The Book of Life is one of those internet gifts that keep on giving. If you haven’t read/subscribed, now is a good time! One of its articles that I read recently (though it seems to have been written a while back) was On the Dawn of Capitalism. It was about the need for capitalism to expand its scope and address the full range of needs of mankind, and uses Maslow’s needs to frame this. (Reminded me of “Currencies of Engagement @ Scale” from a while back)
The article states that companies are (vaguely) aware of this, and that’s why advertising tries to sell to us with an appeal to higher needs. But, We get promised friendship or love and end up with a 4×4 or a new barbecue set. Our materialism/consumerism is also to blame, but it is attributed to our lack of self knowledge. Capitalism, the argument goes, is capable of tackling the higher, deeper problems of life, and make us more refined, and restrained.
This thought ties in well with the book I read recently – Finite & Infinite Games. Across the spheres of life, we play finite games, with the objective to win, even as life continues as the infinite game. The former applies to individuals as well as corporations. (because, after all, humans run corporations, for now!) The only purpose (s) of an infinite game is to continue the play, (and) bring in new players. To see humanity and life as an infinite game requires a tremendous amount of maturity, and it is arguably not fair to expect it of individuals or society if one is struggling to work life out, and is constantly being bombarded by signals of others who are much better off.
But as a species, I think we are running out of time. On one side, we are fracking natural resources for what’s called ‘progress’. Despite technological advances, our physiology will not be able to adapt to potential environmental changes. On the other, the technology we create might lead to a super species that will be mightier than us. As George Dyson’s superb observation goes “In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines.”
We are inevitably moving towards what seems to be the toughest challenge we have faced. Capitalism, in its current form, has pretty much succeeded in creating a currency of engagement (money) that supersedes almost everything else, and concentrating it in the hands of a few. But (to use a semantics play from the book) unless we learn to convert that power of a few to the strength of a multitude, we might not make it. Now that is a game worthy of the planet’s smartest species.
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