Rabbit Holes š³ļø #125
From nihilistic thinking to people scarcity, casino world, artificial relationships, personal health ā planetary health, shade as infrastructure, philosopher-builder, and presence engineering
THIS WEEK ā
š¼ļø Framings: Nihilistic Thinking // People Scarcity // Casino World
š Numbers: Artificial Relationships
š Re-Framings: Personal Health ā Planetary Health // Shade As Infrastructure // Technoking ā Philosopher-Builder
š§¬ Frameworks: Presence Engineering
šØ Works: Don't Tap The Glass // Soli // Future Guessr
ā³ Reading Time: 11 minutes
"You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere."
Ursula K. Le Guin
š¼ļø Framings
Naming Framing it! Giving something we all feel more prominence in a way that promotes a deeper reflection.
šµāš« Nihilistic Thinking
I have a confession: I am burned out and wondering whatās even the point of all this?! The future seems fucked, the economy is fucked, politics is fucked, the internet is fucked, society is fucked, work is fucked, my back is fucked and my financials are fucked, too. And as the author of the piece below notes: weāre grappling with all this, while weāre bombarded with an unfathomable amount of notifications and contentā¦
āIf the world is falling apart and we donāt have faith in the future, why bother working to create change, pursue our own lifeās purpose, and get up everyday and make choices that align with our values?
It may sound pessimistic, even extreme. But at this singularly weird moment of collective chaos and crisis, low-key despair is in the airāand existential questions are circulating in our psyches. As weāve discussed before in this newsletter, we are in the midst of a collective dying process; a time when itās harder to ignore the truth of our own mortality and the essential fragility of life. A quiet crisis of meaning is brewing. [ā¦]
Even as a fairly purpose-driven person with a healthy sense of meaning in my life, I have noticed myself lately slipping into nihilistic thinking. For me, it shows up mostly around my work as a writer and creative. Iāve felt a strange ennui, a sort of languid questioning of whether any of it really matters anymore. With the explosion of AI-generated content (and the general tsunami of content weāre all bombarded with on a daily basis), itās all started to feel a bitā¦. meaningless.
The magnetic pull of my thoughts keeps leading me down the path of slippery existential questions like: Whatās the point? Does it even make a difference? Who even cares? [ā¦]
This kind of questioningāabout meaning, identity, and whether any of it still mattersāisnāt just personal. Itās part of a larger cultural moment of existential disorientation, a quiet but growing crisis of meaning that emerges when the frameworks weāve long relied onāwork, community, faithāare breaking down, and nothing clear has yet emerged to take their place.
And when meaning is lost, nihilism is the result. [ā¦]
Nietzsche saw nihilism not as the end, but a beginningāa reckoning that forms an essential stage before the emergence of truer, more life-affirming values. When meaning fails, we are forced to create new meanings. And the process can actually give rise to our deepest, most authentic selvesāand the creations and works of art that reflect that. āOne must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star,ā he said.
Ā» The vibe shift is nihilism by
š People Scarcity
I am super disillusioned by the dominant discussions about migration (especially from politicians). As the global map of opportunity gets reordered through authoritarianism, climate change, and economic slowdown, what if weāre trying to tackle the āproblemā from the wrong side?
āDespite migrationās centrality to our politics and our world, nobody really understands it.
Political debate about migration today appears to be dominated by a set of assumptions: that migration will be from the global south to the global north; that the richer countries will always control the terms on which that happens; and that rich countries will always be able to pick and choose among the most talented people and turn away the rest.
But what if it doesnāt work out that way? There are plenty of reasons to believe that over time these assumptions will founder in the face of a vast reordering of the map of opportunity across the globe, set in motion by the political ferment and economic torpor besetting wealthy democracies.
Already we see the young people of many European countries leaving their homelands in search of opportunity ā many to other wealthy countries in the West but also to the rapidly growing economies in the Gulf states and Asia. As European economies struggle to grow and more people leave the work force, these trends are likely to accelerate. Trump, now the leader of the worldās most sought-after migrant destination, has proposed policies that could lead the United States down a similar path.
What leaders and policymakers in the rich world donāt seem to grasp is that the roster of countries that will need more people is growing fast, as birthrates plummet much faster than anyone expected in countries that have long been a source of migrants. Our politics revolve around the idea that scarce resources mean keeping people out. We are utterly unprepared for a world in which perhaps the scarcest resource will be people.ā
Ā» Something Extraordinary Is Happening All Over the World by Lydia Polgreen
š° Casino World
Itās not only that the economy and financial markets are becoming ever more abstract. Reality itself is āloosing touchā (little wink back at one of last weekās Rabbit Holes) with reality. The result? Casino world.
āAre we in a bubble? There is simply no way of knowing anymore. [ā¦]
Today, the book value of tangible assets represents less than 10% of S&P 500 valuations. This means that most value is tied to intangible things like code, content, relationships, and, indeed, pure hype. Such assets don't have a clear book value or replacement value. They may have cost $5 to produce or $5 million, but that tells us very little about their worth.
And so, regardless of whether markets are hot or cold, the relationship between share prices and the assets they represent is unclear.
So, how do we know whether we are in a bubble? The only way to find out is to wait and see if it pops. [ā¦] There is no simple way to determine what anything is worth, and whether the market as a whole has lost touch with objective reality. More precisely, there is no "objective reality"; the perception of value and actual value are the same thing. [ā¦]
Does this mean we're in a casino? Kind of. But even in a casino, there are strategies that can increase your chances, most notablyāpicking games that have slightly better odds, sizing your bets in a way that enables you to make multiple bets without going bankrupt, and (in some games) reading the table to try to garner information from people around you.
That last one is probably the most relevant point for our specific predicament. Unlike a casino, the outcomes in investment markets are increasingly dependent on social dynamics. Reading (or manipulating) the feelings of the crowd makes it easier to win.
It is no coincidence that the world's richest man owns the world's most important social media platform. The rest of us have more limited means, but we can still pay attention. And, most importantly, understand that traditional analysis methods provide much less information than they used to.ā
Ā» Are We In A Bubble? by Dror Proleg
š Numbers
A thought-provoking chart that perfectly captures a pivotal shift:
š§æ Artificial Relationships
Below the paywall: This is the part where I share reframings and unconventional ideas that make you see and build more regenerative, caring, and joyful systems.