It's More like your Heart than your Hair

We have reached that point in January where people lose the will to say Happy New Year! So instead: Welcome to the second quarter of the 21st century.

There are some who believe the second quarter begins next year, in 2026. They are the same people who believe the new millennium began in 2001, and not when 1999 became 2000 and everyone celebrated. These kind of people are wonderfully contrarian, and here to keep us on our toes, but I don’t feel too bad about letting them grumble amongst themselves on their chronological high ground. An interesting epistemic question is whether there is a fact of the matter here, or just a kind of power struggle for meaning, but that, as they say, is for another time.

Perspectiva’s highlights in 2024 included getting the antidebate into schools and universities, Emerge’s presence in Ukraine and a successful Realisation Festival, but most of our work was behind the scenes on things that will become public in 2025. We will soon have exciting news to share on forthcoming books, new courses, a media initiative and more. Time may always be ambiguous but I can safely say: watch this space.

With heavy news as the new normal, I wanted to begin the year on a relatively light note. The world doesn’t cease to be amusing when it is tragic any more than it ceases to be tragic when we smile or laugh.

The profiled five minute video clip concerns the important question of how the world is doing, the idea of progress, and whether all this highfalutin talk of transformation is necessary, but it ends on a slightly ridiculous metaphor. I surprised myself by suggesting that the techno-optimist’s view that they have great hair ignores the more important matter of their weak heart. This is a metaphor to capture the risk of “lying with the truth” in which positive metrics obscure a much deeper underlying problem.

I am grateful to Andy Mauro for asking the question in such an inviting way, because that’s probably what led to this impromptu answer. I am also grateful to John Stokes and Real Ventures for inviting me to speak to them about “exploring the metacrisis” in Montreal, on August 15 2024 from which this clip comes. I chose to explore the metacrisis through the idea of The Flip, The Formation, and the Fun.

In plain language:

‘The flip’ is metaphysical, a change in our understanding of reality.
’The formation’ is educational, a change in what we learn to become, why, and how.
And ‘The fun’ is about the political economy, a transformation in societal purposes.

There is some bad news. None of these three things will change easily or willingly.

These changes are possible though, and the good news is that if we can help usher them into being in the second quarter of the 21st century - our time! - the second half of the 21st century could yet be a time of peace and plenty. The full video includes a few practices and lots of audience participation - it’s not just a talk. I am unsure if that makes it more watchable, or if it creates a “had to be there” vibe in the viewer, but I think it’s mostly the former. The full video is on my personal Substack, The Joyous Struggle, and on Perspectiva’s YouTube Pages.

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Transcript of the 5 minute clip:

AM: I'm noticing myself being a little bit closed.​​ And so I thought I would just ask you to maybe address some of the things I'm​ thinking and maybe open me up and make me more receptive.

So isn't the world by every objective measure, generally getting better​? I'm not up on all stats,​ but we know them,​ you know,​ so whatever​: infant mortality,​ drug addiction,​ global GDP​.​..we can name all the stuff that Bill Gates likes to name all the time…Given that,​ the idea that we need like a whole new something happening that is so different that we need definitional newness​ to it.

It just always feels to me like a colossal mistake of ego to think every generation​ thinks their life is the worst.​ And so that's where I'm struggling.

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JR: It's a very much appreciated and timely intervention because you're not alone. You speak for a critical mass of people,​ maybe even a majority of people in relatively affluent, safe countries that are in many ways doing better year on year. So part of your premise is not wrong, but here's why I don't think it's the whole truth. And this gets to things like how Bill Gates sees the world and the Steven Pinker book about The Better Angels of our Nature and so on.

It's possible to lie with the truth. And by that I mean you can accumulate valid facts and tell a story of civilisational progress, including the things you mentioned, like infant mortality and literacy and even GDP per capita and so on.

You can give hard data saying that the world's getting better. But what matters much more is what you don't include in the data. And that's where the question is: how much importance do you give to the things that are not covered?

And what tends to happen is those who have a relatively, let's say, techno-optimist disposition, think that the world is mostly getting better with a few problems we can still solve.

I feel they're wrong, but I don't think they're insane.

I think it's that they look at the world in a certain way where they, for example, see the world getting warmer and they see insecticide (not in the spraying kind, but in the sense of literally insects dying all over the place). And they see massive biodiversity loss and they see the Marshall Islands having a few decades before they go underwater.

And they think those things are kind of small details and the rest is basically sound and that somehow technology will take care of the problems that arise.

I think what they fail to recognize…the analogy I would use is this:

A man goes into a doctor's surgery and the man or the person, let's say (doesn't have to be gender specific) And the doctor says, how are you?

And the guy says, well, can you examine me, please? I'm not sure.

And the doctor says, well, I've examined you now. I've done your bloods.
I've taken all your readings. You have a really, really weak heart.

”Your heart's so weak that you could die any day. You're very likely to have a heart attack quite soon. And there's not that much I can do about it unless you change your ways quite significantly. There's some medication to take there's diet and exercise and so on…”

And the guy responds by saying: “It's so sad to hear you say that because I've been working out. I've got great muscles in my legs. And I've got great hair. I just bought myself a new gym at home. And I like my new contact lenses, and I feel like lots of things are going well…

And the doctor says:

“Yeah but the most fundamental thing is not going well.”

And the analogy here is that the ecological substrate upon which the whole story of progress depends is rapidly degrading at an escalating rate. And we're running out of planet to maintain the progress narrative….

I hope I don't sound Pollyannaesque. I don't come to this view because I hate my life. I love my life. I'm grateful for the peace and prosperity that we have in countries like Canada and the UK. And I would much rather be alive today than 100 years ago.

So there's a lot to the progress story that's true. It's just not the whole truth and the aspects that are not included in the whole truth are aspects that i think the optimists don't give enough credence to…

Because it's more like your heart than your hair.

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