The most important outcome ofmy year of inquiry and travel was arriving at a personal worldview, supported by a renewed sense of personal values. This worldview was to provide enough organizing thought so as to shape how I invest the finite time and energy left in my life.

Here’s what I found:

  1. The world is now on path to a pattern of ever-more complexity, connection and automation
  2. Technology has accelerated the fundamental rhythms of life that always existed, impacting the nature of Being for most individuals
  3. The resulting noise will feel like always-on chaos
  4. And yet, the monoculture continues to spread, consolidating the distribution of value. This will result in bigger economic returns for fewer players. (E.g. Avengers: Endgame and the ilk)
  5. Driving the monoculture is the combination of pervasive bandwidth and pervasive screens — fueling a new kind of law; the Law of Screen Demand — which is that as screens proliferate, consumption as a percentage of concsiousness grows geometrically.
  6. This naturally situates individuals between opposing desires of belonging (uniformity) and individuality (signaling/conspicious consumption)
  7. Thus, truly unique value creation will disproportionately occur at the cultural edge where emergent themes and power dynamics are actually in jeopardy for marginalized voices and under-represented communites
    1. This is why representation matters more than ever
    2. And why equality is ever-more threatened
  8. This is true for art-in-all-forms — look at media (film, music), art (paint, etc.) dance, writing, etc.
  9. Whatever is occurring at these boundaries is subtext and thematic of the re-arrangements of power coming into societal awareness. It is also a kind of telltale for economic growth
  10. The most creative among us will generate the most new value across geogrpahic, professional and industry lines 1. I'm trying to practice what I preach!

Over time, value will consolidate into the monoculture. The cycle will repeat.