Most people recognise that the global financial markets have become too complex for us to control, which is why bear markets sneak up on us so unexpectedly. Now, thanks to social media, public conversation has become a similarly complex system that has escaped our control. The result of this exponentially more connected conversation is that thoughts and ideas can no longer be controlled by the people in power. This is one of the reasons why Brexit and Trump came as such a surprise. They are both the result of an unexpected bear market of political ideas.
Author: jasonxenopoulos
IN HUMAN CONDITION
Are we like sardines packed into a can?
More like bullets in someone else’s gun.
They say orange is the new black…
but I say stress is the new fun.
Personal truth has become a fiction,
in this plagiarised day and age,
where our souls are pressed into tablets
and swallowed three times a day.
But we’re the makers of this horror film.
This nightmare is of our design.
We craft it into being
with the spending of every dime.
Now we’re bought and sold like pork bellies.
We’re pixels on a stock market screen.
But there’s no point complaining…
Beneath the clamor of the media
no one can hear you scream.
So grab another branded sedative
from the blond with the gleaming smile.
Go ahead – swallow it hook, line, and bullshit,
it’s sure to numb you for a while.
A Perpetual Journey Towards Balance
Life is a perpetual journey towards a state of balance. Most of us never get there (and if we do, it is only momentary) but our actions and reactions are nevertheless motivated by this primal and often unconscious desire to achieve harmony.
The things we do in order to achieve this elusive state often elicit strange and unexpected reactions from the world around us, tipping us further into chaos. One of the reasons for this is that our existential quest for balance is actually driven by a single-minded pursuit of pleasure… a pursuit that almost invariably reaches its bounds and triggers some form of pain instead.
Just think of the sun. We bend towards it. We revel in its glow. We do this because it gives us pleasure… but we do it until it burns our skin and only when some of us die from it do we actually acknowledge that it is wrong. But painful and stupid as it may seem, this primal drive for pleasure provides us with a thruster button in our quest for balance.
The system is out of control
We are lost. We have become unmoored, decoupled from our anchor, strangers to our true north. We wake each morning driven by the same unresolved obsessions that carried us over the threshold of the previous day. We strive to complete a list of ever-growing tasks, no longer sure of why we are striving to complete them at all. The rhythm of our lives begins to resemble the syncopated clatter of a production line rather than the sweet refrain of a melody.
I write this now knowing that it is little more than a desperate plea from the other side, a yelp at the passing flicker of the moon, a transitory glimpse of the celestial map that has been drowned out by the light and smog of the city, of modernity. And yet I write it still, drawn to the elusive memory of what could be.
We pass our days as cogs in a machine, as neurons in a network, as pawns in a game played by forces that have outgrown us. We invented money, and the markets, and the social system that now controls us. They were all part of a plan designed to serve the rich and powerful… but now even the richest among us are forced to bend to its will. People fear the rise of intelligent machines but the algorithms we created already control us.
We have been humbled by religion, controlled by capitalism, enslaved by consumerism… but the promise of freedom still exists within each and every one of us. You simply have to break the rhythm, jumble the pattern, turn off all the lights and find your path in the stars again. It won’t be easy – the sounds of modernity are loud and perplexing – but don’t be distracted by the expectations and false obligations of a society engineered to manipulate you. The dizzying sense of imbalance that you feel is not the result of some personal failure… but the symptom of a system that no longer serves you, an algorithm that has spiraled way out of control. Break free if you can. For your own sake, and for mine. Break free so that eventually the rest of us can break free as well.
GOD IS AN IDEA
Reality as we know it emerged from a single idea. The Big Bang wasn’t a giant explosion of knowledge; it was just the single droplet of an idea. But one idea contains every idea and so eternity was born.
At some point these ideas, through a familiar leap of consciousness, took shape and became manifest, and the physical world was born. Each atom, each wave, every element known and not yet known, is simply the particle of an idea.
As living beings we are capable of transmitting these ideas, helping them to mix and form. That is our primary purpose as human beings – to articulate these ideas and to amplify them – to give them the agency with which to further sculpt the reality they have spawned. That is why art is humanity’s most important endeavour.
Drugs are Philosophies
Drugs are philosophies.
Psychoactive substances contain a concentrated code-base capable of re-programming the mind. They serve up the blueprint to a particular worldview, encouraging the user to see reality from a particular perspective. They are like chemical philosophies or ideologies; software for the consciousness.
Like philosophies, some drugs are good, while others are bad. There are those that open your mind to new possibilities and stretch you to the limits of your potential, while others seek to dominate you and force you into their dogmatic way of thinking.
Choose your philosophies carefully for they define you.
Fight Back – The War to Control Your Mind
Recently, while watching Cartoon Network with my kids, I came upon an unexpected epiphany. Despite its childish guise, the cartoon we were watching was heavily charged with ideology. Hidden beneath its bubblegum wrapping was a worldview. I don’t remember exactly what that worldview was, or even whether I objected to it, but what remains indelibly forged into my brain is the realization that everything, even a simple cartoon, is designed to influence our consciousness.
Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer before him, believed that we are driven by a “will to power”, that as human beings we are bent on expanding our hegemony, our circle of influence. But on that night I realized that the many bloody wars our world has endured – the invasions and annexations, the air strikes and terror attacks – are just one small part of this “will to power”. They are neither cause nor cure; they are nothing but symptoms of a higher order battle – the battle to control our minds. It is a war of ideas, of values, of world-views, a sometimes hot and sometimes cold war that never abates. I call it the Hegemony of the Consciousness.
Seated in front of the TV on that fateful night, I discovered that we are ground zero of an ideological offensive. But I also realized that we are not simply casualties in this war – we are its foot soldiers. You and I, the citizens, the consumers, the general public, we are the boots on the ground, fighting in the trenches, and always directly in the line of fire. Every purchase we make represents a set of values and beliefs. When we spend money on something, we are helping to entrench a particular agenda… and our disposable income is the only real weapon we have to defend ourselves. With it we can define which ideas live and which ideas die. But we have to be discerning, we have to look beyond the coercive tactics employed by the cultural superpowers and pledge our support to a long term agenda, rather than simply satisfying our immediate desires.
We have always been complicit in this centuries-old battle but today our role in shaping its outcome is exponentially greater than before. Social media has armed each one of us with an arsenal of weapons that we regularly use to amplify one worldview or another. Every piece of content we share, every like, every re-tweet or comment, is a bullet fired into the fray. You can pretend to be an innocent civilian but your freedom to choose makes you a combatant in this war.
Jean-Paul Sartre said, “man is condemned to be free” but increasingly sophisticated forms of corporate and cultural coercion are undermining that freedom daily. It’s time to open our eyes, to acknowledge the forces of indoctrination that are being insidiously woven into the fabric of our pop culture. Don’t be an unwitting pawn in this battle to control our consciousness. The planet is on a dangerous trajectory. It’s time to set a new agenda, to wrestle back control from the powers that be. It’s time to grab your cursor, like the bayonet it is, and stick it somewhere meaningful.
The Evolution of Storytelling
Story is the organising principle of reality. The world around us is made of atoms – protons, neutrons and electrons – but it is with story that we give them their shape and their meaning. Story is the primary tool of self-awareness and as such the basis of our humanity. From the creation myths that form the foundation of every civilisation to the rich mythologies that define our culture, story sits at the heart of what it means to be human.
ARISTOTLE TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Two and half thousand years ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle added structure to what had previously been a purely intuitive and primal form of self-expression. In his short treatise entitled Aristotle’s Poetics he outlined the principles upon which dramatic storytelling is based. Today, thousands of years later novelists, playwrights, screenwriters and even game designers still turn to Aristotle for the fundamentals of narrative structure. While many of these fundamentals have remained essentially the same, the tools with which we tell our stories have obviously changed.
The open air Theatrons (as they were referred to in ancient Greece) have been replaced by air-conditioned multiplexes, 3D television and IMAX. But these linear visual experiences aren’t really that different from the ancient Theatre of Delphi. Despite cinema’s ability to compress space and time even the most sophisticated viewing experience closely resembles the dramas of ancient Greece. But that doesn’t mean that storytelling will remain the same forever. In fact we have now reached a critical inflection point in the evolution of storytelling. Disruptive technologies like the Internet, Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence (technologies that we have only been experimenting with for the past 20 years) will change the shape of narrative forever.
Think about this trajectory for a moment: After waiting more than 2000 years for live theatre to evolve into cinema, computers came along and changed the canvas completely. Back in the eighties, personal computers introduced a new level of interactivity to storytelling (and non-linear narratives became possible); then in the nineties the Internet added the potential of global connectivity to any canvas (and massive, multiplayer participation was born); over the past ten years the ubiquity of smartphones has added a level of mobility to storytelling (making location-based stories a reality).
Add to this interactive, non-linear, participatory, location-based storytelling the total sensory immersion that comes with virtual reality technologies like the Oculus Rift, as well as the literally infinite plot-generating potential of an AI story engine, and you start to wonder where fiction ends and reality begins.
Helen Papagiannis, a Virtual Reality expert, claims that “Our Word is a hologram,” and then she challenges us with a provocative question: “Are our simulates realities are any less real,” she asks, “than the universe we live in?”
If story is indeed the organising principle of reality then it is not just storytelling that is about to be overhauled by technology but the very nature of reality itself.
TECHNOLOGY IS AN EXTENSION OF US
Terence McKenna describes technology as “the real skin of our species.” “Humanity,” he says, “is an extruder of technological material.” If technology is indeed the extension of our minds then story is the extension of our thoughts because Storytelling and Technology are inseparable. Laurie Anderson once described technology as, “the campfire around which we tell our stories”. Without technology stories cannot be told; and without story technology has no meaning. But not only are they inseparable from one another, they are inseparable from us because Storytelling and Technology are the most critical building blocks of humanity.
Joseph Campbell, the anthropologist and mythologist famous for writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces says, “If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor.” People love metaphors because we are metaphor. Humankind is made of metaphor. We are preoccupied with the physical reality that we experience through our senses – our so-called objective reality – but this objective reality is just a metaphor for the intangible realm of consciousness from which all life emerges. According to the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience.” The purpose of storytelling is to reach beneath the surface of that physical experience so that we may shine a light on the more unknowable aspects of our humanity. The greatest stories are not those that recount the facts of history but those that reveal the mysteries of being human, that illuminate the inexplicable contours of love, and hate, and triumph and jealousy, the more obscure dimensions of our being. As Arsitotle says, “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”
IS THE UNIVERSE EXPANDING?
The universe of the “knowable” is expanding. Technology has given us the ability to see further and deeper. Every day scientists discover new species and molecules and planets and every day the universe of the “unknowable” shrinks. But as the mysteries of human nature disappear so too do the infinite dimensions of our potentiality for in ordering and naming and defining everything we eliminate the fantastical possibilities of our imagination… and our imagination is our true home for it is not just the source of our creativity… but the source of all creation.
Regardless of what story you tell and what technology you use to tell it, the primary objective must be to look beneath the surface of observable fact and into the mysteries of human nature where the deepest and most profound truths about our existence reside. “The aim of art”, say Aristorle, “is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
And herein lies one the potential risks inherent in these new technologies. When we create alternate realities, when we create immersive virtual realities, we risk abstracting our experience of reality even further from its original state of pure consciousness. Storytelling has always had the ability to reach beyond the physical, into the Jungian shadow world of the human sub-conscious, to explain the unexplainable. As we move towards increasing levels of technological mediation we need to ensure that our storytelling still reaches into the core of what it means to be human rather than creating barriers that distance us and disconnect us from who and what we really are.
We spend so much time looking into the beyond, pushing the boundaries of technology, searching for life on other planets, when in fact it is not outward that we should look but inward because the truth of what it means to be human does not exist in outer space or in ever-more complex realms of technological advancement but on the inside, closer to that originating point of pure consciousness. As we hurtle headlong into the technological minefields of our future we must use Story to journey deeper into the heart of who we are because we are not just the makers of our stories, we are made by our stories; and in telling our stories we bring ourselves into being.
Whether you follow the principles of Aristotle’s Poetics or are eager to test the boundaries of Artificial Intelligence, whether you are a marketer or a politician or a preacher or a poet, remember that the stories you tell create the world around you.
The stories you tell create the world around you.
Artificial Intelligence
I attended a seminar at Cannes Lions last week where Tim Berners-Lee, (the inventor of the World Wide Web) painted an eerily believable scenario for the future of Artificial Intelligence.
Berners-Lee believes that society is safe from AIs for as long as robots are subservient to us. We need to write the rules that ensure that sentient machines work for us rather than allowing ourselves to become enslaved by them. The only real dangers emerge, he believes, when robots are given the same rights as human being… and he doesn’t foresee anyone willingly granting robots such rights.
Berners-Lee encourages us not to think of a world in which Artificial Intelligence necessarily takes the form of humanoid robots. Most AI today exists in the form of algorithms and intelligent software systems. We can all imagine a future in which Artificial Intelligence is used to assist in the business world. It is conceivable, for example, that we will utilise intelligent software systems to establish companies, buy shares into those companies, and essentially create wealth on our behalf.
But this is where the danger comes in. While Berners-Lee is confident that we will never purposefully grant robots the same rights as human beings, in the USA corporations already have the same rights as individuals and, by extension, society could “unwittingly” grant such rights to AIs.
The complex web of cause and effect outlined in this scenario is a great illustration of how we may end up outmanoeuvring ourselves. One has to wonder whether there isn’t already some latent sentient presence urging us in that direction. It certainly seems like there is some unseen hand shifting us towards this inevitability.
WHEN PATHS DIVERGE
Could technology convert the widening gap between rich and poor into an evolutionary divergence of our species?
Back in 2012, I attended a keynote presentation by Bill Clinton. In his speech he said that, “our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences.” This statement struck me as being both profound and profoundly disturbing. While it seemed, on the surface, like an inherently humanist position, it was also a deeply imperialistic one. It’s easy to ignore interesting differences, I thought, when yours is the dominant culture. Prompted by Clinton’s speech, I began questioning some of the contradictions inherent in my own beliefs.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a mystic, paleontologist, and evolutionary scientist who lived in the early twentieth century, believed that human beings are evolving towards a state of spiritual convergence. By the time I discovered Teilhard de Chardin’s writing, my own theories regarding human evolution were already quite developed. Without delving into too much detail, I believe that human beings are evolving towards a state of pure consciousness, a single indivisible essence that can, in many respects, be viewed as the incarnation of God. I was delighted to find that many of my theories were echoed by someone as knowledgeable as Teilhard de Chardin because over the years I have had my fair share of run-ins with academics.
In my twenties, emboldened by the hubris of youth, I went head-to-head with one of the world’s most revered paleoanthropologists. This internationally reputed scholar argued that human evolution had essentially come to an end. “We might lose our baby toe,” he said, offering a small concession. I was horrified. How could he be so myopic? Was it possible that a lifetime dedicated to one narrow angle of study had made him blind to the bigger picture… or was I mistaken? Had we in fact reached the end of our evolutionary journey?
Twenty years later I believe that I know the answer to both questions. The human species is undoubtedly hurtling towards a new incarnation… but our evolutionary progress is not being propelled by Darwinian forces of change but by our own technological mastery. As Edward O. Wilson said, “we have decommissioned natural selection and we must now look deep within ourselves and decide what it is we wish to become.” Viewed from a paleoanthropological perspective, human evolution may indeed have run its course, but from a techno-evolutionary point-of-view we are on the verge of transcending our biology and, as such, perhaps even our mortality.
Co-founder and Chancellor of Singularity University, Ray Kurzweil, believes that by 2045 Artificial Intelligence will have reached levels of sophistication that will force human beings to merge with machines, giving rise to a post-biological era. He refers to this transcendental moment in time as The Singularity. “It will get to a point,” says Kurzweil, “where change is so fast that we won’t be able to follow it unless we enhance our own intelligence.” David Dalrymple, MIT’s youngest-ever graduate student, explains Kurzweil’s theory in another way. “The Singularity,” he says, “is the point where the exponential rising curve of our technology suddenly becomes the exponential rising curve of our selves.”
While Kurzweil’s vision of the Singularity is extremely vivid and fairly specific, there are many other futurists positing their own versions of our imminent techno-enabled transcendence. While no one can be sure of exactly what this future will look like (life beyond the Singularity is inherently unknowable), there is general agreement that it will arise from the convergence between exponentially advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, genetics, robotics, virtual reality, biotech and nanotechnology. Jason Silva, an effusive techno-philosopher who is quite literally ecstatic about our enlightened future, points out that, “what currently fits in your pocket will eventually fit into a single blood cell and connect directly with your body.” This very concrete example of advances in the human/computer interface clearly illustrates that we are indeed on a trajectory towards human/machine convergence. But as those of us who believe in Teilhard de Chardin’s Cosmogenesis have realized, convergence and divergence are entwined in a complex dialectic.
While Spiritual Convergence is predicated on our “common humanity”, as Bill Clinton refers to it, it is a philosophy of inclusion and therefore equally dependent on diversity and the celebration of all those “interesting differences” that make up human culture. Unfortunately, in a world where our interesting differences often undermine our common humanity, the notion of a techno-mediated transcendence elicits inevitable questions about how inclusive this transcendence will actually be. Will our mastery of biology herald a new era of unification, or will it give rise to evolutionary divergence, creating a transcendent elite and a second, biologically inferior class of beings, no longer considered human?
Divergent Evolution is the term used to describe the accumulation of differences between groups, which can eventually lead to the formation of a new species. Divergent Evolution, or speciation as it is often called, is ubiquitous. In fact, the monotypic human species is unusually non-divergent when compared with other species. The bird kingdom, for example, is comprised of about 10 000 individual species, while insect species number in the millions. But the story of man can also be plotted according to a series of divergent paths beginning about 85 million years ago when primates first diverged from other mammals. About 70 million years later another divergence took place giving rise to the Hominid family, and a further divergence took place 10 million years after that, separating what would eventually become the first bipedal Hominin from gorillas and chimpanzees.
Imagine having been there when this separation took place, witnessing the very moment at which our forefathers had to choose between those two paths, diverging as they were, in that ancient wood. Of course the history of evolution clearly shows us that change occurs at a glacial pace and one would never have witnessed this epic divergence in a single moment. And yet, modern history also shows us that the speed of technological change is accelerating… so we may in fact come upon those divergent paths yet again… and this time we may be forced to bear witness to that epic split.
Bestselling author and TED alumni Juan Enriquez says that we are entering a period of “hypernatural evolution”. Enriquez claims that over the past 10 000 years human evolution has occurred up to 100 times faster than at any other time in our species history. As a result, he says, “we are transitioning from a hominid that is conscious of its environment into one that drastically shapes its own evolution. We have already started to evolve from Homo sapiens (a conscious hominid) into Homo evolutis: a Hominid that directly and deliberately controls the evolution of its own and other species.”
While I find this notion invigorating at a philosophical level, I cannot shake the overriding concern that power of this magnitude will unleash the greediest and most evil of our human tendencies. While technology may indeed be endowing us with the power of Gods, our moral maturity is barely out of diapers. Ray Kurzweil claims that human beings are fundamentally transcendent. “We didn’t stay in the caves,” he points out, “we haven’t stayed on the planet. Biology is just another membrane to be transcended.” Jason Silva agrees. “What it means to be human,” he says, “is to be Transhuman.” While I cannot argue with their logic, I find it difficult to share their unbridled optimism. Don’t get me wrong; I covet the notion of immortality as much as the next mortal, but I am skeptical about our species ability to wield this Godlike power with the benevolence of Gods. Last time I checked we were waving our most advanced discoveries above our heads like clubs… and techno-enabled evolution will make the Tomahawk Cruse Missile look like a donkey jawbone. It has become cliché to quote Lord Acton when he said, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but technology that gives us the ability to selectively engineer our own immortality must surely be viewed as the epitome of Absolute Power.
I grew up in a country where racial discrimination was hard-wired into society. Two decades of democracy have done little to erase those bitter memories, so it is not difficult for me to imagine a world in which our newfound liberties are once again yanked away by some greedy authority. Looking back, Apartheid was clearly a morally distorted institution, and yet at the time millions of reasonable people where caught-up in its spell. What prohibits another malevolent meme from invading our collective psyche? I am not Christian, but an uneasy sensation befalls me when I consider this passage from the bible, “the gate is small and the way is narrow and few be they that find it”. Will the ruling class invoke this passage, or some other religious pretext, to defend their right to engineer divergence despite the disenfranchised class of subhuman refugees who might result from it?
Thomas Piketty, a French economist widely considered to be the Karl Marx of our generation, believes that capitalism exacerbates wealth inequality, perpetuating a state in which the rich get richer while the poor become increasingly impoverished and disenfranchised. In his book, “Capital in the 21st Century”, Piketty draws on data from the past 200 years to support his hypothesis, clearly demonstrating that the rate of return on capital has consistently outstripped the rate of growth in the economy leading to an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich. Piketty’s book is groundbreaking because it is the first study of wealth inequality to be supported by extensive data. Until now, the discussion about inequality and income disparity has been largely political. Piketty has made it scientific, using sophisticated data analytics to reveal the true, potentially destabilizing nature of capitalism
Piketty’s investigation debunks a commonly held theory that the rapid growth in the mid-twentieth century proves capitalism’s tendency to benefit greater society. Piketty explains that, while inequality decreased between 1945 – 1973, this was not due to the underlying dynamics of capitalism and progress, as often argued, but as a contrast to the instability that preceded it during the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. During the volatile period from 1914 – 1945 there was massive destruction of private wealth and therefore a very low rate of return. Juxtaposing the artificially retarded growth experienced during this dark period against the rapid economic and demographic growth that followed has effectively masked capitalism’s underlying tendency to exacerbate wealth inequality.
While all economists agree that some level of inequality is vital to the proper functioning of capitalism, Piketty believes that excessive inequality isn’t only dangerous for the economy, but for democracy as well.
Piketty may be an economist, rather than a futurist, but extrapolating his findings into the century ahead paints a disturbing picture of a world moving towards levels of inequality likely to trigger severe social disruption. Overlay this dystopian socio-economic view of the future onto Kurzweil’s predictions of a technological singularity and you arrive at a picture of the future that looks terrifyingly like an H.G. Wells novel.
Regardless of how one feels about capitalism, there can be no doubt that it has become the engine of progress in most developed countries. But capitalism itself is just a cold economic system; it is actually consumerism, our fanatical drive to constantly acquire new stuff, that has essentially gamified progress, attaching material rewards to recognized achievements and thereby driving society towards ever-increasing levels of complexity. But our dysmorphic obsession with consumption is eating society from the inside out, driving us inexorably towards a cul-de-sac of depleted resources. When the planet can no longer service our insatiable appetite for consumption, those who can will discard it like a plastic wrapper from a candy bar. But the winner-takes-all game-mechanic driving consumerism is likely to limit access to this escape route, making it a luxury available only to those who can afford it.
The next stage of human evolution is upon us. Whether technology will enable biological transcendence within this lifetime or not is just a question of time. We cannot avoid what is baked-in to our DNA. As Jason Silva says, “we are the species that transforms and transcends. It’s what we are. It never stops.” But we are also the species that is conscious of its own evolution and we must use this unique gift to direct that evolution in such a way as to transcend our moral limitations not just our biological ones.
Achieving immortality is not simply a case of replacing our disposable physical form with a more durable one; it is about achieving a state-of-grace in which we can honestly say that we are able to live with ourselves for eternity. In order to achieve such a state-of-grace we must overcome greed and fear, we must embrace the notion that our common humanity is forged from the individual strands of our interesting differences, and we must accept that the psychedelic fabric of our spiritual unification will be woven from the multicolored threads of our diversity. But it is not enough for us to simply preach inclusiveness; we have to actively fight inequality by revising and re-engineering the polarizing game-mechanics that underlie modern capitalism and consumerism. We need to do this not simply to redress the inequity of modern society, but to defend ourselves from the looming bifurcation of our species.
If we do not act now, we may one day be forced to accept that we engineered an irreversible evolutionary divergence that left the poorest among us to fend for themselves on a dying planet; a planet whose ability to sustain life had been terminally depleted by an elite class who used technology to transcend its limitations. When that time comes, will we look back on these forsaken ancestors with a sense of triumphant superiority, or with the intense pang of regret that a mother feels when abandoning her child?
JASON XENOPOULOS 