Ippolito Caffi, Eclisse di sole alle Fondamenta Nove

The meaning crisis. The meta and poly crisis. The loneliness epidemic. The decline of social capital and collapse of community. The loss of unifying narratives. The kali yuga. Whatever you want to call it. When we listen to these proclamations we inherently perceive their truthfulness. That they are loosely gesturing at the same thing. That something is existentially amiss in the cultural and societal waters we’re swimming in. And although we can’t fully grok what the problem nor solution may be, we feel its repercussions through our relative experiences, reverberating across the human experience: the pervasiveness of of anxiety and depression, decline in institutional trust, increase in social disconnection, and the decay of religious, social and civic infrastructure. Overall, society increasingly feels more individualist. And in that void our surrogates for meaning become progressively derived from dogmatic ideologies, cacophonies of new-age rituals and ancient rites, consumption of brands, institutional affiliations, social media follower counts, personal wealth and vocational prestige.

In other words, we are more materially prosperous and free to self-actualize than we’ve ever been, yet feel unhappy and lonely in that plight, grasping eagerly at proxies for meaning - those of which satiate us temporarily, yet leave an aftertaste of emptiness. I believe that what we’re experiencing is actually a crisis of individualism, in which meaninglessness and loneliness are mere byproducts. What’s needed is not more commentaries expounding on downstream side effects, but rather, clarity into the root causes of our predicament: our individualism. Though there have been many interventions proposed across economics, policy, public health, urbanism, and civil society, I believe one of the most powerful leverage points out of the machinery is back through it; and that’s through ourselves. But first, we must understand how the relationship between the individual and the collective has evolved over-time.  

Derived from the Latin word "individuus”, an individual refers to a single, distinct entity that is considered separate from others. This is the opposite of the non-dual, interconnected, and coherent essence of nature and organic systems. In mythic and archaic eras, our human social systems reflected the natural order of the universe and the harmonious interdependency we had with the transcendent and one another. Later on, our connection to the sacred and this natural order eroded but was realized through various prophets (Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, etc.), which were then codified for lay people through religion, enabling experiential access to truth via exemplar teachers, wisdom teachings, and community. In the pre-modern world of kings and queens, an “individual” was embedded within a larger chain of being, through a divine order which descended from the cosmos, mediated by the church to the state, and onwards, to the roles and purposes carried out by its citizens. Largely predetermined at birth and stable throughout life, meaning was clearly conferred to the average person. While religion provided a unifying framework for values and moral action, it was also gate kept by the clergy. Though deeply meaningful, the social order was also restrictive and dogmatic. Overtime  “Church” became increasingly usurped by “State”, leading to tyranny, bloodshed in the name of God, and social structures that repressed the natural will and expression of the individual. It was also a world without much equality, upward mobility, scientific knowledge and technological progress.

The subsequent ushering in of The Enlightenment was an over-correction that swung the pendulum towards the decline of unquestionable dogma and the rise of reason, autonomy, and individualistic freedom. Meanwhile, modern science, materialism, and rationality co-arose as the teleological end of human civilization, accelerating exponentially with the industrial age and the capitalistic doctrines that have since shaped our politics, culture, and societal norms and values. The price for pedestalling the individual was social disintegration and privatization of spiritual life, as relationships became conceived upon utility and competition, while pervasive rationalistic, technical and bureaucratic ways of being emptied life of meaning. The breakdown of social hierarchies challenged our role within society and led to a loss of shared communal goals, affecting how we conceive of ourselves, and subsequently, how we conduct ourselves ethically. In the end, the revenant pursuit of individual freedom and technological progress brought about many fruits, but also cost us a loss of ‘raison d’être’, inherent meaning, and social cohesion.

Today, ‘the meaning crisis’ and ‘loneliness epidemic’ are in fact new terms alluding to a very old crisis of individualism that has been unfolding since the 17th century.

In recent decades we’ve felt the crisis more acutely, as new forces have exacerbated our individualism and resulting self-reliance. Social and information technologies have intensified the disconnection we feel and infinitely increased the possible sources of truth and frames one can take on. The credibility of mainstream institutions as meditators of sense-making have been upended in the wake of multiple economic crises and the COVID epidemic. And the advent of AI not only magnifies the lack of unifying values in the current human discourse but also has the potential to automate many white and blue-collar jobs that confer meaning, begging the question: what is actually meaningful?

It’s no wonder we are becoming increasingly individualistic, as proverbial rugs continuously get  pulled from under us. With no sense of solid ground to stand upon, we double down on a mix shift of meaning surrogates that feel safe in the relative but don’t necessarily match the dynamism of our inner-truth and authenticity.

Increasingly so, we’ve begun to realize that the answer of personal meaning can no longer be sought outside of ourselves, readily packaged for consumption. We must save ourselves. So we go on a proverbial 10-day meditation retreat, sign up for therapy, solo travel to numerous 3rd world countries, take on the countenance of a personified Walden Pond ascetic, and consider becoming an influencer in the process, mistaking views and likes as real community.

Under the capitalistic mandate of unbounded growth and progress, we become hyper-focused on my trauma, my healing, my passions, my hero’s journey, my hobbies, my tribe - purchasing our way into idealized versions of ourselves, and doing so in a vacuum navigated largely alone and cut off from a broader social fabric of pluralistic perspectives.

Thus the quest for freedom, authenticity, and self-actualization is not only achieved by going at it by ourselves, but making it about ourselves. Propelled by an individualism that serves to reify the ego, rather than loosen its grip, so that our natural gifts may spontaneously arise in service to the larger collective.

What’s required now is not necessarily a return to ancient times but a synthesis: How can we continue the project of Modernity, with its material prosperity and arch towards individual freedom and self-actualization, while mitigating the individualistic and dualistic bugs it brings in? How can we recapture the value of meaning that we’ve lost without sacrificing the authenticity we crave?

How can we have authenticity without individualism?

There is a deep truth and beauty in carrying on the essence of what our forefathers and mothers of The Enlightenment strove for. The process of uncovering our unique soul purpose without outside scripts, arriving at our values through first principles, and (especially pronounced in the last few decades) doing the work of psychological healing and spiritual exploration without the intermediary of religious dogma. As a human species over millennia, the arch towards self-trust, personal actualization, and a world where each individual is fully alive in their gifts is a beautiful one. However, if not careful, the subtle tendrils of the ego, its focus on “I”, and tendency to see “self” and “other” as separate, can sabotage our process. Within “individualism”, there is the term “dualism”. In the same vein, the word “Devil” comes from the Greek word diabolos, meaning to divide or throw against. The proclivity towards duality we experience toward others today, is the same proclivity that animated the turbulence of pre-modern times through its bloodshed, repression, and societal inequality. Only it’s now shining through the project of our personal actualization. It is the frame by which we see others as fundamentally different, less respectable, or separate from oneself. It is the unending prioritization of individual goals, desires, and achievements over the well-being of the collective. It is why the “outside world” becomes a reflection of the duality we feel inside: divisive neighborhoods, polarizing political parties, and a global system oriented around defensiveness over abundance, all mirroring the collective duality we internalize and project onto larger fractals.

True actualization is about letting go of the dualistic frame entirely, going through the process of “clean up, wake up, grow up, and show up”, and operating from its antidote: self-transcendence, non-dualism, interconnectedness, and a striving towards coherence within and outside oneself. In Abraham Maslow’s unpublished notebooks before his death, he came head to head with a paradox: How could so many of the self-actualizing individuals he studied simultaneously have such a strong identity and actualization of their potential, yet also be so selfless? In a 1961 paper, Maslow observed that self-actualization seems to be a “transitional goal, a rite of passage, a step along the path to the transcendence of identity.” This is like saying its function is to erase itself.  He wrote, “The fully developed human being working under the best conditions tends to be motivated by values which transcend his self… My satisfaction with achieving or allowing justice is not within my own skin; it does not lie along my arteries. It is equally outside and inside: therefore, it has transcended the geographical limitations of the self.”

Furthermore, the journey of self-transcendence is not done in a vacuum. To pursue authenticity without individualism means seeing it as an inherently social enterprise. Charles Taylor, the late philosopher, posits that meaning-making is done through ongoing dialogues with others and within the pluralism of traditions and communities we explore. In a similar vein, John Vervaeke calls this phenomenon “Transjectivity”, whereby meaning arises in the relationship between subject and object. In other words, it’s a process that cannot be done in isolation, but in the relationship between ourselves and the environment we’re embedded in. As each of us harbors unique impulses within that guide us towards authentic meaning and actualization, we need one another to ripen those impulses dialogically.

Ultimately, the point of self-actualization is that it’s not about the self at all.

Feel into your body right now. Somatically, we intuit a sense of deep meaning, openness, and relaxation when we imagine ourselves contributing towards the robustness and coherence of a greater whole - serving our loved ones, community, and the entirety of humanity in the unfolding of an even larger evolutionary and cosmic purpose. It is what spiritual guides like Bill Plotkins have described as “soul purpose”, an intrinsic calling and unique niche, within a larger ecological web, that an individual is meant to fulfill in their lifetime. This is actually what we’re all seeking, and the essence of what The Enlightenment was gesturing at. However this purpose often lies buried and paralyzed under the weight of the ego’s frantic efforts to obtain, acceptance, love, approval, and appreciation, as it acts through the blade of the mind in its attempts to rationalize, reduce, separate, and control. And we live in a world which is built around giving the ego what it wants, because we have created it from our own confusion. It is precisely this predicament that fuels our ongoing crisis of individualism. Like a led-astray child, the ego attempts to use the ego to heal and satiate itself - whether that’s through mechanisms of materialism, consumption, social status, or tight-fisted identifications. Little does it know, it must take the Kierkegaardian leap of faith and surrender to something beyond it - a quiet knowing or primordial awareness that is beyond time and concepts, tethered to a cosmic thrust of ever higher orders of coherence and interconnectivity. In this world, the ego is not vanquished, but rather a partner and manifester to what the soul envisions - like a wave that crests in its uniqueness for a little while, then relinquishes into the vast ocean. We are in an infinite dance with reality as it continuously rediscovers itself through us. In this dance of surrender, we keep falling - however, the good news is that there is also no ground. Collapsing inwards recursively, flow is no longer experienced in fleeting moments of transcendence and immersion. It is your whole life serving life itself. Non-duality becomes embodied.

In Leverage Points, systems analyst Donella Meadows considers “the mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises” as the highest leverage point for bringing about systemic change. Re-imagining our individualism and internalized duality as a society is one of the highest leverage things we can do to change all that lies downstream from it. To live in a world that is increasingly non-dual, interconnected, and coherent, means we ourselves must embody those same principles, and express that outwards through our unique gifts to the collective, in a unfolding process that’s in constant dialectic with our social contexts.

A hallmark of the Renaissance is the sudden awareness of previously neglected aspects of experience. In the same vein, we can undergo a paradigm shift at any moment. And as society is made up of a collective of individuals, when enough individuals have made a shift, society as a whole will follow. Slowly but surely, our families, communities, city councils, political arenas, and global villages will be macrocosmic reflections of the embodied non-dual realization we’ve each made individually. We must understand the simultaneous precariousness and preciousness of the “time between worlds” we’re in and embody a new paradigm of being that will serve to unify ourselves, society, and generations to come.

Thanks for taking them time to read this essay. S/O to Kush Sharma for edits and Sam Wolf who’s been my mind-meld partner-in-crime on these topics.

Some further provocations:

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