Want to build a unicorn in the 2020s? Set people free from the tyranny of their own preferences.

Welcome to New World Same Humans, a weekly newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.

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We talked a lot, in 2020, about the implications of the pandemic for us as a collective. Just a brief shock, or the start of system-wide change? A pause, or Great Reset?

But we’ve talked less about how the crisis presents the same challenge, in miniature, to each of us as individuals. Lockdown shattered daily routines and patterns of thought. That meant personal challenges. But also the chance to step back from our own lives, and reassess.

Here in the UK, nearly 30% of people say they plan to make ‘big life changes’ – such as quitting a job or ending a relationship – when the crisis is over.

This week, reflections on that. My argument in short? The consumer societies we live in trap us inside a limited version of ourselves. The big opportunity, then, for the 2020s? Empower people to break free.

Stuck in the Loop

For millions around the world, the pandemic brought everyday life to a halt. That shock made visible a deeper truth. Temporarily distanced from it, we’re more able to see the ways in which 21st-century consumerism becomes a kind of trap.

?? Your Life as a Choice Machine. Back in NWSH #34, I wrote about how the Global North runs on a model of humans as rational choice machines. To look at 21st-century consumerism is to see that model extended to its outer limits. The consumer society models us as sovereign individuals, and encourages us to develop a set of ever-more elaborate preferences to be understood and served. This model is underpinned by a particular vision of human freedom. Specifically, one that tells us that every human should be free to choose, and that when we exercise this freedom we are Living Our Best Lives. Belief in this form of freedom – that is, freedom to enact our own preferences to the extent that we are able – is the fundamental value on which market-based liberal democracies are built.

?? The Little Self and the Unlimited Self. There’s no denying the advancements in human wellbeing achieved by these kinds of societies. So what’s the problem? It’s that this vision of freedom is limited. Over time, it becomes a kind of trap. That’s because we humans are more than only the sum total of our preferences. We’re also ethical beings, capable of psychological investment in values that run beyond – or even contrary to – our everyday desires. Our 21st-century technoconsumerism has little to say to those values. Instead it serves us endless, algorithmically-generated slices of our own past. You played this song; now listen to this one. You bought this product; now buy it again. The result? We become trapped inside a recursive loop of our own preferences, slowly becoming a Warholian copy of a copy. Consumerism wants dominion over our little selves. But we know there is more to each of us. An unlimited self, lying just out of reach.

?? Freedom from Ourselves. We are, by most measures, the luckiest humans ever. But there’s established evidence that materialism of the kind encouraged by the consumer society makes us unhappy. We all sense that the form of life offered by 21st-century consumerism is incomplete. Okay, Amazon Fresh can get an avocados to my door in 30 minutes; is that all there is? In 2020, we talked a lot about the collective Great Reset. But will the pandemic also give rise to millions of personal resets, as lockdown breaks people out of established patterns and causes them to question old assumptions? If we seek a new form of life, we need new ways of thinking. The idea that what we need most now is freedom from ourselves – from the tyranny of our own preferences – might be the most revolutionary thought possible inside 21st-century consumerism.

Waking Up

If the 2020s sees millions embrace a personal version of the Great Reset, that will mean millions seeking new forms of freedom from themselves. One way of looking at that search? It’s a huge, untapped opportunity for a new kind of brand. But perhaps the organisation best able to serve the unlimited self will be something different.

?? The Good Life. What is the way out of the trap set by consumerism? It’s to reinvest in a vision of the Good Life: an ethical ideal that runs beyond our own preferences and desires. This vision is founded in a different conception of freedom. Not freedom from external impediment, but freedom to be all that we can. It means believing that a life spent in thrall to our everyday preferences is limited and reductive; that it does not represent the highest form of human life. When you believe that, then you can believe that some external agent – a person, an idea – can encourage you, or even force you, to be truly free: by freeing you from yourself. We inhabitants of consumer societies are suspicious of this idea. Our system encourages that suspicion, and whispers to us: follow your preferences.

?? Beyond the Market. What kinds of visions am I talking about? We used to be served visions of the Good Life by institutions that existed outside the market. In the Global North that often meant the church, and universities. And here in the UK, by public service broadcasting in the form of the BBC, with its remit to ‘inform, educate, and entertain’. Today, universities don’t teach students, they serve customers; the relentless marketisation of everything has inhibited our ability to articulate visions of human life that aren’t governed by preference satisfaction. We are suspicious of people, or systems, that claim to ‘know better than us’, or want to make value judgements such as ‘it is better to read books than never to read books’. The hunger for something more is still visible, though. Look, for example, to the vast, profitable, and mostly useless self help industry, which will soon be worth $13 billion a year in the US alone.

?? The Great Project. In 2021, our algorithmically-fuelled consumerism continues to double-down on what it does best. That is, serving our little selves. Arguably the greatest opportunity of the 2020s, then? Tapping into, communing with, and serving the other side of human beings, which wants to reach beyond everyday life, and to some higher vision of what a person can be. Serving the unlimited self. We might ask: where is the Nike of this great project? The brand that brings together content, community, and inspiration around a vision of the human Good Life? This would mean a brand bold enough to say: here is a way of being better than the one you currently live inside. We challenge you to be more. To know more. Here is an education. In reality, this organisation wouldn’t be a business, but something altogether new. A hybrid creature: part brand, part new model university, part movement. It might be best understood as some kind of new religion.

Flying high

Thanks for reading this week.

Pretty soon we’ll get to see whether millions of people really will seek a new relationship with the unlimited self in the 2020s.

In the meantime, we members of the New World Same Humans community are on a mission of our own. We started out as a small tribe back in January 2020. Now, there are over 14,000 of us – founders, designers, marketers, policy makers, and more – on a shared journey to imagine, and help build, a better future. 

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I’ll be back on Thursday. Until then, be well.

David.

David Mattin is the founder of the Strategy and Futures Research Unit. He sits on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Consumption.