This era of heightened individualism, of financial crisis, of rising inequality, of personal debt, of small state, of deregulation, of austerity, of gig economy, of zero-hours contracts, of perfection-demanding gender ideals, of declining wages, of unrealistic body-image goals, of social media with its perfectionist presentation and its tribal outrage and demands for public punishment.

These are the kinds of people who’ll be more likely to win at the game that has been made of our world, the kinds who’ll find a place in the boardroom or found billion-dollar hedge funds or startups – and then become powerful consumers, feeding back into the machine. This is who our modern tribal environment wants us to be.

Companies aren’t failing because they can’t execute. They’re failing because nobody agrees on what should be executed. They’re rudderless. Chaotic. Floundering. They’re full of overly-ambitious and politically-savvy leaders who have their own agendas, which means the company is not unified.

I do think this vision is necessary but not sufficient. You can’t have vision with no execution. But in my opinion too many people have swung that pendulum too far towards execution in recent years. It’s very true that if you can’t execute the vision doesn’t matter, but if you don’t have a vision then you execute in multiple directions simultaneously, or not at all.

There is not [a meaningful] distinction between much of what is now considered news and outright propaganda. Much news is produced to make a point and is directed towards emotional agitating of watchers/readers/listeners to ‘do stuff’ or to ‘fight stuff’ at the macro or political level.

News sensationalises shocking events ― often with graphic and loud mediums that shortcut fight-or-flight responses ― that no time has yet been spent on reflection. Sensationalised coverage of recent events is brainwashing: it riles up people to fight things.

No matter how hard we try, there are some things we’re not that good at, some ways of being we just can’t master. Regardless of all the promises we might make to ourselves and our loved ones, there are personal qualities we’d love to have, but can’t make stick.

One of the dictums that defines our culture is that we can be anything we want to be – to win the neoliberal game we just have to dream, to put our minds to it, to want it badly enough. This message leaks out to us from seemingly everywhere in our environment: at the cinema, in heart-warming and inspiring stories we read in the news and social media, in advertising, in self-help books, in the classroom, on television. We internalise it, incorporating it into our sense of self.

But it’s not true. It is, in fact, the dark lie at the heart of the age of perfectionism. It’s the cause, I believe, of an incalculable quotient of misery. Here’s the truth that no million-selling self-help book, famous motivational speaker, happiness guru or blockbusting Hollywood screenwriter seems to want you to know. You’re limited. Imperfect. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

It’s on the internet, in particular, that the beliefs of others are policed, their heresies loudly punished. It occurred to me that this might be the next irresistible step on the road we’ve taken: if we are all gods, then our feelings are sacred, and if our feelings are sacred, the people who hurt them must be sinners. It felt as if, at the heart of all this, there was something inherently narcissistic – that our perspective is so precious we feel justified in silencing or punishing those who don’t share it.

One remarkable feature of this new discord is the language students are using to denote injury. They speak of challenges to their points of view as acts of ‘violence’ or ‘abuse’ which leave them ‘unsafe’ and ‘traumatised’. It’s as if their inner self, their ‘soul’, is so precious as to be sacrosanct.

Also notable is the me-focused direction of much of their political activity. Whereas older generations protested in empathy with distant peoples – in apartheid South Africa, in Vietnam, in Biafra and in solidarity with those in Latin America or the Caribbean who were suffering as a result of US foreign policy – today’s privileged, angry students seem far more preoccupied with changing the world for themselves and those near them.

In the US, polarization between left and right has been increasing inexorably since the 1970s. But tech platforms such as Twitter and Facebook appear to be making what was already a serious problem worse. Studies suggest that experiences of moral outrage in normal ‘offline’ life are relatively rare, with less than 5 per cent of us experiencing it on a daily basis. In the 2010s social media began drenching the general population in levels of outrage the human animal has never before experienced and is not adapted to.

If that wasn’t worrying enough, psychologists also believe that hearing about immoral acts online actually evokes more outrage than when encountered in person. It’s too early to speculate on the full consequences of these radical changes in the public discourse. But consequences there will surely be.

Already, every day, millions of us are needled and outraged by the hysterically stated views of those with whom we don’t agree. Our irritation pushes us into a place of fiercer opposition. The more emotional we become, the less rational we become, the less able to properly reason. In an attempt to quieten the stress, we begin muting, blocking, de-friending and unfollowing.

And we’re in an echo chamber now, shielded from diverse perspectives that might otherwise have made us wiser and more empathetic and open. Safe in the digital cocoon we’ve constructed, surrounded by voices who flatter us with agreement, we become yet more convinced of our essential rightness, and so pushed even further away from our opponents, who by now seem practically evil in their bloody-minded wrongness.

The effects of social media’s echo chamber are magnified by invented news pieces that circulate widely on sites such as Facebook. One investigation found that in the final three months of the 2016 election, the twenty most popular false stories (Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President!‘) had more engagement with people, in the form of shares, reactions and comments, than the top twenty stories from respected sites.

When it was all over, the psychologist Professor Jonathan Haidt told reporters he’d come to believe social media is ‘one of our biggest problems. So long as we are all immersed in a constant stream of unbelievable outrages perpetrated by the other side, I don’t see how we can ever trust each other and work together again.’

So what, roughly, was the story of the world that many of those 2016 voters told themselves?


They had a powerful sense that things weren’t as good as they had been in their parents’ day, despite the fact they worked hard and paid their taxes;


they knew it was the fault of the politicians, who were corrupt, with their expense accounts and incestuous connections to lobbyists and bankers;


they knew that no matter who they voted for, it never seemed to make a difference;


they knew that if Trump got in, there might be an Apple factory opening up some time;


they knew that if we stayed in the EU a million Turks would come a-swarming;


they knew that last month, when their little girl was sick, they’d waited six hours at A&E and there was a large family in front of them who didn’t even speak English and how was that fair?;


they knew the opioid addict two doors down lived on food stamps and shopped in Macy’s, and that those food stamps had been paid for by their own hard toil and time;


they knew the left didn’t care for them any more, that they were over-educated elites who hated working folk, that the only people they gave a crap about were the minorities who were given all the handouts and were able to cut in line in front of them …


and they knew that here, on the TV and on the internet, was a straightforward, no-nonsense businessman, who kind of looked like them, and kind of sounded like them, and seemed to understand their problems. He was promising to restart their stories, to restore the forward motion they’d lost so many years ago.

Travel is a fantastic self-development tool, because it extricates you from the values of your culture and shows you that another society can live with entirely different values and still function and not hate themselves.

This exposure to different cultural values and metrics then forces you to reexamine what seems obvious in your own life and to consider that perhaps it’s not necessarily the best way to live.

Russia had me reexamining the bullshitty, fake-nice communication that is so common in Anglo culture, and asking myself if this wasn’t somehow making us more insecure around each other and worse at intimacy.

You’re at a grocery store, and you watch an elderly lady scream at the cashier, berating him for not accepting her thirty-cent coupon.

Why? That lady probably doesn’t have anything better to do with her days than to sit at home cutting out coupons. She’s old and lonely, er kids are dickheads and never visit, she hasn’t had sex in over thirty years, she can’t fart without extreme lower-back pain, her pension is on its last legs, and she knows she’s probably going to die in a diaper thinking she’s in Candy Land. That’s why.

This may be the first time in human history that every single demographic group has felt unfairly victimized simultaneously. And they’re all riding the highs of the moral indignation that comes along with it.

Right now, anyone who is offended about anything -whether it’s the fact that a book about racism was assigned in a university class, or that Christmas trees were banned at the local mall, or the fact that taxes were raised half a percent on investment funds-feels as though they’re being oppressed in some way and therefore deserve to be outraged and to have a certain amount of attention.

The current media environment both encourages and perpetuates these reactions because, after all, it’s good for business.

Now here’s the problem: Our society today, through the wonders of consumer culture and hey-look-my-life-is-cooler-than-yours social media, has bred a whole generation of people who believe that having these negative experiences anxiety, fear, guilt, etc. -is totally not okay.

I mean, if you look at your Facebook feed, everybody there is having a fucking grand old time. Look, eight people got married this week! And some sixteen-year-old on TV got a Ferrari for her birthday. And another kid just made two billion dollars inventing an app that automatically delivers you more toilet paper when you run out.

Meanwhile, you’re stuck at home flossing your cat. And you can’t help but think your life sucks even more than you thought.

The world is constantly telling you that the path to a better life is more, more, more buy more, own more, make more, fuck more, be more.

You are constantly bombarded with messages to give a fuck about everything, all the time. Give a fuck about a new TV. Give a fuck about having a better vacation than your coworkers. Give a fuck about buying that new lawn ornament. Give a fuck about having the right kind of selfie stick. Why?

My guess: because giving a fuck about more stuff is good for business. And while there’s nothing wrong with good business, the problem is that giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health.

You don’t get rewarded for being extra.

You don’t get any money when you save costs.

You’re going to get a raise below inflation.

You’re stupid for caring the way that you do.

The business’ downside risk is not yours, and it’s profits are not yours either.

You can be incompetent or your project can fail, and that’s fine as long as you don’t rock the boat.

It’s actually probably worse to rock the boat and try to save a failing project, not only do you take it on yourself if it fails (which it likely will anyway, because they won’t listen/the project is too far gone) but even if it succeeds you’ve stuck your head up and shown yourself to not be a yes-man.

We want team players here, not someone who’s going to kick up a fuss and argue with the boss or jump them on the ladder. Doesn’t matter if what you said was true or not, you don’t transgress the power structures.