Select text to annotate, Click play in YouTube to begin
00:00:00
with the rise of artificial intelligence we are facing a new kind of economic Paradigm that is emerging now I want to emphasize that this is brand new uh it is still emerging but the purpose of
00:00:13
this video is so that you understand the changing nature of economics and how this is going to uh ultimately play out uh in the long run now when I say long run I mean decades and you know over the
00:00:26
next Century really uh because uh as you'll in this video the current economic paradigms that have been driving Society for at least the last half a century uh are rooted in philosophical paradigms that are a
00:00:39
century old or older and so basically what happens is as the philosophical paradigms of a society changes this uh Alters the assumptions and goals and priorities of that society and that
00:00:52
Civilization and then that is later reflected in economic and philosophical and social paradigms and so basically Ally what I am going to shine a light on is the changing philosophical and
00:01:04
intellectual paradigms that will eventually have knock on effects um on the broader uh world but I will also point out U ways that this new paradigm is expressing itself already so you
00:01:16
probably have seen a rise in influencers and Tik Tok Travelers and you know pretty young women and other people launching YouTube channels about lifestyle and cottage core and all that other fun stuff and of course like gets
00:01:30
kind of you know ridiculed by some people particularly older folks um that are like oh whatever you know girls just have to take pictures of their butts and then they're you know famous or whatever um but there is something deeper going
00:01:43
on here especially with some of the more thoughtful creators who are exploring alternate ways of life they have checked out of the Rat Race and they are moving to the countryside or traveling or
00:01:54
whatever and in many cases they are some of them are very poor some of them are doing very well for themselves um but what is happening is this is what is called the meaning economy so over the
00:02:07
last century the world has pivoted to an economic productivity focused model and as productivity has gone up over the last decades uh satisfaction with life has gone down now this is somewhat
00:02:19
paradoxical because by most objective measurements we are doing much better today than we have ever been doing in terms of material wealth and you know access to healthcare and you know
00:02:31
longevity and all kinds of other stuff however we find that this life that is focused on productivity above all else is somewhat empty and so because of that we have this dir of meaning we have this
00:02:45
scarcity of of this the most precious commodity which is a sense of meaning and purpose and so this is basically the rejection of the busy holic Rat Race now of course there's plenty of ticktockers
00:02:58
and influencers and in instagrammers who are just doing it for the clout and um they're doing it for the fame and they're not really sure why they're successful um having talked to a few influencers and stuff at this point um
00:03:12
they often don't know what they're selling they often don't understand the their appeal factors and so it's like we just know from the patterns like you can see what's trending um you can see that you know lifestyle Cottage cores you
00:03:25
know other stuff they Trends these are patterns and people can jump on the B wagon but part of it I'm not saying that the entire phenomenon is explained by the meaning economy but certainly some of it is being driven by underlying
00:03:38
philosophical changes that have to do with generational changes so let's unpack these to understand how we got here you need to understand that the West is facing a death of meaning and so
00:03:50
the death of meaning in what I mean by this is that uh the rise of nihilism in the late 19th and early 20th century followed by the um by the rise of
00:04:02
postmodernism which I think that I think that is not by accident that nihilism was followed closely by postmodernism because nihilism is basically the rise of secularism and the idea that um that
00:04:14
our traditional you know sources of meaning are going away the way the dinosaurs and then when you lose that grounding when you lose that anchoring all truth all meaning loses its meaning uh its anchoring its grounding and then
00:04:27
you end up with postmodernism and and the current uh hyperfixation on economic productivity above all else I personally believe is an intrinsically nihilistic and postmodern uh fixation because it's
00:04:39
like well we don't have God anymore and we don't have any higher values so let's just worship money uh let's just warship productivity okay cool uh so that's that's the tldr of where we're at now
00:04:51
what I will point out is that this is primarily a western phenomenon not that the East doesn't have its own issues um but that many East Eastern cultures have been anchored by taism for many many
00:05:03
hundreds of years um and that taism is serves for them what big God serves for us and it is so deeply ingrained in many Eastern cultures such as uh particularly Japan and China which are two very large
00:05:17
powerful Nations um that they it it it it's almost implied it's implicit it's not explicitly discussed but that serves as a um as a philosophical intellectual and and spiritual grounding and anchor
00:05:31
for those societies and so I suspect that while they have some of their own issues that the death of meaning is not one of them so speaking of the East um basically as I just mentioned uh taism
00:05:45
and and its Downstream effects uh you know the influence of of taism Buddhism and Confucianism are very very pervasive and profound in eastern cultures and have been around for hundreds of years in some cases thousands of years um and
00:05:58
these are relatively stable and so one way to one way that it was articulated in a book that I read is that philosophy serves for the Chinese what religion serves for the Americans or the
00:06:10
westerners and so because of this kind of uh durable uh satisfied need uh the easterners uh particularly Chinese and Japanese haven't needed to turn to other
00:06:23
narratives um such as you know focusing on politics economics science and other social phenomenon instead they have a much deeper spiritual grounding that is not dependent upon um you know relying
00:06:36
on the judeo-christian god which is you know for all intents and purposes kind of going out the way of the dinosaurs particularly when you look in Europe Which is far more secular than America but even then secularism is definitely
00:06:49
on the rise in America and when we don't have something to replace it with we're kind of we're kind of lost in the Lurch so this leads to what I call the nihilistic crisis which again is primarily a western phenomenon but this
00:07:02
is the end result so you know how how you've heard of uh probably late stage capitalism the late stage capitalism is the idea that um that the system of capitalism kind of intrinsically Trends towards some attractor State some final
00:07:15
form and that there's all kinds of signs that we are in late stage capitalism likewise the nihilistic crisis I believe is the end stage of the combination of nihilism and postmodernism and it is codified by what
00:07:29
what I call the four abandonments so you might think of it as the Four Horsemen of nihilism um rather than of the Apocalypse so let's get into those the first abandonment is childhood abandonment and so basically what
00:07:41
happens is because we live in a nihilistic Society because we live in a postmodern Society where there is no meaning Beyond productivity what do we do we make choices to to have dual income homes where children are raised
00:07:54
by TV screens and after school programs and they spend very little time with their family this level of emotional alienation and isolation sets children up to one expect and tolerate emotional neglect and
00:08:07
abandonment but it also forces them to perpetuate and buy into the system just by by virtue of that's what everyone is doing and it's what is needed to get by and so this has the the nihilism and
00:08:20
postmodernism has has altered our family structures so instead of living in multigenerational family units or small tribes we now live in um nuclear family homes and suburbs that are very very
00:08:32
structurally isolating um and this leads to a profound deep and pervasive sense of neglect and leaves children IL equipped for the emotional demands of the world as well as the intellectual and spiritual trials that they'll face
00:08:46
which is my generation the Millennials um and probably it seems like even to a greater extent gen Z because man they seem like they're even worse off than us Millennials are the second abandonment is what I call social abandonment so
00:09:00
when you have entire generations of children raised under nihilism and under postmodernism you end up with a self-perpetuating pattern where because they they experienced and learned to tolerate a tremendous amount of
00:09:13
emotional neglect and abandonment and spiritual deprivation in ch in childhood they carry this expectation forward into adulthood and actually perpetuate it it ends up in their social patterns in
00:09:24
their voting patterns in their economic patterns in the business decisions that are made and so this leads to a self-reinforcing cycle of Abandonment and disconnection that is pervasive across all layers of
00:09:37
society I suspect that because we've now had several Generations um in the nihilistic world and in the postmodern world which really nihilism started in like the 1850s and and and uh early
00:09:50
1900s but postmodernism really took off after World War II so we've now had about 60 70 years of postmodern modernism and so that's enough to have two or three full Generations that have
00:10:03
experienced this lack of meaning and so this is I I suspect why gen Z is in even worse shape than Millennials so for you gen Z folks out there watching I hope you get a lot out of this and I think we have the solution uh it's going to take
00:10:16
some time to establish these social trends because one thing that I'll say is that even if we individuals have the solution or have part of the answer it's not going to make a difference until these Trends play out uh over the coming
00:10:29
decades and of course hopefully it doesn't take decades to solve the problem but it might the third abandonment is what I call Cosmic abandonment and so as we shift away from big God religions of Christianity
00:10:41
Judaism and Islam all the big God desert religions we we have to come to terms with a an indifferent Universe with a seemingly cold and empty Cosmos uh which
00:10:53
just doesn't care and so the abandonment and spiritual absence that we have felt from childhood and in society is now also reflected in our view of the cosmos
00:11:04
of the universe r large and so this is this leaves us feeling like wow there's nothing our childhood was empty our society is empty and the entire universe is empty it is very easy to have a
00:11:17
narrative or a worldview that just sees everything is completely meaningless I have talked to uh quite a few people that say oh well nihilism is obviously the truth it is obviously the way and I
00:11:29
suspect that if you were to ask many um Chinese and Japanese people they would kind of laugh at that um because they have a different fundamental relationship with the universe and the environment and nature as as a student of Eastern philosophy and culture and
00:11:42
spirituality I'll say like the universe is anything but empty um Society is anything but empty uh but people unironically believe in nihilism um and so I will be I'll be unpacking this uh
00:11:55
more and more in the future and also I want to take a quick pause this to like okay what does this have to do with pragmatic progressivism and what this has to do with with progressivism is understanding that um the world is
00:12:07
shrinking and so you know America and China are in tension and the the new Cold War the Cold War 2.0 is is heating up and so part of navigating to a more peaceful and prosperous future for the
00:12:20
entire planet means having uh cross-cultural pollination so cross-pollination uh across continents between the East and the West I think it's going to be really important for for finding common ground and um while
00:12:33
there's things that America does well and and things that America does poorly um likewise I think that China is very complimentary to us um I think that they have solved some problems that we haven't we have solved some problems that they haven't and I think that we'll
00:12:46
be better if we join forces now also I think that the lessons that we can take from the Chinese about meaning about our relationship with the cosmos um will serve us very well and will also bring
00:12:58
us closer to them and I think that we can probably navigate the future um in a very diplomatic way so the fourth abandonment is basically when the the first three
00:13:11
abandonments culminate in a lifetime of Abandonment and neglect and emptiness you become just completely overwhelmed by despair devoid of Hope and this is why people just buy into nihilism the
00:13:24
people who unironically believe in nihilism um I consider this a form of self-abandonment because they've basically given up hope this is a form of learned helplessness so this leads to what I call Post nihilism so post
00:13:37
nihilism is basically the realization that nihilism in all of its forms including optimistic nihilism are unsatisfying and unhelpful but it's also the recognition that we need something
00:13:49
else so this recognition that we need something else is the foundation of the meaning economy so this is why uh we're obsessed with Tik Tok culture and Instagram culture and YouTube culture and cottage core and all of these other
00:14:02
things is because we are so hungry for meaning and connection and we say you know what we tried optimistic nihilism we tried existentialism none of it worked none of it was enough and so now we need something else I don't have the
00:14:15
tenants of post nihilism yet I haven't fully codified this but I know that it's a thing that we need it is a direction it is the ligh house on the horizon that I'm working towards um but one of the key things that I want to point out as
00:14:27
to why optimistic nihilism is an abject failure is because it asserts that there is no meaning so you are free to make your own meaning that's not true and I'll explain why with metamodernism um but basically meaning is not arbitrary
00:14:41
and Truth is not arbitrary postmodernism says that meaning and Truth are totally arbitrary and that there's no anchoring and no grounding whatsoever neither none of those assertions are true which is why optimistic nihilism has failed and
00:14:54
it's why postmodernism has failed but we don't have a replacement post nilis ism is the necessary replacement that I will be working over the coming years to codify metamodernism is emerging and um
00:15:07
this is basically again the rejection of post postmodernism postmodernism has failed so modernism was a top- down uh philosophical basically philosophy trying to rationalize big God thinking
00:15:20
um that you know the truth and meaning are absolute and they are out there and they are um given they are handed out from onh High um that they're abstract and you etc etc um postmodernism was
00:15:33
basically the rejection of modernism because well we can't find any meaning up there so maybe there is no meaning maybe we categorically reject all truth and all meaning it's all relativistic it's all entirely subjective and it's
00:15:46
entirely personal and totally arbitrary now as I just mentioned postmodernism is indefensible it's not actually defensively true it's not logically sound it's not Al it's even not exper
00:15:58
entially um defensible to say that truth and meaning are entirely arbitrary yes there are subjective aspects to it there are some relativistic aspects to it but they are grounded and they are anchored
00:16:12
but what is required is a bottom up view of reality an emergent view of reality where things come from uh underlying systems where complexity emerges from the bottom up and I'll talk about emergence and convergence in just a
00:16:24
moment um but the idea is that metamodernism is here to replace postmodernism but again it will take years to codify and propagate out into the world but the meaning economy that we are seeing emerging is part of
00:16:38
metamodernism it is basically saying you know what we have quibbled over meaninglessness and hopelessness and despair and I'm just going to live you know what people on YouTube like myself and Tik Tok and Instagram we're just fed
00:16:51
up with these nihilistic and postmodern narratives and we say to hell with it we're just going to live anyways this is an example of that kind of categorical rejection of the assertion of meaninglessness and purposelessness and
00:17:05
it's actually why I often don't get along with uh uh traditionally trained philosophers in the west so emergence emergence is the idea that complexity emerges from the ground up or from the
00:17:17
bottom up and so this is where you can view the world as having ontological layers or ontological strata and so the simplest way is you see like okay um there's the fundamental particles and
00:17:30
forces which gives rise to matter and energy matter and energy give rise to biology and life life gives rise to um brains and minds and psychology and meaning and then um collectives of of
00:17:44
life forms intelligent life forms give rise to narratives and other social constructs so this is a bottom up view of reality that is of course rooted in science and I know that that postmodern trained uh philosophers will say oh well
00:17:58
but how do you know that and I'm not here to split hairs or move the goalposts this is a reliable and highly defensible model of reality and it is good enough just because you can poke a few small holes in it I'm not interested
00:18:11
in post structuralism and I'm not interested in postmodernism anymore um reality is a durable illusion um even if you can debate what the what the primordial substrate is you know maybe maybe reality is predicated on
00:18:23
Consciousness maybe reality is predicated on a dreaming God maybe reality is predicated on Words and math and numbers or a simulation I don't know and I don't care but there is a
00:18:35
primordial substrate upon which our reality is based whatever that happens to be you can debate over that um but that just because there's room for debate doesn't mean that you can categorically reject the fact that reality exists and that biology exists
00:18:49
and that our minds exist and that humans exist um those again are very durable and this is we're kind of talk about convergence in a in a moment but because these phenomenon are all durable and
00:19:01
reliable that means okay we do have grounding we do have anchoring for um our understanding of Truth meaning and epistemology and ontology and so now this is the emergence the bottom up view
00:19:15
is the Keystone that is the Bedrock foundation of metamodernism the other pillar of metamodernism is Convergence so as I've been saying there are many phenomenon that are incredibly durable and very
00:19:27
Reliant able and also universally true even if there is variance so because of poststructuralism and because of postmodernism uh and this is something that westerners really struggle with and I'll talk about this in just a moment
00:19:41
but because you cannot have concrete definitions that are Universal and always true and always 100% true you have this um this kind of gimmick that postmodernism plays with ah well I found
00:19:55
one small loophole so therefore we categorically reject the entire thing and throw the baby out with the bath water this is something that easterners do not um struggle with and this is why Eastern philosophy is taught with poems and it's because the easterners
00:20:08
understand that you cannot come up with perfect definitions um that words are inadequate to fully explain things but you can circumscribe things you can encircle knowledge you can you can uh
00:20:19
catch things in a net and so basically what they said is um truth is like a fish that you catch with a net but words are the net you can never actually um Define truth with words you can
00:20:32
understand it you can feel it you can encircle it you can envelop it um but you cannot fully capture it and so once you once you understand the sentiment of a Thing Once you understand a thing once
00:20:44
you Converge on it and you understand it you no longer need the words um and so this is why convergence again um comes from Eastern tradition and this is why I'm a big student of um Japanese and
00:20:57
Chinese philosophy is because their approach their their epistemic approach their philosophical approach to knowledge truth and meaning there is a tremendous amount of wisdom and utility in it um and so this idea of
00:21:10
convergence I'm literally just borrowing wholesale from tosm and from uh Chinese philosophy but this this idea of encircling truth and triangulating the direction of Truth is the way to go and
00:21:24
so one example that I like to use is love if you remember the 80s and 90s us westerners with our science and microscopes we said ah love is just a biochemical reaction and therefore it's totally arbitrary and totally
00:21:37
meaningless um that was an idiotic thing that we did um but what we know now from getting over ourselves and being a little bit less intellectually pretentious is that love is a universal experience and that yes there is a
00:21:50
biological a biochemical underpinning but that the that attachment and love is actually what is a universally true source of meaning and emotional and spiritual anchoring um that is
00:22:03
universally true across all humans um but because of postmodernism and and the um the rhetorical gimmick of just saying ah well it's not true in this one small case so therefore I throw the baby out with the bath water the next time a
00:22:16
philosopher does that I'm going to scream at him um because it's pedantic um and that's one of the one of the keystones of postmodernism is it is so incredibly pedantic just because
00:22:28
something is not 100% true all the time and because you can poke tiny holes in it um I don't care I just don't care anymore and so with the rise of the meaning economy
00:22:40
taking this back to uh politics and the future um when you reject postmodernism and when you reject nihilism you realize that okay neoliberalism is based on a
00:22:52
nihilistic and postmodern worldview so if we're de if we're deep prioritizing economic productivity as the purpose of life then what do you replace that with um one of the key things and this this
00:23:04
is evidence of the nistic crisis is when you tell a Westerner that AI is going to take your job how am I going to find meaning is like one of the first things that we come up with and it's like our life is so empty that we can't imagine
00:23:18
having purpose or fun or Joy without work we are so addicted to that worldview that we can't even fathom enjoying life for its own sake um so to that I say read some Japanese
00:23:31
philosophy read about wabisabi and Ichigo Ichi read about WOAY and taism and this is what I'm here to carry I'm I'm here to be the bridge between eastern and western cultures um because
00:23:43
why there's a tremendous amount of wisdom um in those cultures and so as we explore this this is actually one of the jobs of us communicators um we are curators we are synthesizers who are
00:23:57
doing these experiments and making it relatable to Western audiences because the work that we're doing in terms of finding meaning and making meaning and challenging the old paradigms this is
00:24:09
actually a service we are providing to humanity this is a service that we are adding to the conversation and so this is why I say that it's the meaning economy is a Western Way of expressing
00:24:21
this need this unmet need so you know how the iPhone kind of you know from a from an economic perspective it met a set of unmet needs that people didn't know that they needed likewise the meaning economy the reason that we like
00:24:33
travel blogs the reason that we like influencers the reason that we like social commentary is because we are pro we are lacking meaning and we need it and so what I'm here to tell you is that
00:24:45
if you want to Pivot into a post- labor world in in a in a in a place where Ai and machines and automation take most jobs there is still going to be a need for meaning and yeah it's not going to
00:24:57
last forever like we will figure this out it might take a decade or two it might take longer um but if you're in the meaning economy you will have a job until we figure it all out until the foreseeable future until the singularity
00:25:09
or whatever else happens and so finally this is basically about breaking paradigms the we are breaking the Paradigm of postmodernism we are breaking the Paradigm of nihilism and we are breaking the Paradigm of
00:25:20
neoliberalism now what will economics look like in the future like I said I think that post labor economics is coming um but you in order to move from neoliberalism to post- labor economics you need to move away from postmodernism
00:25:34
to metamodernism and away from nihilism to post nihilism um now again as I said all these things are being defined and codified but part of how we're defining and codifying those is through these
00:25:46
social conversations so this was very deep and Abstract I hope that it made a lot of sense to you um but yeah let me know what you think in the comments um thanks for watching to the very end like subscribe cribe and follow me um I have
00:25:59
a few platforms um I'm on patreon this is my primary support so if you want to uh get more of me more of my content hop over on patreon that'll get you access to my exclusive Discord um as well as my
00:26:12
monthly Town Hall Q&A live streams so thanks for watching cheers all the links are in the description uh see you next time
End of transcript