But I don’t Know What to Do.
It is difficult not to lament the dismal state of political and civic leadership in the world. But should we be disappointed?
Those who have the courage of their convictions are, for the most part, emboldened by beliefs anchored to the shallow crust that is their worldview.
Those who dig deeper to find a more solid foundation, promised by the few who claim to have found it, end up quarrying through the same sediments their peers and predecessors plumbed; their excavations invariably expiring with them before bedrock is found.
Mine long enough and you may conclude that “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing” as did Socrates and many others.
“I want to change the world
But I don’t know what to do
So I leave it up to you….”
Skeptics are not known for inspiring the body politic. Campaigns need content. Voters want to know where you stand on important policies or, in skeptical terms, how devoted you are to their prejudices.
The body politic not only demands decisive leadership, it insists on those decisions being grounded in truth; their Truth. Explaining that you will make the best possible choice based on the information you then believe is true mixed in with gut feeling as a platform doesn’t inspire confidence in voters.
There was a time when the number of Truths in dispute in any given community was manageable. Today, with everywhere and everyone viewable on a mobile screen and more fully experienced just a jet flight away, there are too many ways of being with which to contend.
The number of data points available for analytic decision making has exploded beyond our capacity to process them. While we are comfortable allowing AI algorithms to successfully assess these data point to predictively diagnose cancer, will it ever come to pass that these algorithms select the leaders among us?
Unlikely.
We are a species that has ushered in an Age that is far more advanced than our wetware. Not because we have created computers that can beat us at Go or Chess, but because we have accelerated the rate of change beyond the terminal velocity of our biology.
Our brain is processing inputs that its natural peripherals (sensory organs) cannot capture without the aid of technology. The brain certainly had room for growth, but there is a difference between processing a black flag on a ship seen through a looking glass and looking back in time to 900 million years after the big bang through the James Webb Space Telescope.
In the same way that our other organs are struggling to keep pace with the changes we have made to our environments and food, our brains are struggling to make sense of the deluge of diverse information we have generated.
In some ways, the rise of jingoism so quickly after the 21st century’s rapid globalism can be seen as an overreaction to this diversity. Many of us want to reflexively return to the comfort of the native and familiar; to our pastoral mythologies.
Even those who command the world’s resources have created a convergence in their material consumption to allay the anxiety arising from their rapid deployment everywhere. I can be in New York, London, Paris, Dubai, Singapore and Tokyo and visit Berluti, eat at LPM or Hakkasan and stay at the Four Seasons. Luxury has been franchised to ensure the elite’s access to quality. In the same way that you can count on a Big-Mac, you can now count on yellowtail in yuzu soy, anywhere your Gulfstream takes you.
And that’s the point – until humanity acknowledges that we have created a complex world that we are incapable of navigating without extra-human assistance, humility and benevolence, we will continue to rely on simple mythologies to see our way forward (MAGA/Michelin Stars/Louis Vuitton) because we do not know what else to do.
Seeing how we are dealing with things today, that extra-human assistance will continue to be theological, arrogance will continue to trump humility and mean self-interest will continue to override benevolence.
SEÑOR - The Blog 