Man V Mob

Welcome to the start of the next 100 episodes. In this inaugural episode of season 2, Tom and I discuss the context of how the practices and attitudes from 20th century history have led to this moment. These include the Cold War, advertising, debt, the internet and unsustainable, wasteful power concentration in an economic and political system known as corporatism. We then get into how exactly information technology such as blockchain will decentralize and transform every aspect of society away from concentrated power toward interconnected innovation, empowerment, personalization and options. How it will enable ideas like universal basic income and disable the idea that a massive central authority is capable of making wise decisions and interventions on behalf of everyone. How it can merge novel and meaningful experiences with a social fabric that complexly connects humanity to family, community, environment, creativity and self both physically and digitally. The idea of an ethical and intellectual framework known as technological humanism and the Matrix subplot about the defeat of cynicism and nihilism also find their ways into this longer than usual conversation.

Centralized institutions and income are no match for the empowerment of information, networks and technology. First we must understand why our industrial era systems and their incentives are broken beyond repair before we can thoughtfully consider the blueprint of technological humanism.

Sarah returns for a conversation about how to use unexpected, stressful down time to your benefit, disengaging from trolling, willingly exposing yourself to discomforts and the recent loss of her brother Derek to addiction.

Tom and I talk about what to look out for in the emerging antipropaganda culture of active thought toppling the assumptions and mental models which compose our attitudes of complacency and resentment. Our immediate future is studded with domestic tribal political divides and geopolitical rivalries like what has emerged with Russia and China yet there is substantial room for optimism.

In the 21st year of the 21st century my resolution is to bring together minds to create the blueprints for networks of media and education which abandon thriving on propaganda, narrow-mindedness and outrage in favor of empowered engagement, collaboration and self-actualization.

One of the biggest problems with our economy is that it is a market that traffics in the single metric of monetary value. I suggest our global economy will transform into parallel economies with alternative currencies of time, attention, creativity and other exchanges. This will make it harder to dominate and monopolize because of tradeoffs. We'll be able to convert from one to any other form, transact using blockchain and most importantly define human value and the vast societal contributions beyond solely what makes the most money.

If we want benevolent artificial intelligence and a pro-human future that empowers our individual flourishing then why don't we use groups of ethical thinkers as the training data? Would this be the best way to ensure that the most considerate and thoughtfully nuanced human tendencies and patterns are the ones that influence and compose our algorithms?

Can we sustain a real-life team of renegade thinkers and empathetic vigilante ethicists who propose solutions that mediate between Washington DC and Silicon Valley? How could a new checks and balances superstructure influence prosocial innovation and policy, serve as a conduit of public engagement, empower individuals, redefine journalistic integrity and promote the new education movement? How can we prevent such a group from becoming cynical and dystopian government contractors like the Watchmen or corporatized and opportunistic merchandise like The Boys?

This isn't history with names and dates as you've been forced to learn it. In this slightly longer episode I break history down into 6 domains: paradigms, narratives, ego blows, saeculums, supercycles and alliances. After listening you'll recognize alignments and more fully understand the moment we're in right now.

This episode on why Yin and Yang need each other focuses on the complementarity of conservatives and liberals, libertarians and socialists and men and women.

Part 2 of the Cogs No More episode, this half is about how our systems of education dehumanize us and limit our capacity for self-realization.I also talk about how designers of industrial era society and politics regarded people as stupid and dangerous unidimensional masses of livestock which needed to be surveilled and managed.We have gotten so far lost from humanist ideals and its prosocial pursuit of happiness but we're finding our path back.

The feeling of being a cog in an isolating, impersonal machine was the effect of regarding emotionally complex and sociable human beings with needs as part of an industrial assembly line.As we transition to a technological society we have the chance to rediscover humanism, reassert our value and incentivize the happiness of self-discovery. Or we can shrug and let ourselves become standardized inputs in a dystopian computer. The choice is ours.

We ought to listen to wisdom backed up by thoughtfully considered experience and resolve to be less taken in by self promotion, image curation, material status, professional title, name recognition, controversy or performance.

How do we manage the simultaneous discontinuities in everything we take for granted? Geopolitics, technology, employment, socializing, democracy, wealth, influence and unifying greater purpose are all on the table and we're out of plays. Time for the next round.

What has the lost year done for our pursuits and our intimacy?

No more saving face and digging in when our strong opinions and nagging ridicule are clearly wrong. I get it—we hate looking like fools. But time for some collective crow eating.

Thoughtful consideration before logging new information in our brains is a conscious effort, but one that will lead us back to sanity. I talk about the role of insecure resentment frequently beneath imposing strong beliefs on others and our optimal conditions for the growth of conspiracies.

If we filter out the absurdity, this is a moment that demands our critical thought and creative instinct. In this episode I state the case for the creative and logistical instincts that must come together next in order for the meeting of minds and the technological humanist narrative to become a unifying reality.

Alex and I talk about the personal growth in turbulent times and the necessity for great minds to come together.We consider that a modern convention of diverse intellectual, interpersonal and technological thinkers will design the retrofit systems, amendments, ethical framework, institutional incentives, new narrative and forward vision for our transition toward the tech humanism of the 21st century.Imagination and empathy required.

This short episode is to give you something different to think about as the political battles rage in the background. We regard travel, wealth and age as indicators of success and wisdom. Can we think outside these flawed metrics of life experience?

The slow food movement has discovered that decades of fast food has destroyed our bodies and a more conscious intake of natural ingredients and nutrients is the best solution.The emerging slow media movement is a response to the realization that we've destroyed our minds and social fabric through decades of consuming fast media infotainment outrage soundbites. We're coming to realize that the best solution is a steady intake of longer, more thoughtful media content, slow conversation and nuanced information.Additionally, despite the constant analysis that we are living through the chaos and destruction of the end times/end of empire/end of capitalism, we are actually living through the discomfort of metamorphosis and new creation. Welcome to the dawn of technological humanism.

After traveling through Appalachia and the Deep South, I return with some insights and opinions about rural and southern industrial America. Plus after my visit to Scientology headquarters in Clearwater, I ponder why the Church isn't prosecuted as the cult it truly is.

For the decades between World War II and the internet, confident bullshitting and monstrous ego were respected attitudes of the aspiring and accomplished before fact checking and infinite information complicated the story.Grey and I talk thriving in an information dense environment, overcoming the neurotic sense of being aware of and complicit to ever worldly disaster, nuanced moral tradeoffs, societal actualization and the seemingly inverse cyclicality of crises with progress.

Investigative journalist and author Gerald Posner has been on the podcast before to discuss his latest book Pharma. This time we dig into one of his all-time classics, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.If you think you know what happened, even if it's after years of research, Gerald's findings will challenge your sense of historical record, media reporting and speculation's role in contributing toward public distrust.Fascinating and deeply relevant to the social and political climate of today, this conversation addresses the appeal of conspiracy theories. It also demonstrates what meticulous evidence-gathering can reveal. Vitally, this includes a profile of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man himself, a side note now brought to the forefront of the story.Bonus: Check out this immersive virtual reality of Dealey Plaza combined with the Zapruder film. Best viewed on smartphone.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whBmXPaChh4

The data shows immense progress and many trends worthy of optimism but we're addicted to consuming dread and anxiety. Go figure. How distorted is our sense of reality?White supremacy ought to be treated as terrorism just like Islamic fundamentalism. However, we must use cautious nuance so that overly broad and reckless use of labels doesn't alienate, creating more recruits.How can we positively harness our need for narrative, validation, victimhood, superiority, heroism, redemption from humiliation, identity and self-worth?

I end my multi-part trip recap with the quirkier visits, offbeat conversations, profound podcast playlist and MVP travel companions.

We're shifting from an industrial to a technological society of abundance, meaningful experience, creative leisure and complex collaboration.How can we ensure that we don't repeat the ignorance, arrogance, hatred, suppression, scapegoating, bigotry and violence that defined much of the transition from agriculture to industry 150 years ago?

My laptop survived being locked in the trunk of a black car in Death Valley, so the podcasts will continue.This is my first recording since I returned from a month of solo driving 12,000 miles across the northern and southern United States. Why did I do it? What did I see?

If the twin liberal concepts of capitalism and democracy have always been fictional ideals, what is the system we actually have? What assumptions about the public supported these ideas? Do voters really have influence or is the citizen a cameo in an elaborately orchestrated hoax?The changing world and its vastly improved knowledge will require 21st century notions of governance and its limitations. A new convention of compassionate thinkers will bring the blueprint together.

How is one supposed to set and achieve goals when everything is uncertain at the same time? Where is one meant to focus their time an energy when the playbook has been thrown out?

Considering the loss of faith in and impending collapse of familiar institutions, what could a new media and higher education network merged with technology look like?

The first came from Copernicus. The second came from Darwin. We're living through the dawning humility of the third realization right now. How can we use it to be better than we've been?

As humans evolve, so do our social attitudes and morals. Ten years from now, what is the number one current behavior that we'll look back on in disgust? Incarceration and factory farming are runners up to the top spot.

Let's talk about forced stereotypes, the motivation of boredom, suspiciously overeager shamers, binary violations and the perverse comfort in conspiracies.

Did we turn the old carnival exploitation of physical deformity into modern ratings dependence on conflict starring the mentally ill and deranged?

For decades being a company man who dissolved into a corporate structure, committed to being reliably conformist and not saying anything controversial, was the most secure way to climb the ladder to success and own material status.In a time of transition this will suck you down into the mud. Abstract ideas, critical thought, creativity, collaboration, adaptability, leadership, emotional intuition and daring are the tools of opportunity and purpose as old structures and ways of thinking tumble down.

The chain reaction of COVID, student debt default, college and university institutional collapse, resistance against new bailouts, simultaneous elections, desperation and mob rage will round out this bullshit year. 2020 will become 2008 on a much larger scale.Keep yourself smart. Converse, connect, create and pay attention to opportunities for implementing a new networked, intelligent era. The future depends on it.

The race conversation, as we've repeatedly said for years, needs to happen. But why are we so bad at it? How can we advance and make an emotional topic more sophisticated?In this episode I inject some context and nuance to the lazy back and forth lobbing of casual insult and accusation. This includes institutional, cultural, individual intellectual and historical critiques.If you're challenged by what I say, pass it along. Through engaging again, we will rise above and beyond this low moment.

Only thought and collaboration will defeat totalitarianism in it's cruel or protecting forms.If you're unfamiliar with the concept of dystopia, listen to this explanation of how vision can turn to control in the context of two classic stories.

In a world lacking markers of adulthood, principles, emotional regulation and accountability how do boys and girls become men and women anymore?Perhaps mental maturity ought to overtake physical age and status in our more rigorous modern definition?

There are 3 domains, among others, where the wisdom of recent generations is already obsolete: college education, career selection and home ownership.How has and will following this advice as if it still applies lead us toward indebtedness and misery? Breaking recent dogma is your best bet for a functional future.

It's adapt or die when your 20th century systems no longer match your 21st century reality. Perhaps we ought to bring education and knowledge out from behind credentialed walls and promote creation through access to ideas. Just a thought. 

Have you used any COVID time to think about the tough questions of whether what you do is worthwhile or if our social systems and institutions function in reality anymore?This short episode is about using a loose network of stimulating thought and conversation instead of rigid, corrupt and outdated media and education structures.I also introduce a less violent and compulsive crisis frame of mind—being an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary.

We're hooked on outrage and junk, reality tv over reality and fast-tracking ourselves to mental implosion. Be more selective and considerate in your varied content consumption, strengthen your filters and combat mental obesity.

Each generation grows up with different cultural, economic, political and technological factors defining their understanding of the world and the momentary snapshot of the system as it exists.Increasingly, looking to chart your course based on static perspective and what your parents did or approve of will not correspond with reality and will grind you into dust between the gears of change.

Our data will be used to tailor a more personalized existence including education and medicine. The tradeoff is a shift from human labor to professions of abstract intelligence.The great project of the 21st century will be facilitating collaboration of minds in getting the most people possible aboard the rocket on which humanity is about to take off.

If human conciousness is our ability to contstruct narratives from our sensory data, we must protect these narratives from ego hijacking and collapsing into conspiracy.

Our need to be entertained takes on disturbing undertones where it crosses mental illness and politics.

The third and final short episode talks about the recent past, the near future and the further future.Good news: there's land on the horizon. Bad news: we're about to swim through years of stormy seas to get the updated story and renewed civic purpose which will initiate our next phase of development.

What are the ideas behind what divides us? Another short episode, this one goes way back and gets into the important lessons of the 20th century that most of us never learned.

As the two dominant ideologies of our social systems, we probably ought to know more about them than we do. In this brief episode I explain what defines each and where they seem a lot like each other.How do shameful histories, attitudes about jobs programs, annoyance patterns, pejoratives and intersectional individuals unite these coalitions?