, love the passion! Thanks Joel for taking the time to read, engage and also the compliment. Always great to see someone is appreciating it. I’ll check out Eric Godsey! 🙂
Great post! I was wondering if you've come across Post Growth, by Tim Jackson. If you haven't, I really recommend the read.
The more I think about these issues, the more convinced I am that cooperative ownership of capital is absolutely necessary. How capital is deployed impacts every aspect of our lives, so we should all be part of the decision making process. It's where my train of thought led me in a post I wrote criticizing the UBI (I know, I never thought that'd happen either).
Thanks! I’ll add that one to my reading list, it sounds right up my alley. :)
Totally agree with your point about cooperative ownership of capital. I also read your post critiquing UBI. While I understand the underlying fear that the wealthy might find ways to render the rest of us irrelevant, I still think UBI has the potential to be empowering. Like with most systemic tools, it really depends on who designs it, why, and what safeguards are in place.
That said, I don’t see UBI as THE solution for a post-work world, just one of the simpler starting points. There are so many other models worth exploring. Web3, for instance, has opened up a whole range of possibilities around co-ownership. I also came across a great piece on post-work econocmics by David Shapiro, maybe worth checking out!
I think there are also certain psychological biases built in here that cloud our imagination about just how truly beautiful of a world we could build.
For most of us, we have grown up in a fairly stagnant world for our entire lives. As someone who grew up in the United States here are some examples from my own childhood - the United States was 220-something years old when I was a child (by product is forgetting the United States, the worlds most powerful nation, was once AN IDEA), for the entirety of my life schools were not segregated and women and any other American citizen had the right to vote (again, at one point NONE of those things would have true).
The point is, we tend to lose sight sight of just how much can change in any given lifetime and assume that the world is always fated to remain as it has always been (again, fallacy of stability and sameness. The world is always changing).
The first step to creating a new world is dreaming it.
It's hard to dream a new world into being though with a dysregulated nervous system and self-imposed ADHD due to social media consumption.
I am having to actively put in layers of blockers to keep myself focused on the internet - website blocking, app blocking, news feed eradicating google chrome extensions for social media sites I need to have access to but cannot afford to become lost in. And when I look around at other people my age (I'm 26), I seem to be one of the "lucky" ones who has been able to retrain my brain to focus long enough to do meaningful thinking and work.
You should check out the work of Erick Godsey in Austin Texas. He has devoted his life to trying to figure out how to help people put their fractured psyche's back together and become 'true adults,' or people who are actually capable of helping to birth a new world.
Thats it. Rant over. Fucking phenomenal post. Huge fan of what you're covering. It is one of the most pressing blatantly unaddressed issues of our time.
Haha, love the passion! Thanks Joel for taking the time to read, engage and also the compliment. Always great to see someone is appreciating it. I’ll check out Eric Godsey! 🙂
Great post! I was wondering if you've come across Post Growth, by Tim Jackson. If you haven't, I really recommend the read.
The more I think about these issues, the more convinced I am that cooperative ownership of capital is absolutely necessary. How capital is deployed impacts every aspect of our lives, so we should all be part of the decision making process. It's where my train of thought led me in a post I wrote criticizing the UBI (I know, I never thought that'd happen either).
https://open.substack.com/pub/writerbytechnicality/p/eliminating-the-working-class?r=3anz55&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Thanks! I’ll add that one to my reading list, it sounds right up my alley. :)
Totally agree with your point about cooperative ownership of capital. I also read your post critiquing UBI. While I understand the underlying fear that the wealthy might find ways to render the rest of us irrelevant, I still think UBI has the potential to be empowering. Like with most systemic tools, it really depends on who designs it, why, and what safeguards are in place.
That said, I don’t see UBI as THE solution for a post-work world, just one of the simpler starting points. There are so many other models worth exploring. Web3, for instance, has opened up a whole range of possibilities around co-ownership. I also came across a great piece on post-work econocmics by David Shapiro, maybe worth checking out!
https://substack.com/@daveshap/p-163321276
Added to my reading list!