185 - Poisoning the Well

Motivation is a finite resource, like fresh groundwater, and the current dynamics of our global "attention economy" and adjacent influences function like fracking, repurposing, depleting, and critically contaminating that formerly fresh groundwater.

Just as chemical poisoning of water with contaminants such as lead can easily cause brain damage and remain within the body for 30 years, the systematic poisoning of human motivation via exploitive optimization over human attention can cause equally severe and long-lasting effects.

One of my colleagues observed a repeating pattern across friends they knew in a variety of very well-paid roles in tech and tech-adjacent companies some years ago, where they all seemed to be cultivating a deepening sense of malaise, losing any sense of purpose and meaning. As their attention was optimized away from things with meaning by dark patterns attacking from an ever-increasing number of vectors, and with increasing potency, they lost their grounding, making them more vulnerable to all such malevolent optimizers.

This brings to mind the famous poem by T. S. Eliot, named "The Hollow Men", now best remembered by the conclusion, that "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper."

The rate of technological acceleration acts as a force multiplier, prying humanity away from any grounding, with regions also going through rapid development at even greater potential risk due to the greater pace of socio-economic changes taking shape. A chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and countless global supply chains rely on such countries and regions that are now at the greatest risk. This is a particularly potent cascade risk, as one failing can easily cause a domino effect in others.

No matter the awareness of this problem or relevant expertise, "no man is an island", and human motivation can't be fully isolated from the damage, as humans are fundamentally social creatures. As another famously put it, "...it takes a village to raise a child.", but when the villagers have no motivation to do much of anything, let alone raise and educate the next generation, then the poem may reach its conclusion.

Dark patterns hack human motivation by design, punching an increasingly large hole in the bottom of the bucket, and "We've created a world in which online connection has become primary. Especially for younger generations. And yet, in that world, anytime two people connect, the only way it's financed is through a sneaky third person who's paying to manipulate those two people. So we've created an entire global generation of people who were raised within a context with the very meaning of communication, the very meaning of culture, is manipulation."

This begs the question of humanity's current dilemma, how can humanity escape the trap when those with the resources to do so have lost all motivation and grounding? We have the technical means, but that means nothing if they lack the will to take a single step.