July 7th, 2022 Best Friday Are You Going to Let Reality Punch You In The Face?

Reality Will Punch You In The Face So I received an email from Flow Genome Collective CEO Jamie Wheal. It was excellent. Granted, Jamie and I have differing world views on a lot of the content of the email, but there was some great nuggets of wisdom for sure. The most profound was how so many people are caught up in theorizing and talking about all the problems we face without actually doing any real work or problem solving. He describes a retreat he attended in Austin with a bunch of “do gooders” who could define in a hundred different ways all the problems we face without giving one real practical action item. It got me to thinking about how in this rush to build utopia people are completely denying reality in many cases. This is a bad thing. Reality is indifferent. It can’t be made to suit your whims and fancies. It will punch you right in the face. Here’s Jamie’s email and the podcast that it inspired. The Revolution Will NOT Be Spotified! BY JAMIE WHEAL | READ AND SHARE ONLINE I repeat:The Revolution will not be SpotifiedOr YoutubedNor even Substacked(though I suspect that low-fi blogging platform may persist for a bit longer than most)As the old song goes…“You will not be able to stay home, brotherYou will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop outYou will not be able to lose yourself on skag (aka: Oxycontin)And skip out for beer during commercials, becauseThe revolution will not be televised Spotified.”Everybody’s got a plan, until… Just wrapped a three day conference here in Austin that was ostensibly focused on existential risk, systems theory, and human development. A bunch of well-meaning folks convened from all around the world, to try and save it.And boy howdy! I’ve never experienced a bigger disconnect from the actual stakes and the conversations to be had, in my entire life.It reminded me of those cringe Youtube videos, titled in all caps: “Tai Chi master gets ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED by MMA fighter!!!”Click on the link and said master, whose students have attested to his ability to send people through walls without even touching them, gets summarily dismantled by the scrappy MMA guy.It’s never even close.One journalist who was at the existential risk event asked me, “Why do you think these academics and theoreticians are so disconnected from realities on the ground?Why are they so focused on re-diagnosing the problems and debating their pet theories, rather than actually standing up real projects in the real world to do something about it?”Existential Scholasticism. Trying to outdo each other counting Angels of Death on the heads of a pin.Tai Chi masters, the lot of ’em.Waving their hands around in beautiful circles. Visualizing Whirled Peas, but wholly unacquainted with the laws of physics.#everyonesgotaplanuntilyougethitIn some instances at that Austin event (lookin’ at you, Millennials), we weren’t even dealing with real Tai Chi masters. More like Call of Duty/Grand Theft Auto/MortalKombat masters.“I’m not a real badass, but I play one in the metaverse!”Or Tulum.It’s not that these folks were withholding their most precious insights as to what do we do now??? It was increasingly, startlingly, tragically clear they had no. fucking. idea.And that’s what I mean about the Revolution not being Spotified.If you’re aching to keep your finger on the pulse of the Long Disaster, the ones to watch are going to be broadcasting less and less (if they ever were at all).They sure as shit won’t be caring about subscribers on their podcast.They will have unplugged from their screens and started digging in the dirt. Doing real things in the real world, with a degree of urgency and clarity utterly lacking in the poindexters-on-the-spectrum lot.Remember that old Lefty bumper sticker “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention?”  We might revise it to read “If you’re not gardening, you’re not paying attention.”Welcome to the Beginning of the End.(the End of the Middle just happened)Snakes and Ladders (and Maslow)That old Abe Maslow Hierarchy of Needs that Boomers loved so much because it placed their own preferred “Self Actualization” at the tippy top also has a reverse gear.We can slipslide back down to Food, Clothing and Shelter at the bottom of the stack just as easily as we can levitate to the higher reaches of spiritual bypassing.(to be fair, Abe knew this too, and his unpublished papers put “self transcendence” above “self-actualization”––so after we become someone, we’re supposed to become no one and be helpful again)But here’s Three Signs the hour’s getting increasingly late (aka: the Beginning of the End)Thing One: Clean Up Set on the Horizon Smart folks with their eyes on the horizon are warning of some serious cleanup sets heading our way. If we just sit around lollygagging on our boards, we’re going to get creamed. (a “cleanup set” is when, out in the ocean a giant wave comes and breaks further out than the ones you’re trying to surf, so if you don’t paddle your arse off to get further out to sea, it will come down on your head–just watch the video from Jaws, you’ll get it)Ray Dalio’s most recent book The Changing World Order has all sorts of wonky charts and graphs, but one that doesn’t show up online, (but is in the hardback), is a map of mortality across the last 500 years or so of history––European Wars, Spanish Flu, World Wars etc.And for each spike in deaths due to epidemics or battles, there’s an even higher spike for starvation. For everyone clipped by the first two horsemen of the Apocalypse (Pestilence and War) as many again get hosed by the...