How Do We Change Our Lives in a System That’s Broken?
Rather than fight a system designed to thwart us, we need a model for our own lives that bypasses the perverse tides and obsoletes the impediments in our path.
Everyone wants to change their lives for the better (or preserve what’s positive), and this is relatively straightforward in a healthy system with positive incentives and a transparent, productive set of rules and feedbacks.
But what if the system is broken? How do we change our lives for the better in a dysfunctional system of unearned privilege and perverse incentives? Needless to say, it’s difficult, and this is why we see a rise in inward-directed solutions.
If we can’t change the external world we inhabit, then the “solution” is to nurture an inner tranquility. It’s no wonder that Taoism–perhaps the ultimate inner-directed philosophy–arose during the Warring States era in China, when social unrest and conflict were endemic.
But what about real-world changes such as improving our health, fitness, resilience, work/career satisfaction, income security and psychological well-being? When it comes to affecting real-world changes in a broken system, it often feels like we’re swimming against the tide: the system doesn’t make positive improvements easy, despite an abundance of lip service to individual goals such as losing weight, improving our career options, etc.
There are number of reasons for this; here are a few:
1. The economy, society and systems of governance are all changing in fundamental ways. I’ve written a lot about these forces– AI, robotics, globalization, financialization, the concentration of wealth and power at the top, etc. –and how we can respond positively, particularly in my books A Radically Beneficial World and Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.
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