Set(ting) For the Future?

Do you ever wonder about the circumstances that contribute to the outcomes you achieve and the way you manage a task, project, or challenge? Widening the lens, what makes a good time so enjoyable?

One way to evaluate the way you might perform, respond, and experience is to consider set and setting.

Set

Set" refers to the mental state you bring to an experience, like thoughts, mood and expectations. How do you respond with faced with a challenge, or when obstacles stand between you and where you'd like to be? Do you welcome feedback as a means to learn and improve, or view any criticism as an attack?

In other words, what’s your mindset?

Expectations, in particular, are most capable of coloring experience. As described in Master of Change:

Now, the cynic in you and me would point out that under that rubric the goal is merely sufficiently low expectations. Touché. But perhaps instead the aim is expectations less fueled by delusion. Or, as others have described it, tragic optimism.

Setting

"Setting" refers to the physical and social environment. I could write books (and others have) on the way a particular setting (meeting, office, event) can catalyze or inhibit the human spirit.

I'll give you one recent example of the powerful effects of setting: the daughter of some close friends got married on Saturday. Her father left us way too soon. Blan Holman I've ridden the bass line of "Brickhouse" at wedding receptions for more than 35 years, but the time we had with Sol Fusion was something special.

We're still celebrating the richness of what we have and the beauty of what (and who've) we've lost. The magic of friendship, family (that's right, I said it in the singular- One Love), and that sweet, sweet sound had us all out there together under a groove, getting down just for the funk of it.

That's love in action, in all it's paradoxical and bittersweet forms.

And I've got the receipts, as shown in Strava, via Whoop. Dave Maxfield

Problematic Set and Setting

But I digress. (It occurs to me that a discussion of good dance tunes for weddings would be much more interesting, but I have made my bed for the original topic).

[Now is a good time to point out that set and setting are two elements of successful sessions using psychedelics. (I didn't want to lose 4 of the 5 readers of this post until they got this far). And an episode of the Team Human Podcast, The Secret History & Unwritten Future of Psychedelics & Technology got me thinking about set and setting in various contexts.]

I recommend the listen because of the discussion of the history of the Internet and its overlap with a variety of other cultural threads. Some of you will be interested in the mention of John Perry Barlow, who wore several hats in his lifetime.

The Music Never Stopped

How you deploy and manifest a technology (essentially set and setting) will determine how it works. Shades of Marshall McLuhan and the medium being the message. (Jack, you know nothing of his work).

I had never heard McLuhan's theory that modern technologies have extended our nervous systems outside our bodies, but chew on that as you scroll and check.

One observation by Rushkoff struck me:

Our current internet set and setting are surveillance control and exponential growth.

Now, you (the remaining reader) may find controversial. But consider 1) the way our biggest companies are vying for our attention; and 2) the prevalence of the exponential in the discussion of emerging technology tools (particularly AI) and in the broader economic sphere.

As just two examples, the idea of how something "scales" and terms like "10x" (I would have written xx but that's not very descriptive and is a throwback to something completely different) are recent developments.

Growth is necessary and important, but not everything is compatible with exponential growth. Exponential growth is not ideal in certain settings. As Dr. Julie Holland put it in the episode:

“In medicine, unrestricted growth is cancer.”?

In the natural world, pruning follows growth. The only things that practice unrestricted growth do it for a brief time or kill their host.

Homo economicus and relentlessly pursuing the rational obscures any sense of the importance of the natural world and our role in it. As noted by Rushkoff:

Empirical science will let us take nature by the forelock, hold her down, and submit her to our will.? ??-Francis Bacon

And this emphasis on the rational, in all its Cartesian glory, continues to separate mind from body (and spirit). So we exalt productivity at the expense of creativity. The current microdosing approach is one example. (To be fair, perhaps it's not either/or, but yes/and). But imagination and creativity change their shape when used only to conceive of acquiring more.

Please Get to the End of This

It's clear that neither set nor setting is working too well for many of us. Go look at the trends yourself. All amidst unprecedented financial prosperity and amazing technological potential. Rushkoff again, speaking about the appeal of those Trump rallies:

There is a problem with denying people their feet on the ground, their bodies in space, their lived communities in there, and their lived physical, local experience.

We all are looking for a welcoming setting, a place of belonging. Something more than just balance sheet wealth. The kind of surroundings where we can put our mind(set) at ease. Sounds like the allure of a Grateful Dead Show. Many people have pointed out the similarities.

One takeaway from this is another plea for the things that help us feel embodied in a particular place or setting, such as the experiences of awe, connection, and beauty.

I don't know how to value or appreciate imagination or creativity, if it can’t be measured like GDP or the Dow. But I am convinced those things are fueled by playfulness and play.

And I agree with Rushkoff that our job is to use AI to distinguish between what it can do (the math) and what we can do (figure out how to live together and thrive). As he put it:

Celebrate the ecstasy of our collective existence.

And let's not forget everything we miss when so tightly so focused on hitting what we're aiming for . . .