Describing the Water
In 2005, David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech to the graduating class of Kenyon College. He started with a short parable:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
His point in this parable is to bring to attention that often, the most common and important things are usually never discussed or never spoken at length about. I want to attempt to describe them, even though I know I will fail at this impossible endeavor. I want to apologize in advance if (and most likely, when) I get something wrong. This is mainly for me to understand how I got here today, where we came from, and where we can go in the future.
I am sitting at my computer scrolling through Reddit. I see a post about some injustice a corporation has done to the masses. The people in the comment section are understandably shocked and angry. What I have described is something so common -- sitting at a desk, scrolling through a website, and reading the comments -- I don't even need to say it out loud; it's trite, even. But let's take another look.
The Macbook I'm using was designed by Apple and manufactured through a complex global supply chain spanning 6 continents. It is powered by electricity that was once fossil fuels extracted from the ground and went through a pipeline most likely coming from OPEC. It seems like things got complicated real fast. One part of this lifestyle can be attributed to the Bretton-Woods financial system. Around the end of World War II, the Allied nations sent delegates to discuss how to rebuild the world financial system. A couple of ideas were tossed around but ultimately, (since the U.S. had a lot of influence at this time) it was decided that countries "should peg their currencies to the United States dollar, and that the dollar would remain pegged to gold at a fixed exchange rate, and redeemable for gold to foreign central banks" (Alden, 2023). This is key because it allows corporations to have a uniform currency throughout a complex supply chain, like manufacturing a Macbook for example. Doing business is faster and easier if everywhere you go, everyone is using your currency. The Bretton Woods system also kept the peace. Because the economic pie gets bigger every year for most participating countries, instead of squabbling about land or resources or money, countries are more inclined to work together to mutually assure success.
In addition, during the oil shortage of 1973, Nixon started discreet negotiations with Saudi Arabia leadership attempting to persuade them to sell oil only in U.S. dollars. This is also key to many processes that we take for granted today and that help us live in this particular way today.
The United States would buy a lot of oil from Saudi Arabia and sell a lot of military equipment and aid to them in return. The United States would, by extension, also use its unrivaled naval power to ensure that the Strait of Hormuz would remain open for global oil trade, since that is how the U.S. would get its oil as well. (Alden 130)
It is important to observe how crucial geopolitics has been to the U.S. Access to cheap oil has been paramount for the manufacturing of goods and services, which leads to consumer spending. Because consumer spending accounts for almost 70% of the U.S. GDP, you can bet that U.S. leadership has put a lot of effort in keeping this wheel turning (i.e. the rise of the Petrodollar, the war in Iraq, stamping out oil trading not using U.S. currency, etc.). I believe that anything that makes the U.S. population spend more, like advertisements, like social media, like keeping-up-with-the-Jones’s, the better it is for the stock market, for investors, for 401k's, for corporations, and for politicians. That's why Americans overspend, have credit card debt, and ultimately, seek a lot of these dopamine-inducing activities. That is why we feel like cogs in a machine -- that it is so hard to stay off social media, that it feels like we have no control over some parts of our lives. It's because there have been systems in place for decades, if not a century now, to optimize for consumption at the detriment of individuals', environmental, and species health. All of this is not right, but I no longer blame only myself for spending more time than I care to on the internet.
From one perspective, I see why all of this is so important. Things must keep growing. If everyone's economic pie is not increasing, there will be conflicts as was the way throughout most of our history. Our retirement accounts (if you have one) are dependent on this exponential economy. But we cannot sit here and think that this is largely the perspective of what a human life is for nor should we think that this system makes sense. Because it doesn't. Nothing on this earth keeps growing forever -- which is what our financial system is built upon, growth at all costs. It reminds me of what Iain McGilchrist says about the left hemisphere:
[The left hemisphere allows us] to re-present the world in a form that is less truthful, but apparently clearer, and therefore cast in a form which is more useful for manipulation of the world and one another. This world is explicit, abstracted, compartmentalised, fragmented, static (though its 'bits' can be re-set in motion, like a machine), essentially lifeless. From this world we feel detached, but in relation to it we are powerful. (McGilchrist, 2019)
The left hemisphere's principal concern is utility. It is interested in what it has made, and in the world as a resource to be used. It is therefore natural that it has a particular affinity for words and concepts for tools, man-made things, mechanisms and whatever is not alive. (McGilchrist, 2019)
Our global financial system feels like this. It is as if our collective left hemisphere has made this global economic system to help us, to manipulate the world around us, and to optimize for utility. It feels like we have built this make-believe system which sort of represents the world; it's not the Truth but it gets us closer to it than not having it. It does a good job at getting everything partially right but where we get into trouble is when we start believing that the model is the world. Growing at all costs doesn't match up with reality and I would argue it is a pretty big caveat to remember. Daniel Schmachtenberger said it best: that we have an "exponential economy on a linear materials economy that is taking non-renewable resources and turning it into un-processable waste that can't degrade on human timescales".
Let's talk about the electricity that is powering that Macbook. Nate Hagan's video on his channel provides a new perspective of what it means for humans to have discovered fossil fuels, which are plankton and plant compounds that have been underground for millions of years. Suddenly, we had the capacity to do exponentially more. Hagans says "when combined with a machine, a gallon of gasoline could output the same work in a few minutes as a person laboring for an entire month". Now if that isn't magic, I don't know what is! Suddenly, new possibilities emerged in all sectors in our world, from the military to travel to domestic households to how we work. The result of this energy was equally as optimistic with high profits, high wages, and cheaper goods. But we all know from 5th grade science class that fossil fuels are non-renewable. It took millions of years to create and cannot be renewed on human timescales. Instead of treating it as a windfall of money, we've actually created this huge, extravagant, prodigal global economy on top of it, where we can no longer live without this energy. Not only that, energy is extremely tied to GDP and we need it to grow by about 3% every year.
You may be thinking that we are making progress with green energy but there are a whole host of issues to contend with, namely Jevon's paradox (efficiency improvements can sometimes lead to increased consumption rather than the intended conservation) and that renewable energy is not really renewable because the materials needed to make a solar panel still needs to be processed with fossil fuels as of 2025.
This predicament is nothing short of intriguing. That we have managed to sit our entire global economy on something so fragile. That we didn't realize how precious fossil fuels are. And that most importantly, it has disastrous effects on the environment over time. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been providing Assessment Reports commenting on the state of the climate since 1990. And each year, global temperatures have gone in the opposite direction of what we desired. The interesting thing is that many governments around the world set out to stop this and yet it can't be stopped. I believe that most people's ideal world doesn't involve animals going extinct or plastics proliferating our oceans. It reminds me of someone who is trying to eat clean but keeps going back for ice cream every night. It is a superorganism, as Hagans calls it, that has a mind of its own, like a runaway train. There are no solutions yet and this phenomenon runs deep, runs quite possibly to the core of who we are as humans at this period in time, I believe.
So back to the Reddit post and the unjust ways of the corporation. Injustices are all over Reddit. The people at the top all seem evil or at the very least out-of-touch. But I believe there are more factors at play here than the simple fact that politicians and businessmen are greedy. They may be that but there is also this concept called the multipolar trap where an individual of a certain industry, for example, will do a thing that will have negative consequences for everyone involved but the individual will gain an advantage. It will force everyone to also adopt that thing in order to keep up or else be outcompeted. But overall, it is a net negative for the entire population.
A concrete example might be facetuning, which is the process of editing your photos and videos using artificial intelligence to reshape and enhance your face and/or body for social media content. Once a few people do this and at first, gain an advantage and more views, then more and more people who seek to increase their following will make the decision to try it on their photos. Soon, everyone who wants more of a following or engagement will be forced to adopt facetuning. Not one person is actively imposing their will on others but it is in everybody's interest to facetune. In the end, no one is better off (one could argue they are worse off); it's just that now everyone has another step they have to do before posting a photo and on a more serious note, the general public could be more susceptible to body dysmorphia, eating disorders, etc. Or let's say with artificial intelligence, a CEO of a successful tech company is privately nervous about the rise of AI and doesn't want to explore into the space. Yet, he has a fiduciary responsibility to his shareholders and also if he doesn't jump on the bandwagon in a timely fashion, all of his competitors will and thus render his company obsolete. So even though he doesn't necessarily want to or he personally thinks it's risky, the decision is already made; he must dive into AI in order to survive in the industry. This is the multipolar trap.
I believe this goes on in all sorts of different competitive industries. And I believe that injustices happen sometimes due to these multipolar traps. Sometimes, companies do not properly take the time to complete a comprehensive risk analysis on their new product because 1) it may take years and 2) they feel like they have to move fast -- faster than their competitors. It seems to lead to a lot of egregious mistakes that turned into big scandals for corporations and even worse conditions for the general public.
I know this has been all doom and gloom and the future seems hopeless. But it's important to name and describe our world and how we got here. It has been fascinating to learn about these subjects and I feel like I can relate to what is going out there internally within myself. The reverberations of this global order is strong and it sucks everyone in -- to buy more, for example, or to question whether you are pretty enough or to play the role of the CEO. We've got to remember what makes us human. We are not just computers that make game-theoretic decisions. An AI will never make any meaning out of dancing with a partner. An AI will never make any meaning out of feeling the ground beneath their feet or smelling the salt in the air at the beach or having any sort of embodied experience. The path forward doesn't involve the same headspace as before. It doesn't involve thoughts like:
What is the next step forward?
Why are we so stupid?
How do we undo the last 70 years?
It involves more of these things:
dancing
music
poetry
spontaneity
sacredness
meditation
art
imagination
intuition
I know these things above are not the answers you're looking for and perhaps you're abhorred by what you just read since they’re ooey-gooey and "dumb" and non-answers. But obviously, if someone has figured out climate change and multipolar traps, they probably wouldn't be writing about them in a blog. They'd be actually, you know, solving them in the real world. The most important thing about the list above is that they give us a new perspective; they shift our focus from a linear, logical way of thinking to something that is implicit, whole, and creative. That is what we need more of moving forward.
Alden, L. (2023). Broken Money. Timestamp Press.
Mcgilchrist, I. (2019). The Master and His Emissary : The Divided brain and The Making of the Western World. Yale University Press.