Speaker 2
So what's the mentality that we're going to need to adopt to explore or to navigate this and lead well?
Speaker 1
So two, okay, so that's this three components on our layer here. So the first one is that vision of the world. And this will lead us to that answer. The second point, that's a big macro one. The second two points are more personal. So that was if you can imagine a utopianism at a global level. And that has reshaped the individual. In a sense, we're more shaped or at least equally shaped by that neoliberal global globalization view of the world than we are by our local cultures that we exist in. So I know I think it was the Barna connected generation report talked about the fact that millennials are more shaped, are more like millennials in other countries than they are like their own compatriots in their own country. So the neoliberal world is shaping the imagination. So how does that shape the individual's imagination in two particular ways? The first one is a vision of the world where the individual previously and the family and human relationships were seen as separate to the economics sphere. There was the economics sphere of trade and capital and all of that. And that was out there. And then there was almost this place you could hide from that, which was individual relationships, your own personal life, the family, etc, etc. But really what nearly realism did was begin to see the individual as a component of that economic world. The economic reading of the world came into the individual. And so what that meant was the individual's life could be optimized, like a company could be optimized or a production line. And even to think about say like dating apps where people will mark themselves on a series of different likes and the complexities of a human is reduced down to almost into these data points that we would previously look at a commodity around. That then flows naturally into algorithms and the management of people through algorithms and our connection to algorithms in this time and place. But ultimately I think what it means is the vision of neoliberalism was to make a more efficient, profitable, technologically run, manage life where profitability was optimized. Now that world view has them in place over the individual. Just look at how we talk about self-help now. We talk about life hacks. There are people like Tim Ferriss, like he's the tools of the titans of people in Silicon Valley, get up and have this drink in the morning, you should do the same. You should do a high impact training for 15 minutes. Here's the way to maximize your money, maximize your love life, maximize through mindfulness, even your inner mental health. And so what this has done is it's given like just as, I was talking to someone who worked for a organization that was helping people with disabilities. And they talked about how 15, 20 years ago, it was very communal, it was very relational, you got to spend time with the families of people coming in who were experiencing this disability. But what had happened was as neoliberalism had come in, it was more about seeing this entity, this community entity as a business and profitability, long-term staff were sacked and people were brought in who were marketers and people felt like that less time with the people they called to work with, a lot of people were working, they were questioning themselves, this is not why I got into this, they said it's not as enjoyable anymore. So that's what happens to institutions in neoliberalism, but that also happens to us as individuals. I think a lot of talker burnout culture is actually about this mentality rather than people living longer, so sleeping less or working less. There was an article I think was in the Times in the UK over the weekend that actually people are sleeping more and working less than they were like 15, 20 years ago, but we're more burnt out.