I worked in a sugar factory in my youth and I remember the ten minute smoke breaks every two hours. The breaks made the mind-numbing work tolerable and then at the end of the week came the paycheck reward, which made the work week tolerable. It was all part of the system.
I researched tobacco once and discovered that the industrial process that made packs of cigarettes possible co-evolved with industrialism itself. In order to obtain the factory friendly texture, it was necessary to ‘toast’ the tobacco, which raised the nicotine level making cigarettes more addictive. The makers also adjusted the burn time of the cigarettes to align with the ten minutes of breaks.
This is so good. Solutionism! I’ve been writing about this sort of thing in lieu of green energy technocracy. I didn’t know there was a name. Excellent.
Do you have a link to an article about that? I've thought about the fact that the "green energy" solution predominantly presumes we NEED ever-increasing amounts of energy.
I've been trying to articulate the false sense of pioneering that you've characterized in the fintech reference at the end: the story that businesses tell themselves and the world about 'heading towards the future' while essentially anchoring us deeper into this monetary system. Today's version in my head is "There are no leftist startups." Yes to acknowledging where we are. 👍🏽
This is the first time I have had "solutionism" defined in such a way that is both meaningful, makes sense, and generates a framing I mostly agree with. We make our tools and, in turn our tools make us. It is a symbiotic relationship we have far less control over then we'd like to believe.
That said, I find the paragraph you begin with "But let’s get real." to be somewhere between annoying and infuriating. Quickly returning into a system where "non-monetary interactions that economic anthropologists have observed for a very long time would be recreated and foregrounded again" would certainly involve mass death and be the kind of thing that those involved would describe as a 'horror' or 'tragedy'. Those previous systems, whatever their strengths, were not capable of sustaining a population as large as those that currently exist. There is a cost to "simply fragment(ing) into thousands of smaller networks with closer social ties" that you gloss over that makes you sound very callous in a way I do not believe you intend.
This is not to imply that no other system is possible without collapse - I think the space of possible social systems is very large and hope that many exist that both fulfill fundamental human needs better then the current one and sustain at least as large a population. But although such systems would likely take some inspiration from the past, they would probably be as alien to us as our current system is to those of our ancestors.
Hey Ben, thanks for the comments, and glad you like the solutionism definition. I agree with you on the mass tragedy point, and I've added a disclaimer into the paragraph. It is intended to be a thought-experiment, because, as I note in the paragraph below, "there’s no way to go ‘cold turkey’ on money, because we’re an interdependent species, and money underpins the entire system that every one of us relies upon for life-support" (aka. if we actually did do this, we'd lose access to our life support = death)
Yeah, I knew you weren't thinking along those lines, but your tone was flippant enough to make me want to say something.
It is correct to say that if a tragedy were to occur the survivors would be forced to change the scale and style of economic interaction in way that might end up resembling parts of past systems of interdependency.
That said, it's very easy to fall into the progressive frame when thinking about things like this. A post-collapse system would not necessarily be a 'retvrn to the past' but rather a fragmentation in a new direction as systems and people evolved to try and meet their needs in a harsh and changing environment. The results would likely be unlike both the past and the present. It would be an interesting experiment if not for the horribleness of it.
I started a reply about having the best of both (old and new) worlds but got bogged-down because the potential success of decentralised economies of the future is dependent on the present struggle to recapture sovereignty - the mother of all battles https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/red-symphony
"We make our tools and, in turn our tools make us. It is a symbiotic relationship we have far less control over then we'd like to believe." reminds me, I need to return to Kevin Kelly's book What Technology Wants...
I like the addiction metaphor but feel it's worth distinguishing between the individual physical addition to a substance and the collective addiction, which is probably not really addiction.
What's happening underneath the metaphor is that as the money system becomes part of society, then society builds on it; the more layers are built on it, the more we depend on it. If we are addicted to money we are also addicted to government, to language, to any number of technologies. I'm addicted to my fingers, my liver, my glasses.
And withdrawing from our 'addiction' to money is almost not even an option and the health benefits are debatable. Overall I would probably prefer another framing.
There are always trade-offs with metaphors. I guess there's a way to expand the definition of 'addiction' to 'anything that makes your body scream if you withdraw from it', which would include food, water, infrastructures etc etc, but I also understand that addiction has a more specific meaning and there's the risk of expanding it too much. That said, there is a tradition of expanding personal concepts into societal concepts, and I do think there's a case to be made for 'social addiction' - things that our society as is locked into with no means to back out. For these to work though, you need to view society as a being a 'superorganism' made up of us
Alternatively, I could search for related metaphors, like 'hunger' (also worth noting that addiction is sometimes described in terms of 'hungry ghosts').
I do think the 'social smoking to full smoking' trajectory is a very useful frame for quickly disrupting solutionist narrative more generally though: so much of the stuff we use doesn't begin with us having a 'need'. E.g. right now you can see a massive 'social smoking' push for AI, as every tech company keeps of trying to nudge you to use it (e.g. Microsoft keeps trying to get me to use co-pilot, and Evernote is trying to get me to use its AI etc). They're literally behaving like a person trying to nudge me into smoking. This same process can be seen with so many things - e.g. autocorrect was simply rolled out as a feature without anyone asking for it, and now people perceive a 'need' for it
I’m would say there’s a big difference between a human body part that you’re born with (liver, lungs, etc.) and a human created tool (government, money, etc.)
Although that puts motherhood / parenthood in a weird neither space because, unlike other species, humans are incapable of self survival at birth
Perhaps one could say partnering is a “tool” our species created? 🤔
If we take seriously the idea that society is an interdependent 'superorganism' made up of us, and that the current version of it is built upon particular technologies and infrastructures, then those do become analogous to 'organs' in an organism. I.e. complex multi-cellular organisms evolve to a point where they cannot exist without particular organs, much like the version of our society right now implies the presence of money, government etc.
One other reflection: It's interesting that when we say our organs have 'functions' we don't assume we 'choose' them or have agency over them, and this is one area where functional descriptions don't really imply rational choice
Ever since I was a child, I knew there was something very wrong with money, though I had no concept of where that wrongness came from.
Nevertheless, I did make a conscious choice from a very young age to participate as little as possible in the money system. I think the possibility of such a choice exists, but it is no easy task even for someone like myself who never really bought into the whole money paradigm to begin with.
As a society, people need to wake up to the fact that, as you have so well illustrated, money is not a solution but and enclosure, an artificially induced need. If more of us awaken to this reality, then we may find the real solution in old values: solidarity, kindness, paying it forward, love and community. Only by reviving such values that still exist in the background do we have any chance to weaken our addiction to a system where we appear entirely dependent on the organs of false paradigms and institutions.
This stack crystalized some of my fleeting "thinkings".
And confirmed some other ones.
I have a different perspective tho, since I think that humanity should abandon the huge city concept. Communities no larger than 10k people. Spread out and self sustainable in harmony with the land. Problems we are facing now come to us exactly because the big cities provide cover for a huuuge number of crazy evil parasites and psychopaths, never mind the ordinary criminals. Go local and be 100% self-responsible is the solution. Radical self responsibility! Which can not work in such environments, precisely because of their nature! Cities came to be as means of defending the rich abusive thieves - some call them aristocracy. Who are afraid for their lives and thus need a system in which they buy and control people (by any means necessary)...
Spot on view of addiction! Interesting that you said in a comment above how addiction is sometimes called "hungry ghosts". Where does that saying come from if I may ask?
I live on a canal boat in London. While I’m personally still dependent on money, a few of my neighbours use it a lot less. They go skipping for food and other necessities; they have little in terms of income, but they rarely need to use money anyway – just for things like the occasional beer. They have savings for a rainy day (unlike me).
They’re in their 30s, have their own floating homes with no mortgage and an abundance of both food and free time. They’re university-educated and could have chosen the well-trodden path, but decided not to.
Me, on the other hand, I’ve got a £20k debt to pay off after being pushed out of the fintech I founded (which had raised £5m), by my cofounder and VCs. So I’m forced to earn money, but when you earn money, it’s tempting to spend it too — and the cycle continues. I did default on a £4k Amex bill though, which felt great, and they seem to have given up on me.
Thanks for sharing this story Tr. I've spent some time on those canal boats in London and know the vibe. Your startup experience sounds rough - I've actually heard stories like this before.
Indeed, as the article points out, the tragedy of addictants is that, after the honeymoon period is over, they generally only bring the addict back up to the hedonic level that they experienced prior to their addiction. The 'pleasure' that the addictant brings is the relief from 'jonesing'.
I know this is also true for my morning coffee, but there's a personal intimate ritual associated with making and drinking coffee in bed. Although I have never smoked, I have watched enough movies to know that this is true for cigarettes too. These addictants, they readily interpenetrate and infiltrate our lives and become part of our rituals.
In these rituals (repetition x significance) the addictants encourage repetition and associatively acquire significance. They become one of the "sacramental instruments" of the ritual. So, contemplating giving up an addiction feel as if part of the meaning in one's life is as about to fall away -- and that alone is quite a scary thing. Of course, one will recover from the illusion once one has successfully quit, but there maybe a lasting social rupture.
I love this comment. Great description of addiction and ritual. Thanks Tjalrz. One of the hardest parts of quitting smoking for me was the ritual of rolling the cigarette. In fact, one of the ways I quit was to roll 'air cigarettes' - I'd go through the physical motion of rolling without actually using any papers or tobacco, and then I'd 'smoke' the air
Organic functions as provided by nature do not require rational choice. Technological or societal functions are based on the rational choice of usefulness otherwise it is not a ‘function’ but a ‘malfunction’ which is to be scrapped. The dynamics of recognizing the usefulness of ‘functions’ are changing with the mode of production. With progressive development of late stage capitalism by seemingly ubiquitous commodification social usefulness is gradually replaced by exchange-value driven consumer utility, which are dubbed ‘functions’ of choice, individualism and freedom. That is why you can pick from 6 different colors of toilet paper.
Absolutely loved how you laid these perspectives out, will be adding it to my knowledge bank and writing arsenal. Ours Sainsburys card system shut down for a few hours yesterday, couldn’t stop thinking of your work amongst the kafuffle lol
I worked in a sugar factory in my youth and I remember the ten minute smoke breaks every two hours. The breaks made the mind-numbing work tolerable and then at the end of the week came the paycheck reward, which made the work week tolerable. It was all part of the system.
I researched tobacco once and discovered that the industrial process that made packs of cigarettes possible co-evolved with industrialism itself. In order to obtain the factory friendly texture, it was necessary to ‘toast’ the tobacco, which raised the nicotine level making cigarettes more addictive. The makers also adjusted the burn time of the cigarettes to align with the ten minutes of breaks.
Really interesting. I hadn't actually made this connection between monetary wage labour and smoking, so thanks for sharing
I like the fact that this essay doesn’t have a solution. :)
Ha ha. Glad you noticed ;)
This is a huge basement's stone for an healthy perspective of the world!
This is so good. Solutionism! I’ve been writing about this sort of thing in lieu of green energy technocracy. I didn’t know there was a name. Excellent.
Evgeny Morozov was one of the first to start popularizing it. Glad I can contribute to popularizing it further
Do you have a link to an article about that? I've thought about the fact that the "green energy" solution predominantly presumes we NEED ever-increasing amounts of energy.
Hi Tobin,
This is very late bc I somehow missed my substack notifications. I’m part of this organization: protectthecoastpnw.org
Here is a piece I wrote:
https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/resisting-massive-offshore-energy/
That's very beautiful writing, Erica. I posted an excerpt as a note:
https://substack.com/@tobinowl/note/c-73307539?r=1cz07o
I've been trying to articulate the false sense of pioneering that you've characterized in the fintech reference at the end: the story that businesses tell themselves and the world about 'heading towards the future' while essentially anchoring us deeper into this monetary system. Today's version in my head is "There are no leftist startups." Yes to acknowledging where we are. 👍🏽
Glad that it resonates Rosano
This is the first time I have had "solutionism" defined in such a way that is both meaningful, makes sense, and generates a framing I mostly agree with. We make our tools and, in turn our tools make us. It is a symbiotic relationship we have far less control over then we'd like to believe.
That said, I find the paragraph you begin with "But let’s get real." to be somewhere between annoying and infuriating. Quickly returning into a system where "non-monetary interactions that economic anthropologists have observed for a very long time would be recreated and foregrounded again" would certainly involve mass death and be the kind of thing that those involved would describe as a 'horror' or 'tragedy'. Those previous systems, whatever their strengths, were not capable of sustaining a population as large as those that currently exist. There is a cost to "simply fragment(ing) into thousands of smaller networks with closer social ties" that you gloss over that makes you sound very callous in a way I do not believe you intend.
This is not to imply that no other system is possible without collapse - I think the space of possible social systems is very large and hope that many exist that both fulfill fundamental human needs better then the current one and sustain at least as large a population. But although such systems would likely take some inspiration from the past, they would probably be as alien to us as our current system is to those of our ancestors.
Hey Ben, thanks for the comments, and glad you like the solutionism definition. I agree with you on the mass tragedy point, and I've added a disclaimer into the paragraph. It is intended to be a thought-experiment, because, as I note in the paragraph below, "there’s no way to go ‘cold turkey’ on money, because we’re an interdependent species, and money underpins the entire system that every one of us relies upon for life-support" (aka. if we actually did do this, we'd lose access to our life support = death)
Yeah, I knew you weren't thinking along those lines, but your tone was flippant enough to make me want to say something.
It is correct to say that if a tragedy were to occur the survivors would be forced to change the scale and style of economic interaction in way that might end up resembling parts of past systems of interdependency.
That said, it's very easy to fall into the progressive frame when thinking about things like this. A post-collapse system would not necessarily be a 'retvrn to the past' but rather a fragmentation in a new direction as systems and people evolved to try and meet their needs in a harsh and changing environment. The results would likely be unlike both the past and the present. It would be an interesting experiment if not for the horribleness of it.
Sure. I'd reiterate that the article doesn't call for an end to monetary addiction. It calls for acceptance of that as a reality
I started a reply about having the best of both (old and new) worlds but got bogged-down because the potential success of decentralised economies of the future is dependent on the present struggle to recapture sovereignty - the mother of all battles https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/red-symphony
And I'm pretty sure Brett would respond "conspiracy theory"!
I'd just respond 'diagonalist'
"We make our tools and, in turn our tools make us. It is a symbiotic relationship we have far less control over then we'd like to believe." reminds me, I need to return to Kevin Kelly's book What Technology Wants...
I like the addiction metaphor but feel it's worth distinguishing between the individual physical addition to a substance and the collective addiction, which is probably not really addiction.
What's happening underneath the metaphor is that as the money system becomes part of society, then society builds on it; the more layers are built on it, the more we depend on it. If we are addicted to money we are also addicted to government, to language, to any number of technologies. I'm addicted to my fingers, my liver, my glasses.
And withdrawing from our 'addiction' to money is almost not even an option and the health benefits are debatable. Overall I would probably prefer another framing.
There are always trade-offs with metaphors. I guess there's a way to expand the definition of 'addiction' to 'anything that makes your body scream if you withdraw from it', which would include food, water, infrastructures etc etc, but I also understand that addiction has a more specific meaning and there's the risk of expanding it too much. That said, there is a tradition of expanding personal concepts into societal concepts, and I do think there's a case to be made for 'social addiction' - things that our society as is locked into with no means to back out. For these to work though, you need to view society as a being a 'superorganism' made up of us
Alternatively, I could search for related metaphors, like 'hunger' (also worth noting that addiction is sometimes described in terms of 'hungry ghosts').
I do think the 'social smoking to full smoking' trajectory is a very useful frame for quickly disrupting solutionist narrative more generally though: so much of the stuff we use doesn't begin with us having a 'need'. E.g. right now you can see a massive 'social smoking' push for AI, as every tech company keeps of trying to nudge you to use it (e.g. Microsoft keeps trying to get me to use co-pilot, and Evernote is trying to get me to use its AI etc). They're literally behaving like a person trying to nudge me into smoking. This same process can be seen with so many things - e.g. autocorrect was simply rolled out as a feature without anyone asking for it, and now people perceive a 'need' for it
yep I did like the bit about solutionism.
I’m would say there’s a big difference between a human body part that you’re born with (liver, lungs, etc.) and a human created tool (government, money, etc.)
Although that puts motherhood / parenthood in a weird neither space because, unlike other species, humans are incapable of self survival at birth
Perhaps one could say partnering is a “tool” our species created? 🤔
If we take seriously the idea that society is an interdependent 'superorganism' made up of us, and that the current version of it is built upon particular technologies and infrastructures, then those do become analogous to 'organs' in an organism. I.e. complex multi-cellular organisms evolve to a point where they cannot exist without particular organs, much like the version of our society right now implies the presence of money, government etc.
One other reflection: It's interesting that when we say our organs have 'functions' we don't assume we 'choose' them or have agency over them, and this is one area where functional descriptions don't really imply rational choice
Ever since I was a child, I knew there was something very wrong with money, though I had no concept of where that wrongness came from.
Nevertheless, I did make a conscious choice from a very young age to participate as little as possible in the money system. I think the possibility of such a choice exists, but it is no easy task even for someone like myself who never really bought into the whole money paradigm to begin with.
As a society, people need to wake up to the fact that, as you have so well illustrated, money is not a solution but and enclosure, an artificially induced need. If more of us awaken to this reality, then we may find the real solution in old values: solidarity, kindness, paying it forward, love and community. Only by reviving such values that still exist in the background do we have any chance to weaken our addiction to a system where we appear entirely dependent on the organs of false paradigms and institutions.
Thanks Brett!
This stack crystalized some of my fleeting "thinkings".
And confirmed some other ones.
I have a different perspective tho, since I think that humanity should abandon the huge city concept. Communities no larger than 10k people. Spread out and self sustainable in harmony with the land. Problems we are facing now come to us exactly because the big cities provide cover for a huuuge number of crazy evil parasites and psychopaths, never mind the ordinary criminals. Go local and be 100% self-responsible is the solution. Radical self responsibility! Which can not work in such environments, precisely because of their nature! Cities came to be as means of defending the rich abusive thieves - some call them aristocracy. Who are afraid for their lives and thus need a system in which they buy and control people (by any means necessary)...
Spot on view of addiction! Interesting that you said in a comment above how addiction is sometimes called "hungry ghosts". Where does that saying come from if I may ask?
Hi Sirius, thanks for your comment. The term hungry ghost actually originally comes from Buddhism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost), and then Gabor Maté has used it in the context of addiction https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/
Your metaphors are always so spot on. Well done, Brett !
Thanks Ji-Lune!
I live on a canal boat in London. While I’m personally still dependent on money, a few of my neighbours use it a lot less. They go skipping for food and other necessities; they have little in terms of income, but they rarely need to use money anyway – just for things like the occasional beer. They have savings for a rainy day (unlike me).
They’re in their 30s, have their own floating homes with no mortgage and an abundance of both food and free time. They’re university-educated and could have chosen the well-trodden path, but decided not to.
Me, on the other hand, I’ve got a £20k debt to pay off after being pushed out of the fintech I founded (which had raised £5m), by my cofounder and VCs. So I’m forced to earn money, but when you earn money, it’s tempting to spend it too — and the cycle continues. I did default on a £4k Amex bill though, which felt great, and they seem to have given up on me.
Thanks for sharing this story Tr. I've spent some time on those canal boats in London and know the vibe. Your startup experience sounds rough - I've actually heard stories like this before.
In terms of defaulting on debt, you should check out the story of Enric Duran, who deliberately did this to 39 banks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enric_Duran
What a great piece
Indeed, as the article points out, the tragedy of addictants is that, after the honeymoon period is over, they generally only bring the addict back up to the hedonic level that they experienced prior to their addiction. The 'pleasure' that the addictant brings is the relief from 'jonesing'.
I know this is also true for my morning coffee, but there's a personal intimate ritual associated with making and drinking coffee in bed. Although I have never smoked, I have watched enough movies to know that this is true for cigarettes too. These addictants, they readily interpenetrate and infiltrate our lives and become part of our rituals.
In these rituals (repetition x significance) the addictants encourage repetition and associatively acquire significance. They become one of the "sacramental instruments" of the ritual. So, contemplating giving up an addiction feel as if part of the meaning in one's life is as about to fall away -- and that alone is quite a scary thing. Of course, one will recover from the illusion once one has successfully quit, but there maybe a lasting social rupture.
I love this comment. Great description of addiction and ritual. Thanks Tjalrz. One of the hardest parts of quitting smoking for me was the ritual of rolling the cigarette. In fact, one of the ways I quit was to roll 'air cigarettes' - I'd go through the physical motion of rolling without actually using any papers or tobacco, and then I'd 'smoke' the air
Organic functions as provided by nature do not require rational choice. Technological or societal functions are based on the rational choice of usefulness otherwise it is not a ‘function’ but a ‘malfunction’ which is to be scrapped. The dynamics of recognizing the usefulness of ‘functions’ are changing with the mode of production. With progressive development of late stage capitalism by seemingly ubiquitous commodification social usefulness is gradually replaced by exchange-value driven consumer utility, which are dubbed ‘functions’ of choice, individualism and freedom. That is why you can pick from 6 different colors of toilet paper.
Absolutely loved how you laid these perspectives out, will be adding it to my knowledge bank and writing arsenal. Ours Sainsburys card system shut down for a few hours yesterday, couldn’t stop thinking of your work amongst the kafuffle lol
Really glad that you find it helpful Isabelle
Extremely thought provoking.
Very interesting and well written edition.
Thanks!