Category: Change

How We Need to Overcome Our Societies’ Over-Protection Tendency

Following on our previous post ‘How Over-Protection of University Students Is Spreading and May Be Due to a Generational Issue‘ I feel the need to expand on the issue of over-protection in our societies and the need to be exposed from time to time to situations that hurt. How could we all have learnt to ride a bicycle without falling from time to time? How could our immune system grow and be effective without getting exposed regularly to microbes?

It all comes down to the fact that we are living organisms with the ability to repair and evolve. And that our evolution is the result of our will and experience.

The situation would be of course different with an object: when it is damaged or broken it can’t repair itself (yet at least). But for living organisms, what does not kill us makes us progress and evolve.

And avoiding confrontation with potentially disturbing situations diminishes greatly our adaptability and versatility. Adaptability is the prime advantage in natural evolution for humans. Therefore, avoiding exposure to potentially disturbing ideas and situations puts us at disadvantage in the long term.

I fear that is what may happen to the most developed countries. Take for example a Singaporean that has lived all its life in an exceptionally safe country: he or she will be frightened and will have difficulty to adapt to cities like Paris, New York or Houston which are reasonably safe cities, where you need however to be a bit vigilant (that’s an example I have been witness to!). Over-protection makes it difficult to adapt and there is a risk that people will tend to stay in their comfortable environment – until it gets wished away by some greater external forces.

Making sure we are exposed from time to time to tough situations, different opinions and ideas is healthy. And if it does not happen we need to force ourselves. Simple tip: travel more, and expose yourself to unfamiliar environments and cultures!

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How Over-Protection of University Students Is Spreading and May Be Due to a Generational Issue

Also known as the “coddling of the american mind”, this disturbing trend is spreading and speeding up, as exposed in the following papers the Atlantic ‘the coddling of the american mind is speeding up‘, and the two National Review papers ‘Are We Setting a Generation Up for Failure?’ Part 1 and Part 2. Those follow the publication of the book ‘The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure‘ And it now also spreads to other countries like France. We had already addressed this trend in our 2016 post ‘How Overprotecting from Different Points of View is a Moral Hazard‘.

The issue is that students can declare to be violently assaulted by ideas that do not fit their opinions and therefore decline to participate to debates and presentations. They can flee to safe rooms. Moreover this leads to cancelling speeches and debates even with renown philosophers and personalities, that have strong opinions on certain subjects.

The interesting point made in the analysis of the situation is the observation that this issue may be generational – linked to the first generation reaching university that has known internet since early childhood and social networks since teenage years. The theory would be they this generation falls prey to a low exposure to contradictory ideas, staying comfortably within their own online communities. “The new beliefs about fragility really came in only for those born after 1995. When [you] read the book iGen by Jean Twenge, and when I saw the graphs that she shows of how mental health plummeted when iGen reached its teen years, that’s when a whole new dimension of the problem became visible.”

This would be the demonstration that internet and online social networks effectively fostering community-centered and intolerant feelings. In addition, excessive protection from parents investing more in their children would also be a culprit.

Another issue is that universities in the US become increasingly corporatized, funded by large endowment funds and avoid to feel the wrath of past and future donors. This may also be a factor.

In any case, this trend is disturbing and needs to be curbed. In the modern world we can’t live in a society where people would close themselves to contradiction and avoid exposure to other ideas than the ones they are familiar with.

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How Fake News Reflect Collective Fears and Aspirations

Cory Doctorow takes an interesting perspective in his post ‘Fake news is an Oracle: How the falsehoods we believe reveal the truth about our fears and aspirations‘ (the post also refers to the Locus column ‘Cory Doctorow: Fake News Is an Oracle‘. He considers fake news as the emergence of a collective subconscious issue.

Cory Doctorow analyses in detail the myth of science-fiction literature being deemed to be predictive of actual evolution of society. Of course it has an influence, but Cory Doctorow concludes that it is more like a revealing medium for our hidden subconscious collective aspirations and fears. And, he concludes, so are fake news: if they prosper, they do reflect at some point collective fears and aspirations.

Cory Doctorow continues to show that the fact that the anti-vaccination movement and its fake news is so popular has a point in demonstrating that there is an issue about big pharma and its control, beyond the reaction on vaccines themselves.

His view hence is that “Fake news is an instrument for measuring trauma, and the epistemological incoherence that trauma creates – the justifiable mistrust of the establishment“. Therefore, according to him the issue is to “address the underlying corruption that is rotting our society“.

I believe that fake news and other conspiracy theories have always been around, and are just easier to spread. Still I agree with Cory Doctorow that they are revealing subconscious and more conscious issues and are thus interesting to examine and consider. And the core issues once identified certainly need to be addressed.

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How World Wars reshaped deeply our world and triggered deep changes still felt today

This interesting piece ‘Three Big Things: The Most Important Forces Shaping the World‘ is quite interesting about those forces mentioned, and also on the reflection that much of what we live comes from a reset of the world during World War 2.

Those forces identified in this post shaping our world today:

  • the demographic shift reconfiguring modern economies
  • wealth inequality
  • unprecedented access to information leveling social gaps (i.e. the Fourth Revolution)

However the most important part of the article for me is the long description of what our world today owes to WW2. “It’s hard to overstate how much the world reset from 1939 to 1945, and how deeply the changes the war left behind went on to define virtually everything that’s happened since.” As examples: the baby-boom, antibiotics, all sorts of technological advances (nuclear, jet engines, social changes triggered by war economy, GI bill and higher education, and also the social net in European countries…).

Internet at the end was a technology that evolve as a result of Cold War and the need to preserve communication in case of nuclear attack. And Cold War was in itself an intermediate consequence of WW2.

We too often fail to go back sufficiently in time to understand the deep drivers of our societies. It is worth sometimes going back a century to grasp those large trends and what triggered social changes that astonish us today.

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How We Need to Set Rules for Biohacking

Biohacking (using drugs and technology to make one’s body/mind function better) is trendy. In this post ‘Biohacking Gone Wild‘, some interesting examples are given – from simple examples we all are actually using, to extreme hacking.

We’ve been doing biohacking in its widest senses for ages, for example when we are wearing glasses.

Some modern examples are quite frightening: “It’s estimated that over 100,000 people already have various types of implants. In Sweden, thousands of Swedes are inserting chips under their skin to speed up their daily routines. They use chips to open locked doors, to store contact information, and to get on to the train“

We do, and we will obviously progressively extend our capabilities using technology of some sort. I do think there are some limits that should only be exceeded with care. For me, anything changing my body chemistry for example, is for me clearly out-of-bounds. Using prosthetics adding capabilities to my body can be discussed as long as it can be shut down, removed, or only put on when needed. Not to mention personal data protection.

Biohacking is just starting, and it will pervade the world of the Collaborative Age. What rules should we put in place to keep it within reasonable bounds?

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How the Current Asset Over-valuation Changes Economic Behavior

I can only recommend to read this enlightening research paper ‘Bubble or nothing‘, produced by an American Think Tank. It may require some time to read, but I believe it is absolutely worthwhile to understand how the current economic situation differs from the 20th century economic situation – and how therefore, history can only be of limited value in understanding future economic behavior.

The point is that “The evolution of the economy’s aggregate financial structure [with a much higher value of assets compared to value production] has, over decades, altered the playing field for financial decision makers throughout the economy, increasingly skewing their available options toward higher risks, lower returns, or both.” Basically, the increase in asset value implies low interest rates. Those low interest rates are much below the return rates expected from financial players (such as retirement funds), and this leads them inevitably to take higher risks than they would have in the past.

The author calls the time since the mid-1980s the “era of the Big Balance Sheets”. According to him, this excessive risk-taking behavior explains situations as the one giving way to the 2008 financial crisis, which stemmed from the property market. “Each successive crisis, with more bloated balance sheets to stabilize, was more difficult to resolve and therefore required the government to engineer dramatic new lows in interest rates, heavy fiscal stimulus, and other measures to stabilize economic conditions. The measures eventually overcame recession and chronic weakness, but in doing so they necessarily caused further expansion of balance sheets relative to income.“

This current situation appears to be quite metastable, with excessive risk-taking happening since the early 2010s, and may lead to another hard recession with substantial asset value decrease. Whether this decrease will be temporary or more permanent is still open (previous recessions have not changed the excessive asset value on the long term).

As a summary, “The U.S. economy continues to face a bubble-or-nothing outlook. Participants in the economy and markets will keep increasing their financial risk until the expansion breaks down, and the bigger the balance sheets are relative to income, the more severe the breakdown is likely to be.”

Take some time to read this instructive analysis, as it provides an interesting explanation of the changes in our economy in the last decades.

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How to Subtly Shift One’s Mind to Overcome Procrastination

Leo Babauta in his post ‘Mindfully Shifting Your Approach to a Task Can Shift Everything‘ reminds us that to tackle a task that is not easy or nice, and to overcome procrastination, all it takes is a subtle mindset shift.

“So you either run to distraction and procrastinate, or you do it but really don’t enjoy doing it. Neither of these is helpful. So what can we do instead of procrastinating or disliking the task? We can bring some subtle, mindful, powerful shifts to the task. And in fact, we can do this to any activity.”

Many of the approaches then described by Leo Babauta involve more self-consciousness of our feelings and changing our view on this unpleasant task by living more in an appreciative manner, closer to the present. In summary, it requests more presence and self-consciousness about the importance of the task.

In general it is true that it is often effective to change slightly one’s mindset regarding some event or some task to find that it is finally easier to perform than one would expect.

Next time you’re faced with procrastination, try to change slightly your mindset and view about the difficult task you can’t seem to be able to perform!

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How We Need to Know How to Enforce Replenishment Periods

As Leo Babuta reminds us in his post ‘Antidotes to Overwork‘, we need to learnt to “Do Less By Enforcing Replenishment Time“.

“Enforcing time for rest and replenishment doesn’t come naturally to most of us, especially in our society. In our world, it’s always a matter of doing more and more. It’s always connected, always cram in more, always respond. All the time.”

“How often do you take an hour or two just to go for a walk and not read or listen to anything useful? To find silence and time to contemplate? To find space for yourself, to find room to breathe? We don’t value that, but it’s so important. You can’t function at your best without it.”

Leo Babuta continues by suggesting some approaches and techniques to really find the time to replenish. What I find interesting is the recognition for the need to have some balance between very active moments and replenishment moments. Replenishment is not just relaxation it is also being open to new ideas, people, locations and thus taking the time to grow.

When are you taking the time to grow?

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How To Avoid Losing Our Identity While Collaborating With AI

Following on our previous post ‘How We Need to Learn to Work with AI‘, there are also interesting points of view of how AI may lead to losing our identity, such as this article ‘Would You Survive a Merger with AI?‘

This article is focused on actual hybridation between humans and machine (a physical merger of sorts) but takes it at the philosophical level. It then shows that we can’t at the same time merge with AI, or replicate ourselves, without losing our identity.

There are thus some limits (luckily, quite remote and still very much science-fiction) beyond which our joint working with AI may lead to losing our identity, or being unclear about it.

In the short term, in order to benefit from AI without losing our identity, it may be a good idea to make sure we keep some of our identity to ourselves and do not share everything with AI, however enticing this may look!

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How We Need to Learn to Work with AI

This article ‘Humans and AI will work better when they start learning from each other‘ is part of a growing realization that AI will enhance human capabilities rather than compete or replace them.

“Trust plays a significant role in decreasing the cognitive complexity users face in interacting with sophisticated technology. Consequently, its absence leads to an AI model’s underutilization or abandonment“. “Technology will be just as good if all groups understand the evidence behind it and prepare themselves to use it effectively“.

While there are ways to improve the interaction with AI and still substantial progress is required in this area (interface design, etc), end-users must also learn to deal with, and understand the limits of AI. This is new skill-set that will need to be learnt and taught in the future.

We can expect a few years of soul-searching, finding ways to leverage better those AI engines that are pervading our lives, while those AI persona and their interface will also quickly improve.

We need to learn how to leverage the AI capabilities now available. This will take time to become a clear skill-set and I am quite excited to see how this will get formalized in terms of behaviors and adaptation of AI interfaces.

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How Important It Is to Distinguish Between Finite and Infinite Games

In this excellent speech ‘What game theory teaches us about war’ (Youtube), Simon Sinek reminds us that there isa great difference between playing finite or infinite games. This brings back to the book ‘Finite and Infinite Games‘ by James Carse.

“There are two types of games: there are finite games and there are infinite games. A finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and agreed-upon objective (such as baseball for example). An infinite game is defined as known and unknown players the rules are changeable and the objective is to perpetuate the game.“

He reminds us then that business or strategy is an infinite game, and those finite players won’t last long. “The game of business is an infinite game. The concept of business has existed longer than every single company that exists right now and it’ll exist long after all the companies that exist right now go away. The funny thing about business is the number of companies that are playing finite they’re playing to win they’re playing to be the best they’re playing to beat the quarter or the year and they’re always frustrated by that company that has an amazing vision, a long-term vision that seems to drive them crazy and over the long term that player will always win and the other player will run out of resources or the will and they’ll go out of business“.

There can be some differing views about how to play infinite games (see this post about whether the current unpredictability of US external policy could be a way to play the infinite game: ‘Why Simon Sinek is wrong about Game Theory.’

Still this distinction is important and it reminds us that when we play infinite games, rules are not so essential as they are constantly reinvented; and strategies such as unpredictability can be valid to have other players on their toes. Are you playing a finite or infinite game?

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How to Create Rituals to Change

This excellent post by Leo Babauta ‘The Art of Creating a Ritual for What Matters Most‘ reminds us that an effective way to change is to create a ritual.

“In this world where technology and consumerism have become our religion, we’ve largely lost something magical: the ability to elevate something into the realm of the sacred.” “We can lift an everyday act into the realm of the divine by turning it into a sacred ritual. What I’ve been trying to practice is the art of turning what matters most in my life into a ritual.”

Leo Babuta goes on suggesting moment and activities that could be converted into rituals, and how to achieve this transformation.

Without attempting to change everything to a ritual, I note that it can be a very useful way to induce change and ensure that there is repetition of a voluntary action where we are present. We may gain at having a few rituals in our lives, with a spiritual element added on!

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