Very few things are given or assured. And they typically fall outside our control. That leaves the vast majority of the human experience, at both the personal level and on occasion at the societal scale, hanging in the balance of what has recently been described as agency. A cute word that apparently everyone thinks we can and should literally anthropologize via software—how many times have you heard of agents in the last three weeks?
I prefer to think of it as the ability to will things into existence. It is the same ability we use to make gardens: the same stubborn impulse that allows us to span, and sail oceans which we will never tame, in wooden sailboats barely equal in size to a giant squid, or a whale shark, no less.
Willing things into existence has never been about starting from zero. No one starts from absolute zero or nothingness. That capability is reserved for the divine. Yet, in our little ways, puny people have always willed things into forms and shapes that defy the idle course of nature. Our objects, institutions, governments, and social structures are either a result of collective or personal creation and constant maintenance that bend and keep Idle Nature conformed to specific and even unintended outcomes.
It is the same ability we use to make gardens: the same stubborn impulse that allows us to span, and sail oceans which we will never tame
But each person’s journey to will something into being is also an interaction with other things that are being molded by the force of another person’s or society’s resolve. So that every outcome is rarely a pure achievement. The Outcome of every creation is often the combination of several influences and the degree of flexing and/or breaking of each participant, plus the standard laws that are de facto inevitable but not inert.
I believe many people are slowly realising this at different levels, after the first two decades of the 21st century created a mostly coddled public content to go with the flow. Such that even so-called rebellion became a fadist identity.
As we settle into a new phase of being smacked with reality, here are a couple of (and by no means an exhaustive list) things I am keeping in mind, as I first will myself to make progress in bringing forth the things I was meant to.
Technology makes and breaks industries.
And industries shape societies, whether it’s the hunter-gatherer industry of the early history of man. Or the suited blokes and ladies who earn a living working in any of the 6–70 “Wall Streets” on earth. There’s a reason the human historical calendar is secularly grouped into stages of technological progress.
Each technology arrives with a chisel and hammer and leaves a radically different society when the next one arrives. Each new arrival is both a result of the labours of people to create and an empowerment for them to create the next arrival. It is not always linear, and it is not always clean-cut and tidy. But it rolls on.
You already know this. You probably also feel it already at some level, depending on your level of exposure to the Current Thing and the attendant craziness. Still, you should keep it at the front of your mind as you work through the noise of The Current Thing.
Capital trails technology
Capital is itself a sort of technology. A social sort of technology that turns things people want into effective tools for making people do things they would rather let idle and create outcomes they may or may not enjoy in a fairly predictable way. It is insanely good at this. The thing capital usually mobilises people to do usually requires technology, and also supports technology. The assembly line requires mechanical technology tools to create the cars that other people do other types of work to buy. Because of this, capital is very much intertwined with technology.
Capital is also slow and cautious. So that, while human ingenuity can invent a new tool or system rapidly, the "capital", which is made up of the money, infrastructure, specialized labor**, regulatory frameworks, and the business processes, takes much longer to reorganize itself to actually put that technology to productive use. You, I, and the rest of us 8 billion people on earth are here.
But capital can also be fast. Irrationally so at times, that it funds (monetarily) or overestimates (in human impact terms) the effect of the technology. You, I, and the rest of us 8 billion people on earth are also here.
In essence, some types of capital are slow, and some types of it are irrationally overspeeding and “overfitting” to compensate or force the slow types to move faster. The good news is we all possess some measure of capital; the trouble is, you never quite know how much you have until you begin to spend it.
You should keep this too in mind as you work through the noise of The Current Thing.
Make your capital count
To be persuaded by the noise of the Current Thing is to believe in the finality of this historical phase. It's a tempting oversimplification, and a lot of money "capital" is betting that it is true.
There's one type of capital we all possess and certainly do not equally use as well as we should. It is the thing inside your skull.
The adult human brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons and roughly 100 trillion synapses. Neurons are the "fundamental units of the brain and nervous system," 1 receiving input, firing motor commands, and transferring the signals that allow you to function each nanosecond of your life. Each neuron in your brain is actively trying to form a new connection, or replace a worn-out connection across more than 100 trillion brain "junctions". And if you're a young adult, you likely add 700 of these connections every day.
It is a biological miracle that rivals even what the best of The Current Thing can produce today, and forever, given the sheer enormity of the physical constraints involved. But you would never know if you did not try. And you might never know it, if you give in to the doom broadcast of the cult of the Current Thing and the financial and narrative bubble around it.
I'll suggest something instead. This is the part of the story when you realise that fire has been discovered, and rather than surrender to its fiery power, begin to learn to tame it, and use it, just like flint, to will things into being. Your tools are the same ones we always had. The Capital of Time and the miracle of Cognitive Ability, i.e., the native desire of 86,000,000,000 brain cells to learn new things, and shape, perhaps not the entire world, but the specific part of the planet you inhabit.
You've heard all this before. And it mattered then; it just didn't matter as much as now. When a new paradigm and the narrative power of its towncriers seem to threaten the foundations of all human progress.
To be persuaded by the noise of the Current Thing is to believe in the finality of this historical phase. It's a tempting oversimplification, and a lot of money "capital" is betting that it is true. But what is truly at stake is the very thing that makes us human: the other capital that is primal, and the stubborn desire to pit our mental and physical grit against the indifference of nature, and test the true limits of what we can will into existence in our individual space-times on earth.
You mustn’t lose sight of this. That is, a time to lay hold on your chisel and hammer and, with consideration of the bits that you cannot control, and the parts that are the exclusive preserve of God, will something really good, into existence. Life is much more exciting that way.
Feature image: The Biglin Brothers Racing, 1872 by Thomas Eakins | The National Gallery of Art
Woodruff, Alan. 2018. “What Is a Neuron?” The University of Queensland. The University of Queensland. 2018. https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain/brain-anatomy/what-neuron.
↩Very few things are given or assured. And they typically fall outside our control. That leaves the vast majority of the human experience, at both the personal level and on occasion at the societal scale, hanging in the balance of what has recently been described as agency. A cute word that apparently everyone thinks we can and should literally anthropologize via software—how many times have you heard of agents in the last three weeks?
I prefer to think of it as the ability to will things into existence. It is the same ability we use to make gardens: the same stubborn impulse that allows us to span, and sail oceans which we will never tame, in wooden sailboats barely equal in size to a giant squid, or a whale shark, no less.
Willing things into existence has never been about starting from zero. No one starts from absolute zero or nothingness. That capability is reserved for the divine. Yet, in our little ways, puny people have always willed things into forms and shapes that defy the idle course of nature. Our objects, institutions, governments, and social structures are either a result of collective or personal creation and constant maintenance that bend and keep Idle Nature conformed to specific and even unintended outcomes.
It is the same ability we use to make gardens: the same stubborn impulse that allows us to span, and sail oceans which we will never tame
But each person’s journey to will something into being is also an interaction with other things that are being molded by the force of another person’s or society’s resolve. So that every outcome is rarely a pure achievement. The Outcome of every creation is often the combination of several influences and the degree of flexing and/or breaking of each participant, plus the standard laws that are de facto inevitable but not inert.
I believe many people are slowly realising this at different levels, after the first two decades of the 21st century created a mostly coddled public content to go with the flow. Such that even so-called rebellion became a fadist identity.
As we settle into a new phase of being smacked with reality, here are a couple of (and by no means an exhaustive list) things I am keeping in mind, as I first will myself to make progress in bringing forth the things I was meant to.
Technology makes and breaks industries.
And industries shape societies, whether it’s the hunter-gatherer industry of the early history of man. Or the suited blokes and ladies who earn a living working in any of the 6–70 “Wall Streets” on earth. There’s a reason the human historical calendar is secularly grouped into stages of technological progress.
Each technology arrives with a chisel and hammer and leaves a radically different society when the next one arrives. Each new arrival is both a result of the labours of people to create and an empowerment for them to create the next arrival. It is not always linear, and it is not always clean-cut and tidy. But it rolls on.
You already know this. You probably also feel it already at some level, depending on your level of exposure to the Current Thing and the attendant craziness. Still, you should keep it at the front of your mind as you work through the noise of The Current Thing.
Capital trails technology
Capital is itself a sort of technology. A social sort of technology that turns things people want into effective tools for making people do things they would rather let idle and create outcomes they may or may not enjoy in a fairly predictable way. It is insanely good at this. The thing capital usually mobilises people to do usually requires technology, and also supports technology. The assembly line requires mechanical technology tools to create the cars that other people do other types of work to buy. Because of this, capital is very much intertwined with technology.
Capital is also slow and cautious. So that, while human ingenuity can invent a new tool or system rapidly, the "capital", which is made up of the money, infrastructure, specialized labor**, regulatory frameworks, and the business processes, takes much longer to reorganize itself to actually put that technology to productive use. You, I, and the rest of us 8 billion people on earth are here.
But capital can also be fast. Irrationally so at times, that it funds (monetarily) or overestimates (in human impact terms) the effect of the technology. You, I, and the rest of us 8 billion people on earth are also here.
In essence, some types of capital are slow, and some types of it are irrationally overspeeding and “overfitting” to compensate or force the slow types to move faster. The good news is we all possess some measure of capital; the trouble is, you never quite know how much you have until you begin to spend it.
You should keep this too in mind as you work through the noise of The Current Thing.
Make your capital count
To be persuaded by the noise of the Current Thing is to believe in the finality of this historical phase. It's a tempting oversimplification, and a lot of money "capital" is betting that it is true.
There's one type of capital we all possess and certainly do not equally use as well as we should. It is the thing inside your skull.
The adult human brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons and roughly 100 trillion synapses. Neurons are the "fundamental units of the brain and nervous system," 1 receiving input, firing motor commands, and transferring the signals that allow you to function each nanosecond of your life. Each neuron in your brain is actively trying to form a new connection, or replace a worn-out connection across more than 100 trillion brain "junctions". And if you're a young adult, you likely add 700 of these connections every day.
It is a biological miracle that rivals even what the best of The Current Thing can produce today, and forever, given the sheer enormity of the physical constraints involved. But you would never know if you did not try. And you might never know it, if you give in to the doom broadcast of the cult of the Current Thing and the financial and narrative bubble around it.
I'll suggest something instead. This is the part of the story when you realise that fire has been discovered, and rather than surrender to its fiery power, begin to learn to tame it, and use it, just like flint, to will things into being. Your tools are the same ones we always had. The Capital of Time and the miracle of Cognitive Ability, i.e., the native desire of 86,000,000,000 brain cells to learn new things, and shape, perhaps not the entire world, but the specific part of the planet you inhabit.
You've heard all this before. And it mattered then; it just didn't matter as much as now. When a new paradigm and the narrative power of its towncriers seem to threaten the foundations of all human progress.
To be persuaded by the noise of the Current Thing is to believe in the finality of this historical phase. It's a tempting oversimplification, and a lot of money "capital" is betting that it is true. But what is truly at stake is the very thing that makes us human: the other capital that is primal, and the stubborn desire to pit our mental and physical grit against the indifference of nature, and test the true limits of what we can will into existence in our individual space-times on earth.
You mustn’t lose sight of this. That is, a time to lay hold on your chisel and hammer and, with consideration of the bits that you cannot control, and the parts that are the exclusive preserve of God, will something really good, into existence. Life is much more exciting that way.
Feature image: The Biglin Brothers Racing, 1872 by Thomas Eakins | The National Gallery of Art
Woodruff, Alan. 2018. “What Is a Neuron?” The University of Queensland. The University of Queensland. 2018. https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain/brain-anatomy/what-neuron.
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