Comments - If the old systems are breaking, what comes next?
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If the old systems are breaking, what comes…
New systems and stories for an accelerated world Read →
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Liked by Scott Barker
Thank you for this thought provoking post. I like the idea of the Great Nothing. I can’t quite bring myself to believe in any god or deity these days but connection and ritual have value beyond any particular story attached to them, to keep us grounded and humble and awake.
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Thank you Kamsin, I’m glad it resonated with you. Yes, there is so much beauty/peace in practice alone without doctrine attached.
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Thank you Kamsin, I’m glad it resonated with you. Yes, there is so much beauty/peace in practice alone without doctrine attached.
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Liked by Scott Barker
Well put. Ancient wisdom and rituals stuck around for a reason
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Thanks India. Yea it seems like the ‘reimagining’ of new modern stories that will help us navigate the uncertainty, look a lot like ancient ones.
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Liked by Scott Barker
Great piece with a lot of valuable points. Thank you.
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Thanks Brian, appreciate you taking the time to give it a read 🙏
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Liked by Scott Barker
Brilliant work here brother. So much to take away from it. Technology Sabbath - love that
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Thank you man. Taking intentional breaks from technology has been crucial for me in order to start seeing clearly again. I think we’re all aware of the influence tech has over our lives but it’s not until we get some space that we can really understand the weight of that influence. Appreciate you giving this a read Alex and look forward to our upcoming podcast (will reach out to get it back on the books).
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Uhoh!!! Trigger word!!
Thank you for always adding a sense of humour and lightness in your writing, Scott.
Our world is full of enough seriousness without our human intensity attached to it. Sometimes approaching a topic with softness is the gateway to an open mind.
It’s about time we remove the woo woo from spiritually and the dogma from religion. It all comes down to ego, doesn’t it. You said it yourself, nothing exists in absolute. We live in relation to one another and the world around us. How can we better embody that connectedness in such a separated world?
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I love it - it’s a call to the times of old. Bringing tradition back!
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What is a life without a community. Nice thoughts Scott, I like how you talked about having a large online community but that they probably can’t help you or challenge you when you need it most.
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The deeper problem may not be technological acceleration itself, but the absence of systems capable of helping humans metabolize constant change.
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One other thought! For every force there is an equal and opposite. Yin and yang.
The age of acceleration is also the age of slowing down. I could write another while article on that thought but I just put it out there to ponder!
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I’d like to join this conversation and thank you for writing this and other articles.
I’m now 65, and still trying to make sense of the same questions that I have over-thought since a young child. A perpetual Candide in a world seemingly understood by only by Pangloss.
Essentially why the world is the way it is and our place in it.
Something that our hunter gatherer ancestors probably never thought about but ‘felt’ their place through their daily rhythms and routines.
They were part of nature and acted accordingly- small walking villages sharing necessary and life-essential tasks between them, building tacit knowledge of the nature around them and how to relate with it (not ‘to’ it which implies greater separation than they would have been aware of).
So in the context of your article and the questions you raise:
What our hunter gatherer ancestors experienced is in every way possibly the complete antithesis of conditions created since then, that now comprise our current stage of ‘development’ of the ‘Sapiens’ species.
And to pause and reflect on just this point alone will explain much about why our species now feels so displaced/disoriented/and frankly often so depressed.
Every point you made about how we might improve - community etc - was deeply embedded in a way of life we began to lose the moment we stopped and planted the first seed and waited for it to grow.
This is not to romanticise that far ago era but to acknowledge the profound change that was initiated at that point in history.
And with the first seed planted, so too was an implicit question - who will benefit from the the produce that followed. The means of production was no longer nature itself. Man had played a hand in it, and so began the question of to whom the result of that production belonged.
Our history since that point has largely been an ongoing and ever more complex attempt to wrestle and influence the answer to that question. First plants, then the land on which they are grown, then natural resources of all kinds, then man made, and now artificially made. With cycles of increasing amplitudes of empires and influences coming and going. Within which those with money seek to protect it and make more of it.
All problems are relational as Alfred Adler so clearly stated. All solutions are too.
The complexity of the system in which we live is now extreme. We are all affected by any black swan event no matter how much we wish to think otherwise. The 2008 crash was one of many such events to remind us of this interdependency. Having built a new entity called money, our species can port this energy resource across borders and across time. And a world has been created upon the promise of greater financial wealth in the future - both the promise and the curse of usury or debt. Such a system is a break with the rhythm of nature.
The answers were already experienced as normal long before we embarked upon the quest of ‘civilisation’. But in evolving - in societal and cognitive terms - we created new questions to solve.
I am not sure thinking will provide the best way forward. At least not the same method of thinking that has got us here. Einstein eloquently suggested that.
Instead it has to become a different relationship with ourselves, others and the world at large. We no longer can see the tribe with whom we co-exist and create. Nearly everybody else is now a stranger - no matter how they appear. Not just to us, but also to themselves. And we treat them understandably so; that is a deep human instinct. And most relationships have become transactional and objectify others.
What is missing is empathy. Not surface level. But deep empathy for every human who breathes. Every human who did not ask to be born but carries the task of living nevertheless.
Who like you has sought answers in a certain realm only to discover that they were not to be found there. So the story goes: Rockefeller when asked how much money makes a man happy, replied ‘just one more dollar than he already has’.
We are bound in a never ending question between our ‘separate’ selves and all their endless needs, and our collective humanity.
Between ‘our’ life and life itself.
It is perhaps the privilege and burden of having made enough money to live that the existential question of what to do with life can become so heavy. Such is the weight of feeling separate. Most of the Greek philosophers did not have to pay a mortgage or do the grocery shop or school run.
Others merely do what feels right anyway. I live in a terrace of small cottages in an English market town. There is a father and daughter who live here. He is a handyman; she a carer. They rent their home. Yet their front garden is a joy - planted with love and care. A pleasure to look at as people go past. Each Easter and Christmas they give a small present and card to all the people living in the terrace. No fuss; no instagram pictures. Just a quiet unspoken gesture of neighbourliness.
Such a gesture embodies what your question asks of us. How do we treat those with whom we are in relationship? How does it make us feel; and how does it make them feel? How can it be an I-Thou relationship. Or as Adler might put it a horizontal relationship.
So to finish - this is written without any AI and with two thumbs on a phone so no proper editing - I would simply suggest a good question for people to keep in mind and in heart. As it is our body that the truth lies.
How am I relating to myself and others and the world in which we all live. And how through my actions and influence can I improve that relationship?
As true for a CEO of a tech start up as for my kind handyman neighbour.
With best wishes.
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I’m not so sure that things will carry on accelerating. We as a species have a limit for that and I think we have already reached it. Some individuals may push for that…but I don’t think it will happen. More likely the push will break the unity of the species and scatter different individuals all over, just like a centrifuge does when it breaks.
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Thank you Scott for articulating what all of us are feeling and bringing the conversation down to an individual level. It’s practical and empowering.
It’s not “all or nothing”. It’s how do we move forward and create a future that works for humanity. It’s about being human.
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You've named the collapse, but the conscription:
The five pillars are crumbling. Yes. But here's the question your piece doesn't dare ask: who's been paying for the demolition?
The systems didn't fail. They were transferred. Community became a wellness subscription. Ritual became a morning routine you optimise on an app. Philosophy became a LinkedIn carousel. And the work of holding it all together- the repair, the witnessing, the staying landed on the shoulders of the exhausted, who were then told their exhaustion was a personal problem.
This is the privatisation of repair. The system didn't break. It offloaded.
You tell us to rebuild. But who does the rebuilding? The same woman who's already editing herself for every room? The one who smiles when she wants to scream, who softens her sentences to make truth acceptable, who performs "community" on a platform while her body forgets what it feels like to be held?
You cannot rebuild the container by assigning it as a task on an already overflowing list.
The real question isn't what comes next? It's who gets to stop performing long enough to remember what the ground felt like before it was taken?
The engine I've been writing about the relentless drive to plan, to optimise, to be the "preferred version" is the very machinery that privatised repair. It keeps you running so you don't notice the ground was stolen.
Healing isn't a new pillar. It's the refusal to carry the old one alone.
I've mapped this architecture the gap between the room's demands and the body's truth, the cost of performing repair in isolation, and what happens when you finally stop in "The Privatisation of Repair" and "Every Room Has a Preferred Version of You."
You'd be welcome at Unusual.
https://substack.com/@leenadalal26/note/p-196639135
❝ The pillars didn't fall. They were handed to you and you were told to be grateful for the workout. ❞
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Thank you for embarking on “ridiculous endeavours”, we need them so much. I’ve been also thinking and writing about non-optimized lifestyles (and computational systems). I know it’s a lot do ask, but I would be incredibly thankful if you can give me some feedback on my thoughts here: https://kanhan.com.br/en/computing-as-cultivation/ .
Congrats for your work and vision.
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