The Gravity Well Effect

But categories are now less clear. They have multiplied and in some cases collapsed. And this makes the world buzz with imprecision. A FTL teenager looks into the social world and goes, “Oh please. I’m supposed to navigate that? What do I aim for? If there’s an identity waiting for me out there, I can’t see it.”

Our competitors are looking not just to beat us but baffle us. So, yes, the new American culture makes even business more changeable and chaotic. And culture, those underlying assumptions, are the culprit.

Even good things are bad. Take the cult of wellness. This was supposed to be a way to improve health in all of its dimensions, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. It hasn’t always turned out that way. Many people say wellness proves to be trying and diminishing. It’s become “you are not good enough” theater. One respondent captured the prob

A profusion of categories multiples the opportunities for human happiness. On the other hand, if you are 18, this explosion of categories may strike you as a new and daunting order of complexity.

Once as tidy as a Koi pond, culture now floods like the Nile. Great riches. Precious little order. This “too much” culture is a concussive, confusing culture.

Our culture no longer acts as a cultures should. It now creates more noise than system. It is too heterogeneous to have a center. It is too voluminous to organize. It is too rapid to mature. Once reliable diffusion “delivery systems" are broken. This means we cannot find the talented people, good ideas, and big solutions that once came to us n

Anyone with several decades left on the planet is obliged to wonder how bad things will get.

The university that cannot fix itself is disqualified from educating our young.

When our heroes are failing, what hope is there for the rest of us?