How to Make Peace. The squid beating Jeff Bezos into space. One solution involution and Futurists! – great at predictions just don’t ask about sport

Gru?zi! I’m Adrian Monck – and welcome to this World Economic Forum newsletter!

Also this week – the holiday island going fume free and Sir Patrick Stewart as you have never seen him before.

Need an excuse to reach out? Share this newsletter!

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1?? How to Make Peace

How do we ‘cure’ conflict? Build from the bottom up not the top down.

Tobias Jones has a great essay on building peace. Having spent some of my professional life reporting on conflict, it’s good to see light shone on what it takes to step back from hostility, violence and war.

“Reconciliation is always a shocking apocalypse of both mercy and truth. Generosity shines a more penetrating and unbearable light on our complicity with violence than conflict.” 

• “Jonathan Herbert is a lifelong peacebuilder and has worked in conflicts in the Solomon Islands, Israel-Palestine and Uganda. ‘The biggest thing was having to come to terms with so much conflict within myself. I had taken on the pain... I felt polluted by the place, by the hatred. I had to look at myself, and go and reflect and find compassion... That’s what reconciliation is about: making peace with ourselves first, then with others…’
• It requires the sort of humility that isn’t often found among problem-solving peacekeepers. ‘It’s about presence,’ says Herbert, ‘You have to dare to be fairly useless to begin with, dare not to get anything out of it…’ As one’s perspective on the violence becomes much more local, both conflict and peace start to be framed very differently.
• In order to understand peace on locals’ terms, [researchers] devised what they call ‘everyday peace indicators’. Rather than the slightly absurd parameters often used to evaluate pacification, they found that the real indices of peace were, for locals, often far more mundane: a lack of barking dogs, a child using the future tense, the ability to sleep in pyjamas, put up an antenna on the roof, or urinate outside at night.” 

Elsewhere, historian Helmut Walser Smith has an equally fascinating look at how modern Germany exorcised the demons of its past:

“[Germany] set out on a remarkable journey – not one racing down the highway to cosmopolitanism, but rather a slow one that required a series of small steps leading to the gradual creation of a more pacific, diverse and historically honest nation – a better Germany.”

? The work starts early: how to talk to kids about politics.

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2?? The Involution-ary Masses

Are the rewards of competition worth the effort for the post-90s workforce?

The country facing this challenge is the one that’s transformed fastest: China. Forget Marx and Mao Zedong, it’s Veblen, Weber and Frederick Taylor who are the ideologists key to understanding the anxious mindsets of the post-industrial masses.

The FT’s Yuan Yang has a fascinating piece about a Chinese buzz term that probably resonates with young people in every job market: involution. The New Yorker has also featured it.

In a nutshell, the pressures of academic and social competition for employment are not being met with the rewards that went to previous generations. Even elite tech workers describe themselves dismissively as ‘code peasants’.

Chinese anthropologist Xiang Biao explains:

• “If involution originally referred to a structural pattern in agricultural society which is repetitive, lacks competition, and prevents progress, then involution today is an endless cycle of self-flagellation, feeling as if you’re running in place and constantly having to motivate yourself day in, day out. So, it’s a highly dynamic trap which consumes a lot of energy. Living in a smallholder society was physically tiring, but this kind of mental torture didn’t exist.
• [T]he winners demand the losers to admit that they are a failure: Not only that they have less money and fewer material possessions; they must bow down morally and admit that they’re useless and have failed. If you don’t admit it and simply quietly walk away from the competition, you’ll face a lot of criticism. It’s not allowed. ... If your child isn’t academically minded, then make sure they have other options. This is something that should be taught in schools.” 

It’s also Gaokao week – which means ultra-competitive university entrance exams for millions of kids across China. But it’s not all involutionary gloom, the sign below says 不管你考的怎么样爸爸妈妈都很爱你...

“No matter how well you do in your exams, mum and dad love you.”

(h/t Julian Fisher)

? How we can change education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

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3?? How Big Companies can Help Beat Climate Change

The CEOs who are ready to turn political promises into action.

The Forum’s Dominic Waughray explains.

? Supercharging public-private efforts in the race to protect the planet.

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4?? Jeff Bezos is Going Into Orbit. So are Squid.

Check out who’s joining the Calamari space safari.

? Back on Earth, human-centric tech is making AI faster and fairer.

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5?? Fuming and exhausted? Go where there’s no exhaust fumes!

Recharge your batteries on Greece’s EV island.

? 4 ways to make the most of electric transport

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6?? Futurists Don’t Know Who’ll win the Euros

But trust them to pontificate with passionate certainty about technology.

? Another tech prediction: blockchain is about to boom in Ethiopia.

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7?? Sir Patrick Stewart as Vacuum Cleaners

A twitter thread for your weekend diversion.

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? Vacuum up a podcast with the latest Radio Davos!

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If you enjoy this newsletter – please recommend it to someone nice.

Best,

Adrian

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Thanks to everyone for the help and encouragement.