This invitation just begs me to haul out my soapbox. To make two points.
The lesser is that if we are neatly divided into the Red Team and the Blue Team in the US, at a time when inequality is surpassing levels that in the past brought out the pitchforks and guillotines--but now we're all throwing rocks at the other team--is that coincidence? Did the ruling class just get lucky, with the Culture Wars? Or did they use their ownership of the legacy media and the digital monopolies that now act as gatekeepers, along with all the psychological and PR expertise money can buy, to engineer this arrangement?
Main soapbox is this, something I've been saying for decades: working for a better future is much more likely when people can picture, believe in, a better future and right now all that's presented as possibilities are dystopias (funny how this administration is trying to move us TOWARD an amalgamation of all the dystopias) or more-of-the-status-quo with minor changes in slang and fashions. And--due to too much screen-watching, people's imaginative faculties have atrophied--so they need to have images of that better future presented to them in living color, DEPICTED, not merely presented in academic language. I didn't see anyone doing this so I wrote three novels set in the future--didn't get anywhere with publishing them and I've given up on fiction writing, but this is still needed. Unfortunately, by now I don't think there is a realistic path to a much better future, short term--things have gone too far, especially environmentally--so much damage has been done and it's still ramping up, even if the break comes soon, our children will be picking their way to that future over a lot of rubble. Nate Hagens on his Great Simplification podcast, talks about a future that's "better than the default." I like that phrasing.
Are the Masters of the Universe just looking for short-term money and power? Quite possibly. But I also think it's possible that, seeing that the resources are not there for a transition to a clean energy future in which all 8.5 billion of us live like Americans, and they retain all their power and privilege,
they're working toward a future of Fortress America and Fortress Europe, where outsiders are excluded but from which corporate teams move at will to loot the resources of all those failed states...and likely within the fortresses, there will be walled enclaves for the rich, with the rest on the outside left to struggle for survival in a hot, dangerous, degraded landscape. Hence the changing of laws to remove rights from ordinary people, and hence the Cop Cities going up everywhere to "train" the young men desperate for decent work and willing to mow down their friends on order. Cops, soldiers, security guards, are all disproportionately people with authoritarian personalities, but it will take more "training" to get most of them to shoot into crowds that may contain old friends or cousins, people engaged in resistance for survival. I'm not sure I buy the more extreme doom scenarios with the advent of AI, but it will exacerbate the environmental crises and enable more detailed surveillance and targeting of those who resist. Which is why I see the fight against the huge buildout of data centers with no local right to input, as a Rubicon, acritical fight we must engage NOW.
Too often, society’s shared vision of the future is really just the forward projection of romantic nostalgia for a past that was never really quite as we remember it being in our selective remembering.
The prevailing popular Neoliberal vision of our future as more that is better through Growth as 19th Century PROGRESS through technological innovation and economies of scale into an infinitely receding geobiophysical Frontier for endless socio-political expansion that got reduced over the course of the 20th Century to simple, numerical increases in qualitatively undifferentiated transaction volumes, measured in prices paid in money, from one period of measurement to the next, is just such a forward projection of romantic nostalgia through selective remembering.
This vision is the special pleading for the self-interests of those with a vested interest in promoting the financial mathematics of ownership for profit extraction from volatility and growth in market clearing prices for securities in the markets for maintaining volatility and growth in market clearing prices for those securities, as THE way to finance enterprise and the economy.
There is an alternative.
We can set Pensions & Endowments free from Neoliberal Asset Ownership, and the allocation of Assets across Asset Classes, and within classes, the selection of Asset Managers who are benchmarked against their peers by Consultants for outperformance in maximizing the highest possible purely pecuniary profit extraction from volatility and growth in market clearing prices for securities in the markets for maintaining volatility and growth in market clearing prices for those securities, solely in the financial best interest of Asset Managers, Consultants, Corporate Executives and other Securities Trading Market Professionals, in reliance on the axiomatic assertion that more quantities of money in the markets (fees and profits for them) will also always mean a better quality of life for us.
We can, instead, support them in becoming Prudent Stewards of a Dignified Future for some and all, by allocating the money we entrust to their discretion through the innovative new financial mathematics of waterwheel modeling of equity paybacks to an actuarial/fiduciary cost of money, plus opportunistic upside, from enterprise cash flows prioritized by contract for suitability of the technology to the times, longevity of the enterprise over time and fairness in how the business does business all the time.
We can then engage with them in ongoing deliberation (Julie Guegen calls this Metacollaboration) about the changing circumstances of our changing times, and what technologies are right for those times (for example, energy extraction from hydrocarbons is decidedly NOT right for our times), how long those technologies can be expected to continue to be right for the times as they change over future time, and fairness in how business does business across six vectors of fairness in business: Fair Trade (with suppliers); Fair Engagement with law and community); Fair Reckoning (with Nature, Society and the Future); Fair Working; Fair Dealing and Fair Sharing (between the enterprise and its financiers).
When we view our shared future through this innovative new lens of Deliberation with Fiduciary Money on Suitability, Longevity and Fairness, we get a forwards looking vision of a carefully curated future; not a forward projection of a selectively remembered past.
This is why we need thrutopia - writing about the future which is neither utopia nor dystopia, for example, Manda Scott's work https://thrutopia.life/. I also recommend 'How to Fall in Love with the Future' by Rob Hopkins.
One thing this post made me think about was, what is the image of the future that the current elites and oligarchs or those in power will have to look forward to for themselves? I think part of finding a solution to the current challenges is tied to crafting a picture of the future that those that are in power today will accept as being better than the situation today. I am not sure that I know what that picture is, but it seems necessary to move forward without a revolution of some kind to bring about the change needed.
I see extinction
This invitation just begs me to haul out my soapbox. To make two points.
The lesser is that if we are neatly divided into the Red Team and the Blue Team in the US, at a time when inequality is surpassing levels that in the past brought out the pitchforks and guillotines--but now we're all throwing rocks at the other team--is that coincidence? Did the ruling class just get lucky, with the Culture Wars? Or did they use their ownership of the legacy media and the digital monopolies that now act as gatekeepers, along with all the psychological and PR expertise money can buy, to engineer this arrangement?
Main soapbox is this, something I've been saying for decades: working for a better future is much more likely when people can picture, believe in, a better future and right now all that's presented as possibilities are dystopias (funny how this administration is trying to move us TOWARD an amalgamation of all the dystopias) or more-of-the-status-quo with minor changes in slang and fashions. And--due to too much screen-watching, people's imaginative faculties have atrophied--so they need to have images of that better future presented to them in living color, DEPICTED, not merely presented in academic language. I didn't see anyone doing this so I wrote three novels set in the future--didn't get anywhere with publishing them and I've given up on fiction writing, but this is still needed. Unfortunately, by now I don't think there is a realistic path to a much better future, short term--things have gone too far, especially environmentally--so much damage has been done and it's still ramping up, even if the break comes soon, our children will be picking their way to that future over a lot of rubble. Nate Hagens on his Great Simplification podcast, talks about a future that's "better than the default." I like that phrasing.
Are the Masters of the Universe just looking for short-term money and power? Quite possibly. But I also think it's possible that, seeing that the resources are not there for a transition to a clean energy future in which all 8.5 billion of us live like Americans, and they retain all their power and privilege,
they're working toward a future of Fortress America and Fortress Europe, where outsiders are excluded but from which corporate teams move at will to loot the resources of all those failed states...and likely within the fortresses, there will be walled enclaves for the rich, with the rest on the outside left to struggle for survival in a hot, dangerous, degraded landscape. Hence the changing of laws to remove rights from ordinary people, and hence the Cop Cities going up everywhere to "train" the young men desperate for decent work and willing to mow down their friends on order. Cops, soldiers, security guards, are all disproportionately people with authoritarian personalities, but it will take more "training" to get most of them to shoot into crowds that may contain old friends or cousins, people engaged in resistance for survival. I'm not sure I buy the more extreme doom scenarios with the advent of AI, but it will exacerbate the environmental crises and enable more detailed surveillance and targeting of those who resist. Which is why I see the fight against the huge buildout of data centers with no local right to input, as a Rubicon, acritical fight we must engage NOW.
That’s a nice soapbox you have there.
YES, What are we waiting for??!!
Too often, society’s shared vision of the future is really just the forward projection of romantic nostalgia for a past that was never really quite as we remember it being in our selective remembering.
The prevailing popular Neoliberal vision of our future as more that is better through Growth as 19th Century PROGRESS through technological innovation and economies of scale into an infinitely receding geobiophysical Frontier for endless socio-political expansion that got reduced over the course of the 20th Century to simple, numerical increases in qualitatively undifferentiated transaction volumes, measured in prices paid in money, from one period of measurement to the next, is just such a forward projection of romantic nostalgia through selective remembering.
This vision is the special pleading for the self-interests of those with a vested interest in promoting the financial mathematics of ownership for profit extraction from volatility and growth in market clearing prices for securities in the markets for maintaining volatility and growth in market clearing prices for those securities, as THE way to finance enterprise and the economy.
There is an alternative.
We can set Pensions & Endowments free from Neoliberal Asset Ownership, and the allocation of Assets across Asset Classes, and within classes, the selection of Asset Managers who are benchmarked against their peers by Consultants for outperformance in maximizing the highest possible purely pecuniary profit extraction from volatility and growth in market clearing prices for securities in the markets for maintaining volatility and growth in market clearing prices for those securities, solely in the financial best interest of Asset Managers, Consultants, Corporate Executives and other Securities Trading Market Professionals, in reliance on the axiomatic assertion that more quantities of money in the markets (fees and profits for them) will also always mean a better quality of life for us.
We can, instead, support them in becoming Prudent Stewards of a Dignified Future for some and all, by allocating the money we entrust to their discretion through the innovative new financial mathematics of waterwheel modeling of equity paybacks to an actuarial/fiduciary cost of money, plus opportunistic upside, from enterprise cash flows prioritized by contract for suitability of the technology to the times, longevity of the enterprise over time and fairness in how the business does business all the time.
We can then engage with them in ongoing deliberation (Julie Guegen calls this Metacollaboration) about the changing circumstances of our changing times, and what technologies are right for those times (for example, energy extraction from hydrocarbons is decidedly NOT right for our times), how long those technologies can be expected to continue to be right for the times as they change over future time, and fairness in how business does business across six vectors of fairness in business: Fair Trade (with suppliers); Fair Engagement with law and community); Fair Reckoning (with Nature, Society and the Future); Fair Working; Fair Dealing and Fair Sharing (between the enterprise and its financiers).
When we view our shared future through this innovative new lens of Deliberation with Fiduciary Money on Suitability, Longevity and Fairness, we get a forwards looking vision of a carefully curated future; not a forward projection of a selectively remembered past.
This is why we need thrutopia - writing about the future which is neither utopia nor dystopia, for example, Manda Scott's work https://thrutopia.life/. I also recommend 'How to Fall in Love with the Future' by Rob Hopkins.
One thing this post made me think about was, what is the image of the future that the current elites and oligarchs or those in power will have to look forward to for themselves? I think part of finding a solution to the current challenges is tied to crafting a picture of the future that those that are in power today will accept as being better than the situation today. I am not sure that I know what that picture is, but it seems necessary to move forward without a revolution of some kind to bring about the change needed.