The image above was made with stable diffusion.'
Business as usual might be popular, but it's becoming less and less viable. Society is at the beginning of a total shift in how things work, driven at a deep level by emerging technology. Crypto. AI. Decentralization. New media. Along with millions of other people, I'm right in the center of these things.
At the same time, there are millions of others who have no idea that a complete transformation of society is now underway. This mainstream is preoccupied with identity drama and celebrities. Gridlock and chaos appear prominently on the political horizon. DOGE is trying to modernize a government whose records haven't even been fully digitized. And under the surface, everything is changing.
The covid economy sucked much of the value out of our dollars, leading to our present circumstance, which I call the big squeeze. Rampant corporate price gouging has been putting more and more pressure on every budget. Individuals and companies are becoming increasingly desperate for the funds necessary to carry on. Everyone is getting squeezed and people are responding in one of two ways to this.
Some are becoming more selfish and lashing out at their perceived enemies. Others are becoming more collaborative to get through this uncertain time together. While the former approach is more popular, the latter approach is more in line with my own tendencies. When the going gets tough, I favor cooperation over conflict.
The people who isolate will increasingly enter into conflict with their adversaries and they'll use the latest tech to do this. Those who instead come together to collaborate will also power their endeavors with the latest tech. AI is already a force multiplier for many kinds of work. So are all of the activity coordination tools now at our disposal.
Money is the ultimate activity coordination tool and money itself is changing. The emerging blockchain economy represents a new borderless global financial transaction layer for the internet. Millions use it today. In 5 years it may be billions.
The point I'm trying to make is that the real shift society is entering is more fundamental than the conflicts capturing most of our attention. We're told to pick a side: red or blue. Pick a side: 5 Eyes or BRICS. Pick a side: Pfizer or Merck. MSNBC or Fox. Whitney Webb or Robert Mercer. Below the surface, however, all of these sides are the same side. The real question we face concerns our strategy for navigating the shift.
Beyond the idea of conflict versus collaboration, each of us is now faced with a more existential choice. Will we adapt to the new technological environment or be consumed by it? Note that fighting it isn't an option at all. You may as well try to fight a volcano.
In the US right now, the forces of discontent are gathering. As the weather warms up, the blue team may take to the streets to protest the red team, in numbers reminiscent of the civil unrest of 2020. This will have no effect politically, but it may be very disruptive. At the same time, a million or more jobs might be lost as new policies are rolled out, adding fuel to this fire.
The more chaotic things become, the faster they'll change. This is ultimately a good thing as our status quo needs to be completely refactored, but it probably won't be pretty. Everywhere we look, we'll see people and groups trying to harness this change in service to their narrow agendas. They'll all try to convince us that their fight is THE fight and they'll all be wrong about that.
Fortunately, our path through the storm is clear. Work together instead of apart. Adapt or be consumed. And, perhaps most importantly, hold our focus on what we want to see being brought into being instead of on what needs to be torn down. The transformation society has entered will destroy the world to which we're accustomed. As this world falls away, it creates space for a new world to come into being. A world we can all have a hand in creating.
Business as usual has been performing poorly for a long time. It has wrecked our social and biological landscapes while horribly exploiting our permanent underclass in every imaginable way. The new status quo in media and public discourse has made most of our social ecology toxic. So clearly, business as usual has got to go. But it won't go quietly, and there's no guarantee that tomorrow's new normal will actually be better.
I would go so far as to say that the only way it will be better is if we take direct control of the process of bringing our future society into being. The powers that be obviously can't be trusted to do this for us. Politicians and big companies are unlikely to begin serving our interests anytime soon. No one else is going to hand us the world we want to live in. We have to create it together.
Read Free Mind Gazette on Substack
Read my novels:
See my NFTs:
