This newsletter goes out to more than 1,000 ambitious frontier people. If you like it, share it with a friend or support me on Patreon!
If you want to go deeper on these ideas, apply for my online school, Roote—a community of world-class systems thinkers looking to understand and build the future.
Hey everyone!
I learned a ton in my podcast this week: #71 Yele Bademosi: #EndSARS and The Rise of Nigerian Tech.
Some background: In the last week, massive protests have erupted across Nigeria in opposition to police brutality (#EndSARS). Yele himself was extorted by the police. In the podcast, we explore the ongoing protests and Yele explains how digital technology has shaped the movement. If you’re looking to donate, Yele recommends the Feminist Coalition. And if you want to learn more about tech-enabled protest generally, check out Crypto is Networked Nonviolent Protest.
Yele and I also chatted about the rise of Nigeria’s tech scene. Yele talks about how, in 2015, $1M rounds were a big deal. Just five years later, we’re seeing Stripe acquire Paystack for $200M. And it’s just getting started! More of this to come.
————
Some reader comments this week:
1) A reader, Edmund Mills, wrote a response to my piece Carbon Offsets as a Service. His piece is titled Free your heart from climate change penitence and impotence.
This piece gives a great framework for thinking about climate action. When I tell folks that I carbon offset my emissions, there’s pushback that individual action don’t matter, I shouldn’t pay for my sins, and carbon offsets can’t be trusted. Edmund’s piece addresses all of these concerns.
He starts the piece by reframing the “personal lifestyle” argument:
In the shadow of the immense climate crisis, what difference could it possibly make to bike to work or eat less meat? The mismatch between what we’re being asked to do and the size of the problem has created disillusionment.
My goal here isn’t to add to the chorus of voices saying that you urgently need to reduce your fossil fuel emissions to prevent climate change, but rather to offer a different way of understanding and relating to these kinds of choices—one that nourishes and frees the heart, rather than saddling it with penitence and impotence.
Edmund’s “different way of understanding” is that these lifestyle choices should be thought of as precipitating paradigm change, not as one-off actions. Carbon offsets aren’t the answer, but the intention behind them is. He writes:
To reduce our carbon footprint we might be told to buy carbon offsets, a form of self-taxing. But carbon offsets are built on the geomechanical worldview and financialization of nature, and their adoption perpetuates and furthers it.
While carbon offsets are built on the mechanistic view of nature, we can self-tax for paradigm change itself.
A moderate change in behavior can create a momentum beyond just the immediate, quantifiable impact of that action.
When considered from the perspective of its direct impact on fossil fuel emissions, changes in personal consumption can seem pointless, but they can be a potent intervention to bring about paradigm change. Our choices about consumption are an element of our relationship with nature, expressed daily, and ripe for change.
Cultivating a heartfulness of practice in this way is itself a paradigmatic act—the world we’d like to bring about is one where people are motivated by genuine care for the earth and their overall impact in the world.
I agree with Edmund here. We should think of our daily actions both as their direct impacts (carbon offsets) and as what they represent about our underlying worldview (closing the loop on climate externalities).
Be the change you want to see in the world. Or rather, embody the paradigm you’d like to swim in.
To you, dear reader, what are your thoughts on self-taxing? Do you do it? Should society encourage it?
2) Another reader, Eugene Leventhal, responded to my article Post-WEIRD Nacirema Psychology. Eugene writes:
After reading your Nacirema article and I wanted to comment on one thing related to Big 5/HEXACO. I recently listened to a podcast where Spencer Greenberg described another trait missing from the Big 5—finding the humor in a situation.
If we are to shift towards a more distributed/collectivistic future, another trait we might want to explore is something along the lines of mindfulness or oneness. This would be a spectrum of how much people see the center of their life and meaning coming from them as an individual vs. from being part of a bigger collective.
Another important element of this is the willingness to recognize one’s smallness in the context of the universe and use that as a starting point to figuring out meaning in a collective (as opposed to purely pleasure-based models with much more short-term results but a lack of sustainable happiness).
Indeed, how will different people make meaning in the future? By connecting with their Deep Individual Self or the Greater Collective Self?
3) I had a couple of readers push back on my recent valorization of infinite games. As an example, one reader, Andrew Hooker, wrote:
For me the value of finite competition is to take ourselves to new limits/new heights. Direct competition, like ultimate or tennis or whatever, in its best form is a way for 2+ people to see how good they can be. There is a pressure there that does not exist in infinite competitions, and that pressure can create new levels/heights of performance/experience.
I agree with this. Finite games are helpful too :).
LINKS
1) I’ve watched a couple of documentaries recently.
First, I definitely enjoyed The Social Dilemma. It’s a good (if a bit extreme) look at how tech platforms shape our lives. Facebook wrote a formal response to the film. I also agree with much of Facebook’s response—they’ve done a ton of good work from 2016-2020. I also found Mozilla’s response helpful—they’ve showcased other folks who have contributed to this conversation (especially BIPOC folks).
Second, I loved David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet. It’s a sad look at how humans have damaged the earth over the 50 years of Attenborough’s career. He calls it his “witness statement.” It was pretty emotional for me. I found it helpful to reconnect with the emotional side of the climate crisis. Definitely recommended.
Related: a couple of “empathy with white America” movies are coming out soon. White Noise on Oct 21. Hillbilly Elegy on Nov 24.
2) Some quick COVID and election reminders/bits:
50% chance we’ll get a vaccine to 25M Americans by May 31, 2021. 50% chance we won’t.
Hundreds of thousands in China have already taken a vaccine.
microCOVIDs was recently featured on Vox and NYT. If you haven’t tried the tool yet, I recommend it!
Given all the mail-in voting in the U.S. election, prepare low expectations by thinking of it as Election Month instead of Election Day.
3) Here are the proposed new emoji for Unicode 14.0 (coming in early 2022). I love the heart hands and the biting lip. More on these emoji in my podcast next week.
4) The Onion: Amazon Offers New Blank Box Upcharge For Progressive Members To Discreetly Receive Prime Orders. Related: Nation’s Independent Bookstore Owners Announce They Don’t Have It In Stock But Would Be Happy To Order It In For You.
JOBS / OPPORTUNITIES
Join Benjamin Bratton and 30 interdisciplinary researchers in a 5-month research program, The Terraforming. Apply here by Nov 10.
Variant Fund (which is investing in the Ownership Economy) is hiring a Research Analyst.
Product Director of Anti-Disinformation at Wikipedia. Wiki continues to be a crucial piece of sensemaking infrastructure.
EVENTS
Weekly Bento (recurring on Sundays)
Effective Altruist Events Calendar (recurring)
Interintellect Salons (recurring)
The Stoa (recurring)
MUSIC
Lindy Bro Radio Show #3 is hot off the press. John and I discuss our favorite “fake free jazz” album: Well, I Should Have Learned How To Play Piano. We also look at eight songs about zombies and T-Pain’s amazing Twitch intro.
Hope you have a good week! Warmth, Rhys
❤️ Thanks to my generous patrons ❤️
Jessica Polka, Michael Groeneman, Haseeb Qureshi, Todd Youngblood, Jim Rutt, Zoe Harris, Yancey Strickler, Jacob Zax, David Ernst, Jonny Dubowsky, Brian Crain, Matt Lindmark, Colin Wielga, Samuel Jonas, Andy Cochrane, Malcolm Ocean, Ryan Martens, John Lindmark, Collin Brown, Ref Lindmark, James Waugh, Mark Moore, Matt Daley, Brayton Williams, Jeff Snyder, Mike Goldin, Chris Edmonds, Peter Rogers, Darrell Duane, Denise Beighley, Scott Levi, Harry Lindmark, Simon de la Rouviere, and Katie Powell.