Life in times of creative destruction
Doesn’t it seem to you that the world is crumbling around us? Some people are panicking. Some are desperately searching for ways of preserving the illusion of stability. Some are masterfully hiding their heads in the sand, pretending it has nothing to do with them, it is all just a conspiracy theory. Some, as usual, blame the governments (whatever those governments are). And some are enthusiastically creating new opportunities for themselves in the coming world order.
Is it really the end of the world, and what can one do about it, if one can do anything at all?
The crisis we have over our heads undoubtedly is not the first disaster in the history of humanity. And most probably, every time the world plunges into some kind of catastrophe, those who have to live through the calamity think that their crisis is the worst of all that came to be. It has its logic: when you are in pain, what’s the use for you to be aware that someone at some other time suffered more? This is your pain, your experience right now.
Maybe it is arrogance: thinking that your times are somewhat unique compared to all other periods of history, but I do believe that we undergo something extraordinary.
The talks that we pass through an undeniable systemic change, a paradigm shift, have been constant since the beginning of the century. Nowadays, only a lazy one doesn’t drop Schumpeter’s term creative destruction now and then. I must confess, I didn’t read the Schumpeter myself. I learned the term from Richard Florida’s “The Great Reset”, where he quite persuasively explained how the crisis of 2008 was not a crisis at all but a manifestation of a transition to a new way of living and doing things. At that time, we tended to “blame” technology; we said it was all about the digital revolution that turned our lives upside down. Those of us who like change looked at what was coming with optimism and hope: so many new opportunities, so much creative excitement.
It turned out it is much more than just going digital.
I think we are witnessing the global destruction of collective agreements that have been regulating our functioning within the shared system.
The first one to fall was education: remember when we began to hear all those cries that studying didn’t guarantee you any secure future anymore? Then, indeed, the digital revolution changed the game’s rules for many markets and continues to do so. The 2008 turmoil killed any trust in the banking system. Then everybody started shouting about the deceived millennials who turned out to be the first generation (or so we are told) with worse expectations of the quality of life than the previous ones. Then the pandemic undermined our confidence in the medical system. All the fuss around fake news revealed that we had lost a collective arrangement that would warrant information veracity (and no matter how the increased censorship all around the world tries to remedy the situation, I don’t think it will work). And now we see how a collective illusion of international security is destroyed too.
It all does look quite deem, indeed.
I definitely can’t say anymore that I share the same enthusiasm regarding the future I felt a decade ago. But it doesn’t mean we are all doomed. It is just that the changes the world is undergoing are so radical, and they lead us to a future so different from what we know that we simply don’t have valid criteria to judge it.
What does it leave us with? Extreme uncertainty. And that, yes, is scary as hell.
What we have lost is the system in which, if you followed certain protocols agreed upon at the collective level, every step led to an assured result. It doesn’t matter what anyone might think about the system itself or its ruin. It is no more. And we have no idea what the new system will look like. There are many speculations about that: the 2030 agenda and the evil plans of the secret world government, AI, robots, blockchain, Metaverse, climate change and world hunger, and what have you. A lot of people are losing it, thinking of our damned fate. Others are rubbing their hands in anticipation. I am actually not sure that any of the prognostics we see here and there will come true as they are.
I think the future will be so entirely unalike to all we know that we just can’t imagine it.
The only guarantee we have at the moment is that, for some time at least, nothing will be guaranteed.
All is not lost. It is difficult to learn to live in constant uncertainty. But it is possible. Possible not only to survive but to thrive and create. It requires effort. It demands arduous work. It calls for attitude change. In the theory of creative thinking, there is a term: avoiding premature closure. It is about hanging deliberately in the space of ambiguity, abstaining from any judgment, and welcoming any emerging elements as equal opportunities. When I teach my students the art of creative thinking, the usual comments I hear after they go through this ordeal are:
how difficult it is to suspend judgment but how great the results are when one makes the effort.
Someone once told me that the original term Schumpeter used for his creative destruction is literally translated from German to English as healing shakethrough. I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of it, but I like the idea. I find it extremely beautiful. And adequate at the same time. Any process of profound transformation (and I know it from my personal experience as well as from the experience of my clients) at a certain point feels like a predicament without any way out.
But when you learn to sustain this uncomfortable feeling and open to the experience, you are able to absorb its wisdom, and any obstacle turns into a great resource.
There are practices that seem critical to me for developing the skills of navigating through creative destruction.
Meditation is one of them. It is not a magic pill. Its objective is not to evade the painful reality and make yourself feel better, as many claim. Quite the opposite. It is about making full contact with reality. Meditation, first of all, is about training your attention and stabilizing your mind. Then it is about self-regulation: to thrive in unpredictability, you will need to master managing your states. And once you’ve learned to notice every little detail of your experience here and now and enter the state of deep connection with yourself and the world around you, you get access to the only guide through the incertitude: yourself. Call it intuition. Call it your True Self. Call it the soul. Call it The Essence. Call it The Source. Call it the Parasympathetic Ventral Vagal system. Call it whatever.
You are the only thing that can save you when the world around you is crumbling.
And, if your connection with yourself is deep enough, maybe you can even save the world. Who knows?
