I read a lot of articles, quite a few book summaries, and a fair amount of actual books. I love few things more than digesting a good blog post or quality book. And if I was asked to recommend just one thing I've read over the past year, Tim Urban's series "The Story of Us" on his blog "Wait but Why" would be it-- hands down. Here's the link: https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html
The reasons for this selection are many. First and foremost, the topic is one of utmost importance: the underlying reasons why our society is heading in the wrong direction. Urban deconstructs the psychological, historical, cultural, anthropological, and technological dynamics that have brought us to our current state of affairs-- which by his and most other accounts is the brink of societal collapse. The number of mental models I gained or reinforced as a result of reading this series by far exceeds any other collection of writings in my recent memory. And I can't think of another series with as many "aha" moments as this one. And finally, like most of Urban's writing, it's fun to read. Hilarious, even.
Though a summary would take far too long, a couple takeaways I will mention is that the level of consciousness of individuals, organizations, political commentators, news outlets, political parties, and politicians matters far more than where on the "right/left" spectrum they are. Is their "higher mind" (symbolized by the guy with the turquoise light above) in control? Or is their primitive mind (you guessed it-- the orange flame-carrying blob) calling the shots? Another idea is that confirmation bias, rather than truth, becomes the driving force when the primitive mind takes over an individual or a group, which instigates a feedback loop which becomes ever more difficult to break as time goes on.
Urban isn't actually finished with the series, either. In the two final posts, it seems that he intends to offer his prescriptions for how we can break the cycles that have fractured our society. If you get a chance to read the series up to now, I think you'll be anticipating this as much as I am. Happy reading!
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| Below, I do explain this picture. |
The reasons for this selection are many. First and foremost, the topic is one of utmost importance: the underlying reasons why our society is heading in the wrong direction. Urban deconstructs the psychological, historical, cultural, anthropological, and technological dynamics that have brought us to our current state of affairs-- which by his and most other accounts is the brink of societal collapse. The number of mental models I gained or reinforced as a result of reading this series by far exceeds any other collection of writings in my recent memory. And I can't think of another series with as many "aha" moments as this one. And finally, like most of Urban's writing, it's fun to read. Hilarious, even.
Though a summary would take far too long, a couple takeaways I will mention is that the level of consciousness of individuals, organizations, political commentators, news outlets, political parties, and politicians matters far more than where on the "right/left" spectrum they are. Is their "higher mind" (symbolized by the guy with the turquoise light above) in control? Or is their primitive mind (you guessed it-- the orange flame-carrying blob) calling the shots? Another idea is that confirmation bias, rather than truth, becomes the driving force when the primitive mind takes over an individual or a group, which instigates a feedback loop which becomes ever more difficult to break as time goes on.
Urban isn't actually finished with the series, either. In the two final posts, it seems that he intends to offer his prescriptions for how we can break the cycles that have fractured our society. If you get a chance to read the series up to now, I think you'll be anticipating this as much as I am. Happy reading!
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