Stark Choices Are Now Your Reality
Much AI noise is swirling.
A friend shared an article with me.
It's a hypothetical - a financial advisory note (written by a real financial advisory firm) written two years from now. It details in painstaking and plausible reality the collapse the global economy over the preceding two years. All the way back to today.
A short retelling :
Yes, to an extent companies lay off more and more people (maybe you?), with increasing velocity, as knowledge and services once provided by people are more cheaply provided by bots. Meet Claude, for those who haven't.
Negative feedback loops are exacerbated by collapsing business services.
Seemingly innocuous shifts, like your ability to strike a better insurance deal with a bot doing the work for you, catalyses into a crashed insurance market, dependent as they were on our inertia paying more for less, year on year.
Or the companies you work for and with, no longer able to sell to their corporate pay masters as bot alternatives do almost all the things expensive software intermediaries used to do for less.
Maybe you don't work for these. Or care. But the rippling affects wash quickly to your shore.
These - and much else besides - create a negative doom spiral where companies with less and less profit lay off more and more people - maybe you see this today? Know anyone unemployed? - in search of money and the maintaining of the growth illusion, necessary to appease shareholders. More and more done by AI, less and less for people.
Very quickly this creates, what the article calls, Ghost GDP: the ticker shows growth yet millions without work (9 or 10% of the workers. You, your friend or family?) or forced into work at a fraction of their previous earning potential.
That's your salary halved, drawn and quartered. What would you do?
The impacts of this are real: when people stop spending, the house of cards which is our economy tumbles all the way down. A crash, a collapse, unlike much else. In time, likely good. Yet the transition could be messy.
Hypothetical, yes. Plausible? Absolutely.
The writers don't claim this as baked in. They write to provoke action.
Amid this, it's easy to fall into a despondent stupor.
In the first instance, there's a need to hold this - and almost everything - lightly. By which I don't mean ignore, I mean hold lightly. Yes, the scenarios are real. But as is our agency and creativity and almost limitless pools of human ingenuity.
Over the years, the book I've gifted most (maybe twice. Relax) is The Wayfinders, by Wade Davis. He a wise and insightful anthropologist and writer. The subtitle is 'What Ancient Civilizations Might Teach Us Today'. As he compellingly tells, humans have been evolving through adversity for as long as we've been humans, surviving and thriving against seeming impossible odds. It is - and we are - nature at play.
And maybe this the important orientation. Nature at play.
Eric Markowitz is a writer and entrepreneur. He wrote a piece in response to another doomy future inviting us to something more; our bigger selves. Creativity. Long term thinking. Nature too.
We have a choice amid all this. How to turn up. Where and how to invest our time, or marshal our resources - whether your pocket money, or Aunty Vera or the hundreds and thousands who work for you.
To all this, I am reminded back to three great sages of modern business life.
Daoist wise soul, Lao Tzu.
Gnarly Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi.
Old Stoic writer, Seneca.
The Very Old Daoist View
First, Lao Tzu.
A whole and rich life can be lived in a small village, he allegedly said.
This is a beautiful and important sentiment. Embody the spirit of village in our work and life, and a few things happen.
We seek to know - and care for - the people we work with. Relationships are less extractive, more generative, collaborative and supportive - this a real commercial advantage at play today too, as one LeanMinder shared with me just yesterday. This is human, nature at play.
Life is a rich web of interconnection. Honour it, serve it, appreciate it. Do so, and it'll do the same for you.
And, by its nature, a village is small. We'd know each other. Which brings us to the next. Suzuki Roshi.
The Very Old Zen View
" Teacher, teacher, tell me", a desperate sounding student asked wise Zen teacher, "what is the most important thing?".
In all his gnarly Zen wisdom, Suzuki Roshi, the teacher who did much to bring Buddhism to the US in the 1960/70's, replied "the most important thing is to know the most important thing".
This about clarity and simplicity. About cutting away what no longer serves you - be it stories (of the mind), habits, people, companies, relationships. Equally though it's about how we fill our time. Is your day a mad chase through a never ending list of commitments, leaving you doing nothing very well? Or something clearer, simpler, more potent?
It's about small too. Our culture fetishes the large. Work chapters told in mountains. Rather than chase these, what if you chase small but impactful? Who knows, maybe in retrospect you'll see a history of rolling hills, bigger than the mightiest of mountains. But orientate to small, first.
And the third view.
The Very Old Stoic View
Seneca. One of the great Stoic writers, said:
We suffer more in our imagination than reality.
True true.
As we well know, our minds are hardwired to the negative. It explains the writing of articles like those above leading with doom. We can't not be compelled. Which is why how you hold this is important.
How do you sit with and hold uncertainty, ambiguity, doubt and worry?
This requires space. And a steadiness. It is a practise. It's about the ground (of your mind and heart ) you're cultivating. What you're intending towards? To agency, creativity and human flourishing? To your well being and clarity?
I'm not prescribing what you should be doing amid these tumultuous times - more the spirit of how you carry yourself, and the ideas which shape your actions.
Steadiness. Clarity. Creativity. Connection. Service. Truth. Justice. Power.
These ideas are primal. And the opportunities here much, and varied.
Eric Markowitz, the writer of the second story above, commented in a group I'm part of:
Let me be the unreasonable radical optimist in the group. This [AI] is going to be good for humanity precisely because it will force us to see how fragile things become over efficient and over optimised.
Which brings us back to nature. Maybe the best place to end.
Imperfect. Alive. Connected. And ingenious.
How will you turn up today? In service of what and who? It need not be big, but it should be spirited. Remembering that other invocation: a rich and full life is to be defeated by ever greater things. (James Hollis).
Are you?
Amen, brother.
And... a favour - if you know one person who'd benefit from this, please share 🙏
This writing, and the work of LeanMind more generally, is my response to the above: creating a place of learning and experimentation, in service of each and every reader, each and every member, and each other - shedding what no longer fits, leaving you fitter, wiser, leaner. The more who get on board, the more powerful and potent the group becomes. To that end, please share. And invite.