Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #74

From living more playfully to a matriarchal society, amusing ourselves to death, getting out of our heads and learning machines

THIS WEEK → 🛝 Living More Playfully 🤰 From Patriarchy To Matriarchy 📺 Amusing Ourselves To Death ➕ Getting Out Of Our Heads 🚿 Learning Machines

Rabbit Holes 🕳️

How can we build a better world? As always, here are three perspective-shifting ideas to rewild your mind and help you create a better world, plus some extras below. Enjoy!

#1 🛝 Living More Playfully

I think that we massively underestimate how we’ve internalized an unhealthy capitalist productivity ethic into all aspects of our lives and selves. Elevated by the COVID pandemic, individual burnouts have blended together, and we’re now experiencing collective burnout. The solution? A new set of economic and cultural conditions that help us live more playfully!

“For the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han, contemporary capitalist society has become an ‘achievement society’ and we, as its subjects, have become ‘achievement-subjects’. In the achievement society, we suffer from an internalised pressure to achieve – to do more, to be more, to have more. Whether we are aware of it or not, we have internalised the capitalist work ethic to the degree that our successes and failures weigh heavily on our individual shoulders. The primary result of the achievement society is burnout – the emotional, cognitive and physical exhaustion that comes from the pressure to constantly achieve.

And so, for Han, in the contemporary world, the self is no longer a subject but a project. The self is something to be optimised, to be maximised, to be made efficient, cultivated for its capacity for productive output. The worry is that all life activities become viewed as lines on a résumé. Knowingly or otherwise, we risk being constantly governed by the question How is what I’m doing right now impacting my maximally productive self? This mindset infiltrates even our personal and seemingly private moments, turning every choice and action into a strategic move in the game of self-improvement and advancement. […]

The German philosopher Moritz Schlick (1882-1936) shows us that this approach to life is a mistake. […] He argues that true meaning in life can be found only in those things that ‘exist for their own sake and carry their satisfaction in themselves,’ only in ‘free, purposeless action … which in fact carries its purpose within itself’. For Schlick, the true meaning of our lives can be found only in play.

Play is activity that we do for its own sake. It is what we call an autotelic activity – it has itself as its own goal, and it seeks no further purpose outside of itself. When we play, we are guided by the spirit of passion and joy found in the activity. In play, we are not motivated by external rewards or instrumentality. We are not driven by performance and external purpose. We don’t play to be productive or to self-optimise. We play purely for the sake of itself. In short, when we play, if it is true play, we cannot be achievement-subjects. […]

In adulthood, play is taken to be nothing more than a short respite from work, a sojourn that helps us pass the time between periods of intense productivity. But crucially, for Schlick, it is possible for our work to become play. If work can take on the creative and self-sufficient character of play, then the distinction collapses: ‘Human action is work, not because it bears fruit, but only when it proceeds from, and is governed by, the thought of its fruit … It is the joy in sheer creation, the dedication to the activity, the absorption in the movement, which transforms work into play.’ […]

Insofar as the achievement-subject is an outgrowth of the capitalist work ethic, the ‘play subject’ will have to emerge from a new set of economic conditions.

What would it mean to live more playfully? First, it would require us to reject work that is not intrinsically motivating and to build working conditions that are joyfully engaging. Second, it would require that we de-emphasise the importance of work for finding personal fulfilment and meaning in our lives. Despite work being central to who we are and how we can make an impact on the lives of others, we overemphasise the centrality of work in our lives at our own peril. Third, it would require a movement away from efficiency and productivity as primary indicators of social wellbeing. Finally, it would require that we develop the skills and capacities to play – to give ourselves over to those things that are intrinsically motivating, those things that are not ‘overshadowed by the dark clouds of purpose’.

Play can easily be dismissed as childish, irresponsible and unbecoming of the seriousness required of us modern achievement-subjects. But the demand for playful living is really a demand to reject the conditions of the achievement society. […] A call to playfulness is not an individual psychological prescription – it is a call to collective action against the achievement society.”

» Psyche | The achievement society by is burning us out, we need more play by Alec Stubbs

(This article links well with two of my most positively feedbacked pieces: Pleasure Activism and Aliveness: Reframing Productivity.)

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#2 🤰 From Patriarchy To Matriarchy

New scholars, such as Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth (cited below) and Angela Saini (whose work I shared here before), are busting myths and shedding new light on the origins of the patriarchy. More importantly, they reveal the historical importance and vitality of matriarchal societies, thereby providing a much-needed vision for what could replace patriarchy.

“Mainstream feminism has been focused on giving women more legal rights and “empowerment” with the assumption that the patriarchy will go away when more of us are CEOs and presidents. But it’s clear now that the corporate feminist dream of being able to “smash”, “lean in”, or “girlboss” our way out of the patriarchy is dead. It turns out we can’t take down the patriarchy with the patriarchy.

Modern feminism has been clear on one thing: we must dismantle the patriarchy. But it’s not clear what will take its place. It’s time for feminist thought to take a different approach. We need nothing short of a transformation of our social structures. It’s time to focus on creating a matriarchy.

Matriarchy is patriarchy in reverse, but not in the way you think. […]

A matriarchy is a social structure where women (mainly mothers) are at the center. The idea that every human being originates from a mother is reflected in the cultural norms of a matriarchal society. The Greek word -arche also means “beginning”, as in “archeology” or “archetype”. Matriarchy literally translates to “in the beginning, the mothers”. In a matriarchy, there is no top or hierarchy, there is only an inclusive circle where everyone’s needs are met.

Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth, a researcher of Matriarchal Studies, is a pioneer in looking at human history through a non-patriarchal lens. Her 2022 book, Matriarchal Societies of the Past and the Rise of Patriarchy examines archeological evidence to bring to light the groundbreaking revelation that for most of history, humans have lived in peaceful matriarchal societies. […]

According to Goettner-Abendroth, a social structure is considered a matriarchy if it satisfies all four of the following conditions:

• Balanced economic reciprocity without accumulation through a gift economy.

• Matrilineal kinship and gender equality. In other words, where the mother is the center of the household and society, and every person we interact with is equal like a sibling.

• An egalitarian society of consensus where everyone recognizes we have shared interests so we make decisions unanimously. This is in sharp contrast to the division and harmful conflict that defines patriarchal societies.

• A culture that recognizes the sacredness of life. […]

Miki Kashtan, the founder of the Nonviolent Global Liberation Community, wrote in a recent paper that patriarchy is characteristic of a “loss of trust in the flow of life”. We have now reached a point where we are so disconnected from the flow of life that we are destroying the only life we know exists.

Matriarchy, by contrast, is about giving the most and being thankful to receive the most in return. The climate crisis would never exist if we approached nature with this mindset instead. A transition to matriarchy would ensure not only joy and liberation but a restoration of trust in the flow of life. […]

The feminist cause so far has been focused on giving women the power and authority to solve their own problems. But in creating a matriarchy, the structures that uphold power and authority in the first place disappear into irrelevance. […] It is only through a matriarchy that we can live in true equality. It’s time for feminists to name the society we want. It’s a matriarchy. Not “women rule”, but “in the beginning, the mothers”.”

» CHIX | The Next Phase of Feminism is Matriarchy by Nergiz de Baere

credit: CHIX

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#3 📺 Amusing Ourselves To Death

There are articles out there that are very interesting, even mind-blowing. And then there are articles that are truly transformative, like this one. I don’t even wanna add more of a comment or intro here for this one. Please just read the entire piece (link below)! 😉

“Dystopias often share a common feature: Amusement, in their skewed worlds, becomes a means of captivity rather than escape. George Orwell’s 1984 had the telescreen, a Ring-like device that surveilled and broadcast at the same time. The totalitarian regime of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 burned books, yet encouraged the watching of television. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World described the “feelies”—movies that, embracing the tactile as well as the visual, were “far more real than reality.” In 1992, Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi novel Snow Crash imagined a form of virtual entertainment so immersive that it would allow people, essentially, to live within it. He named it the metaverse. […]

In the future, the writers warned, we will surrender ourselves to our entertainment. We will become so distracted and dazed by our fictions that we’ll lose our sense of what is real. We will make our escapes so comprehensive that we cannot free ourselves from them. The result will be a populace that forgets how to think, how to empathize with one another, even how to govern and be governed.

That future has already arrived. We live our lives, willingly or not, within the metaverse. […]

I don’t want to question the value of entertainment itself—that would be foolish and, in my case, deeply hypocritical. But I do want to question the hold that all of the immersive amusement is gaining over my life, and maybe yours.

Dwell in this environment long enough, and it becomes difficult to process the facts of the world through anything except entertainment. We’ve become so accustomed to its heightened atmosphere that the plain old real version of things starts to seem dull by comparison. A weather app recently sent me a push notification offering to tell me about “interesting storms.” I didn’t know I needed my storms to be interesting. Or consider an email I received from TurboTax. It informed me, cheerily, that “we’ve pulled together this year’s best tax moments and created your own personalized tax story.” Here was the entertainment imperative at its most absurd: Even my Form 1040 comes with a highlight reel.

Such examples may seem trivial, harmless—brands being brands. But each invitation to be entertained reinforces an impulse: to seek diversion whenever possible, to avoid tedium at all costs, to privilege the dramatized version of events over the actual one. To live in the metaverse is to expect that life should play out as it does on our screens. And the stakes are anything but trivial. […]

“All the world’s a stage” was once a metaphor; today, it’s a dull description of life in the metaverse. As the journalist Neal Gabler foresaw in his book Life: The Movie, performance, as a language but also as a value, bleeds into nearly every facet of experience. […]

My iPhone is now in the habit of transforming photographs and videos from my camera roll into mini-movies. […] What better way to encourage customers to be loyal than to tell them their life should be a movie? […]

The people on our screens look like characters, so we begin to treat them like characters. And characters are, ultimately, expendable; their purpose is to serve the story. When their service is no longer required, they can be written off the show. […]

In his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, the critic Neil Postman described a nation that was losing itself to entertainment. […] Postman saw a public that confused authority with celebrity, assessing politicians, religious leaders, and educators according not to their wisdom, but to their ability to entertain. He feared that the confusion would continue. He worried that the distinction that informed all others—fact or fiction—would be obliterated in the haze. […]

Studying societies held in the sway of totalitarian dictators—the very real dystopias of the mid-20th century—[Hannah] Arendt concluded that the ideal subjects of such rule are not the committed believers in the cause. They are instead the people who come to believe in everything and nothing at all: people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.

A republic requires citizens; entertainment requires only an audience. […]

“Are you not entertained?” Maximus, the hero of Gladiator, yells to the Roman throngs who treat his pain as their show. We might see something of ourselves in both the captive warrior and the crowd. We might feel his righteous fury. We might recognize their fun. We have never been more entertained. That is our luxury—and our burden.”

» The Atlantic | We’ve Lost The Plot by Megan Garber (archived version)

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➕ Extras

“I’ve been thinking about presence in terms of sensuality lately. About what it might mean to make love to the moment you’re in. This is a framing for presence that has unlocked some greater access to my inner being for me. This idea that living can be an act of sensuality. Being in this body, writing these words, reading them. We are doing something that only those who are living, breathing, who are alive can do. We are existing.”
Get out of your head by

Isabel

“Imagining us outside of nature is the same mistake as imagining us as having limitless mastery over it.”
Out of the Wild: Why we can’t rid nature of us by Samuel Matlack

“I can’t help but notice though that after a successful stint at building things that do scale (or at least giving it a really good, long try), many people seem to gravitate towards building things that don’t scale. I have a theory that chasing things that scale makes you need therapy, and the therapy is pursuing things that can’t scale.”
Pursuits That Don’t Scale by

Anu

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🚿 Shower Thoughts

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That’s it for this week’s Rabbit Holes issue!

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Thomas