#76 | Who are we kidding? (Ourselves, and it’s probably worth it)
"Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time." -Ruth Bader Ginsburg
We live in a time when all elites, whether on the left or the right, believe in rigid rules that say there is no alternative to the present political and economic system. - Adam Curtis
I'm happily deluded. I believe things that others suppose are improbable (or impossible). I think all people are intrinsically good (even the awful ones), that the world will get much better for everyone (even if it appears to be heading in the opposite direction). I consider optimism a glowing character trait, yet it's also dangerous. Optimism is necessarily disconnected from reality. And somewhere (I'm not sure where), there is a hard-to-find line between seeing the 'glass half full' and…
the horrors of delusion.
If Trump and then Ukraine have taught me anything, it's that people (including me) can believe literally anything—no matter how ridiculous. In the news, we see the macro-impact: Trump's January 6th coup and Russia's terrifying invasion of Ukraine are both evidence of masses of people (Republicans and Russians, respectively) being deluded. Of course, this is delusion by my standards—from my vantage point. No doubt I'm also duped.
Paul Graham recently tweeted that he can't believe people can be so stupid. I'm also surprised. But is Graham aware of when he's kidding himself, too? Our delusions aren't critiqued and unmasked in the newspapers we read (if they were, we wouldn't read them). It seems unrealistic and unfair to assume that others are more susceptible than us. It's just sometimes gullibility manifests in terrible ways.
If millions of people believe 'stupid' things with global significance, then what lies are we carrying with us that have local impact. We don't see (because it's not published) the marginal effect of small delusions on individuals, family life, friends, and work. An imaginary line is drawn between the lies; one side is naiveté, the other is a tragedy, and sometimes…
we inadvertently traverse it.
A few years ago, I watched HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis. (recommended; the soundtrack is particularly haunting). The film made a big impact on how I view the world.
The notion of hypernormalisation was coined in the 2005 book 'Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation'. Per the author's Wikipedia (my bolding):
The book focused on the political, social and cultural conditions during what he terms "late socialism" (the period after Stalin but before Perestroika, mid-1950s – mid-1980s) which led to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet state in 1991. Yurchak argues that everyone knew the system was failing, but as no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, politicians and citizens were resigned to maintaining a pretence of a functioning society. Over time, this delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy and the "fakeness" was accepted by everyone as real, an effect that Yurchak termed "hypernormalization".
Curtis's documentary declares that everyone knows our existing system is failing, but no one imagines any alternative to the status quo. This resonates; there are too few conversations about how the world 'could' be. For example, corruption in Kenya is the status quo, and it's not widely acknowledged that it's possible and preferable to rid the community of it. Similarly, climate change has been known for a century, and we (as a society and as individuals) still do very little.
Somehow it serves us not to imagine an alternative. We probably believe the world is trending in one ever more prosperous direction. This is wrong.
Our status quo is predicated on the assumption that the stock market will continue to rise 5% per annum, that inflation will be healthy at 2%, and that we'll each save enough for retirement. Yes, there will be fallow years, but generally, these assumptions will hold, won't they?
The last few years have been an anomaly. From 0 AD to the year 1000, "global output increased by only approximately 8 percent, and per capita income actually fell slightly." Over a thousand years! So, growth only began very recently. Between…
"1000–1500, … annual growth in per capita output was 0.05 percent [nothing!!]; 1500–1820 … it was 0.07 percent; and 1820–2000 … it was 1.17 percent. Within the latter period, the years from 1950 to 1973 represent a golden age, when output per person grew by 2.9 percent per year. Since then, that figure has averaged about 1.3 percent."
It's hard to imagine a world that isn't growing economically. But the status quo is one where nothing much changes from decade to decade (and century to century). Therefore, the hypernormal state (the delusion) assumes now is normal and will go on forever. It's more likely it won't.
But you should be optimistic.
I think about delusion a lot because, as an entrepreneur, it's necessary to live with one foot firmly grounded in today's reality. At the same time, the other must (with gusto) kick about in the fantasy of some invented tomorrow. I don't think it's possible to think creatively unless you are, to some extent, deluded.
So, the paradox is as follows: Some of the biggest problems we face as a civilisation are because of hypernormalisation, where we live duped, appreciating that everything is fucked, but not thinking about (and working towards) our treasured utopian ideals. We assume it will all work out when it likely won't (and certainly won't without hard work). Paradoxically, to creatively solve tremendous problems, we must, by traditional standards, be mad and believe it's possible to change the status quo! So we have to be, at least in part, unplugged from our reality. So we have to be both within reality, to note the issues, and beyond reality, to think creatively.
I am definitely deluded, but I'm unsure which side of that crazy line I sit.
Live well,
Hector