I think a lot about this difficult, ill-defined (in the sense that people conceptualize the relative importance of the conditions that perpetuate senselessness, differently) problem, and I often times find myself coming back to ideas/hypotheses related to a) individual desire for power/authority (of various forms) that is appealing expressly because it can is higher than and can be imposed upon the ‘lower’ power of others, and/or b) individual desire for closure, certainty, cognitive fluency, and a reduction of cognitive dissonance. See This Article Won’t Change Your Mind
With respect to the power piece, I think the dominant incentive structures of the times (and by this I don’t just mean money/authority—incentives ranging from “feeling good about oneself” to “being seen as morally good by others” to “feeling epistemically superior”, etc), as well as the normalization of self-absorption via social media, have been really counter-productive to intellectual honesty, intellectual humility, and co-productive discourse&deliberation...
It seems ironic that these power structures may have come about (initially) such that actual ‘good work’ was rewarded appropriately: those agents who were the means of production of that work probably never cared about receiving credit for it in the first place—that rewarding recognition was merely a byproduct of an initial goal to do good work for the sake of good work itself and for the sake of one another. Over time, we see a system that conditions people and groups such that they can no longer distinguish between ‘socioeconomic credits’ and ‘good work’. As a result, we see agents who avoid the production of ‘good work’ entirely, by creating the perception that they do ‘good work’ by signaling and amplifying their existing social/economic credit. This is then reinforced (the system can no longer distinguish between what is good work and what is being made to look like it is good work) leading to agents accruing more socioeconomic credits without a corresponding production of ‘good work’. This mutually reinforcing dynamic, particularly in academic settings, may undermine the honest pursuit of knowledge. This is not conducive to individual/collective progress. Under circumstances where convergence with powerful others, status, money, security, etc become the primary drivers and outcomes of participation, rather than the process of honest work itself, it becomes hard to not engage in the rat race. If we take the claim that these incentives are reciprocal to self-absorption (you want to ‘feel good about yourself’, you want more money than other people, you want to feel like ‘you help people’, you want others to approve of you based on the public perception that ‘you help people’, you want a job title that society has deemed ‘more valuable’ than others in some way, etc) it follows then, that organizations that refrain from reifying individual reward could make space for the individual-individual attraction toward enacting power with one another in equal partnership. Hopefully, this would lead to the honest co-production of progress, inclusion, and harm reduction. For those who do not find the power-based incentive structure of the system to be especially appealing, or for those who feel uncomfortable with implicitly being ‘given’ more power than others, or for those who are attracted to the integrity of the process of work itself, it may be important to break from the feedback loop by generating autonomous cooperative interactions from which the co-creation of shared value (i.e systems reorganization and re-coupling) emerges (See Autopoeisis Wiki Reference for an analogue within the systems science framework. For more breadth and depth that is dense but worthwhile, see “From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: Francisco Varela’s exploration of the biophysics of being”) This emergence functions such that the meta-structure and meta-function of the entire system changes...and with any luck, it changes such that we see less suffering, less insanity, more connection, results.
Maybe pushing UBI could be one way to create that cushion that would be needed to allow people to voluntarily commit time and mental energy to strategic ideation and implementation. I also think that it would make it more likely that people remain principled, analytical, and honest in their jobs (being rational and ethical confers individual risk these days apparently) if working within a larger organization. Losing their job due to office politics wouldn’t render them homeless/completely incapacitated, and it at least slightly lessens the intense dependence on (and therefore compliance with) one’s potentially insane organizational ecosystem of employment.
I think a lot about this difficult, ill-defined (in the sense that people conceptualize the relative importance of the conditions that perpetuate senselessness, differently) problem, and I often times find myself coming back to ideas/hypotheses related to a) individual desire for power/authority (of various forms) that is appealing expressly because it can is higher than and can be imposed upon the ‘lower’ power of others, and/or b) individual desire for closure, certainty, cognitive fluency, and a reduction of cognitive dissonance. See This Article Won’t Change Your Mind
With respect to the power piece, I think the dominant incentive structures of the times (and by this I don’t just mean money/authority—incentives ranging from “feeling good about oneself” to “being seen as morally good by others” to “feeling epistemically superior”, etc), as well as the normalization of self-absorption via social media, have been really counter-productive to intellectual honesty, intellectual humility, and co-productive discourse&deliberation...
It seems ironic that these power structures may have come about (initially) such that actual ‘good work’ was rewarded appropriately: those agents who were the means of production of that work probably never cared about receiving credit for it in the first place—that rewarding recognition was merely a byproduct of an initial goal to do good work for the sake of good work itself and for the sake of one another. Over time, we see a system that conditions people and groups such that they can no longer distinguish between ‘socioeconomic credits’ and ‘good work’. As a result, we see agents who avoid the production of ‘good work’ entirely, by creating the perception that they do ‘good work’ by signaling and amplifying their existing social/economic credit. This is then reinforced (the system can no longer distinguish between what is good work and what is being made to look like it is good work) leading to agents accruing more socioeconomic credits without a corresponding production of ‘good work’. This mutually reinforcing dynamic, particularly in academic settings, may undermine the honest pursuit of knowledge. This is not conducive to individual/collective progress. Under circumstances where convergence with powerful others, status, money, security, etc become the primary drivers and outcomes of participation, rather than the process of honest work itself, it becomes hard to not engage in the rat race. If we take the claim that these incentives are reciprocal to self-absorption (you want to ‘feel good about yourself’, you want more money than other people, you want to feel like ‘you help people’, you want others to approve of you based on the public perception that ‘you help people’, you want a job title that society has deemed ‘more valuable’ than others in some way, etc) it follows then, that organizations that refrain from reifying individual reward could make space for the individual-individual attraction toward enacting power with one another in equal partnership. Hopefully, this would lead to the honest co-production of progress, inclusion, and harm reduction. For those who do not find the power-based incentive structure of the system to be especially appealing, or for those who feel uncomfortable with implicitly being ‘given’ more power than others, or for those who are attracted to the integrity of the process of work itself, it may be important to break from the feedback loop by generating autonomous cooperative interactions from which the co-creation of shared value (i.e systems reorganization and re-coupling) emerges (See Autopoeisis Wiki Reference for an analogue within the systems science framework. For more breadth and depth that is dense but worthwhile, see “From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: Francisco Varela’s exploration of the biophysics of being”) This emergence functions such that the meta-structure and meta-function of the entire system changes...and with any luck, it changes such that we see less suffering, less insanity, more connection, results.
Maybe pushing UBI could be one way to create that cushion that would be needed to allow people to voluntarily commit time and mental energy to strategic ideation and implementation. I also think that it would make it more likely that people remain principled, analytical, and honest in their jobs (being rational and ethical confers individual risk these days apparently) if working within a larger organization. Losing their job due to office politics wouldn’t render them homeless/completely incapacitated, and it at least slightly lessens the intense dependence on (and therefore compliance with) one’s potentially insane organizational ecosystem of employment.