Looking backward to move forward

Will be find asabiyyah? In search of practical utopias.

This feels like a dangerous moment in history for humanity. It feels like things were okay...ish for a long time and now they aren't. I came up with the phrase "the Age of Discord" and I had a series of posts planned to flesh out the idea, but haven't gotten around to it.

What I wanted to convey with the phrase is that it really does feel like a unique moment in history where we are having to deal with existential risks like total ecological collapse, nuclear Armageddon, societal collapse—all at the same time.

What makes this moment even scarier is that all this might be just one bad dick joke or butt joke away. I mean, Seth Rogen almost caused the end of the world because he made fun of Kim Jong-un's asshole.

But I think the phrase "Age of discord" is not catchy enough. If you follow economists, sociologists, and historians, you might have come across the term "polycrisis." It's a term used to describe the simultaneous series of interlocking and mutually reinforcing ecological, economic, political, technological, and social crises that we are dealing with on a global and planetary scale all at the same time.

A cursory Google search tells me that the term was coined by French complexity theorists Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern in 1999. But in recent times, the term owes its popularity to Jean-Claude Juncker, the former president of the European Commission, and the industrious and omnivorous historian Adam Tooze.

Now of course not everyone likes the term. Here’s what the historian Niall Ferguson said on a World Economic Forum panel in Davos with Adam Tooze:

Well, I have to confess I don’t like the word polycrisis. I’m with Gideon Rachman on this—it makes me think of polyester and polystyrene, things I never much liked. And I’m also somewhat skeptical of ‘geopolitical recession’ as a term. I mean, this is just history—it’s just how history works.

You get stuff that is not so perceptible: economic convergence, technological change, which were obviously going to alter the way the global economy worked. You had a financial crisis in 2008–09; you’ve had a populist protectionist backlash which kind of went from 2016 to 2019; then you have had Cold War II from about 2018 between the U.S. and China; a pandemic; and then a war in Eastern Europe. But that’s just history happening, and it would be surprising if there weren’t structural changes in the way the world economy worked under those circumstances.

Ferguson has a point. We’ve always faced one crisis or another and complaints and worries about the present are informed as much by reality as they are whitewashed memories of the past and sanitized feelings of nostalgia. But whatever may be the case, I would argue that the the crises we are confronting in the present are no less virulent than the ones we have in the last 100 years. In fact, I’d argue that the number of slow-moving existential crises—from ecological to social and technological—are not only greater in number but also seem to be accelerating.

It feels like we are careening toward a reckoning and we are utterly unprepared. The optimist in me tells me that when push comes to shove humanity has always gotten it right. But the cynic in me tells me that we are too fucking dumb to forestall a reckoning. A more likely reality is something like the movie Idiocracy.

Now, the reason why I am saying all this is because the YouTube algorithm recommended a talk by historian Roman Krznaric titled "History for Tomorrow" based on a book by the same title. As much as I bitch and moan about algorithms, they can be awesome sometimes. I probably would've never discovered Roman if not for the YouTube algorithm.

It was a delightful talk on how we can look to history for guidance and inspiration on how to deal with some of the most pressing challenges of our time:

…I think that it’s an illustration of the way that history is one of the most undervalued resources that we have for thinking about the future of humanity. We have vast amounts of the stuff that we are failing to tap into. That history, I think, can be a guide through our turbulent times. It can be a kind of counselor rather than a clairvoyant.

And here we are in an age of polycrisis—risks from artificial intelligence, the climate emergency, threats to democracy. And yet our politicians, to my frustration—maybe all our frustration—are so trapped in the tyranny of the now. They are looking at the next opinion poll, the latest tweet, or crossing their fingers and hoping that the tech bros in Silicon Valley are going to sort out our civilizational problems for us. They’re failing to recognize that to go forwards, sometimes you need to look backwards.

I mean, you wouldn’t drive a car without looking in the rearview mirror. But the idea of learning from history—what’s sometimes called applied history—is certainly not a new idea. It’s an idea that goes back to historical thinkers such as the ancient Greek writer Thucydides, the Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun in the 14th century, to Hobsbawm and Machiavelli. Goethe in the early 1800s said, ‘He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living from hand to mouth.’ I love that idea that history is full of nourishment.

I haven't read the book yet but as you may have guessed, I've ordered History for Tomorrow and a couple of other books by Roman. But I did watch the same talk twice because I agree with many of the thoughts that he shares about our current shitty moment. Listening to him, it felt like he spoke to the disenchantment that has been building up in me for a long time

I would describe the talk as wildly utopian and idealistic and I mean that in the best possible way. It's not an unrestrained paean to progress and how good we have it in the present moment that's often associated with the likes of Steven Pinker but this was more nuanced and grounded in some fascinating history.

I can easily imagine realists listening to the same talk and laughing at the naive idealistic visions that Roman sketches out. I can imagine their objections that history is more nasty and brutish in the Hobbesian vein than the sunshine and roses vision.

I think utopians get a bad rep because they are often painted as Pollyannas who are excessively optimistic and have no appreciation for the complexities of reality. One reason why some people might think this way could be due to negativity bias that's deeply ingrained in us—an evolutionary endowment designed to help us survive. As I was writing this post, I stumbled across this awesome post by

Stephen Oram

which kinda hints at the same thing:

I believe my stories are optimistic, albeit often dark and focussed on the unintended consequences of mixing messy humans with imperfect technology. Still, I agree there is an imbalance between the numbers of utopian stories compared to dystopian. You only have to look at the Wikipedia entries for twenty-first century dystopian and utopian literature. There are one hundred and six dystopian[2] and only four utopian[3], of which only Iain Banks’ Culture series are novels. The imbalance is staggering.

Maybe it’s easier to imagine a utopia than dystopia?

I think utopia and dystopia are two sides of the same coin and one can't exist without the other. I think progress is the result of a clash of these two competing visions of the future.

In stock market parlance, there's a saying that "The market always clears," meaning the market will always find a price to match the buyers and sellers. It might not exactly be the price that the buyers and the sellers expect, but markets find an equilibrium price to clear the trade.

The evolution of ideas follows a surprisingly similar pattern. Reality is often the middle ground between excessive optimism and unrelenting pessimism. Nobody gets everything, but all of us get something. The clash between utopian and dystopian visions, it seems to me, is the same. Put that way, reality is a clearinghouse of ideas.

In a moment where reality seems to have swung more toward despair than hope, I think we need more realistic utopian visions.

In 2019, the Financial Times published an article posing the question, “Orwell v Huxley: whose dystopia are we living in today?”[5] It’s a good question and an article worth reading. What’s fascinating is that it takes for granted that we are living in a dystopia. Although, right now, it’s hard to imagine an article asking whose fictional utopia we are living in. That said we’re far better off living now than in mediaeval times. But the fact that many commentators still consider today’s world to be dystopian shows a desire for a better world. We have an inherent hope for that elusive utopia and we are prepared to strive for it.

I highly recommend listening to the full talk but I wanted to share a few things I loved.

Circular economy

Roman starts the talk with the fascinating example of Edo and how it might have been one of the earliest circular economies on a huge scale:

We can find radical hope in ancient Japan. Now, imagine for a moment that you are standing on the Nihonbashi Bridge in the ancient Japanese city of Edo, which we now know as Tokyo. It's the year 1750, during the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate. You see people with bamboo umbrellas, fish traders carrying their goods to the market on the other side of the bridge, and others pushing cartloads of cotton or rice.

One of the extraordinary things about Edo in the 18th century was its size—it was a massive city with over a million residents, much larger than London or Paris at the time. But what was truly remarkable was how Edo operated what we would today call a circular economy. Almost everything was reused, refurbished, repurposed, repaired, or recycled.

This approach emerged partly because Japan was not trading much with the outside world, leading to shortages of precious resources like timber and cotton. As an example of this circular economy, they developed a garment-making tradition called "boro," where old pieces of cotton were sewn together to create new clothing. These garments were passed down through generations. In fact, I’m wearing a boro jacket today—it's over a hundred years old and represents a standard style from 18th-century Japan.

There were other circular practices as well. For instance, a kimono, once worn out, could be turned into pajamas, then into nappies, and eventually into cleaning cloths, before finally being burned as fuel. Edo was home to thousands of circular businesses. People would collect used candle wax and reshape it into new candles. Displaced samurai would repair umbrellas, and even human waste was collected and sold as agricultural fertilizer.

Japan also faced timber shortages, which led to the introduction of timber rationing and mass plantation forestry to regenerate their old-growth forests, which had been depleted before 1600. If we take a step back, Edo Japan was one of the world's first large-scale examples of a low-carbon, low-waste ecological civilization—very different from the shareholder-driven, consumer capitalism we know today. It was a deeply sustainable economy.

Of course, Edo was not a utopia. It was a feudal, patriarchal society. But it also had a lot going for it. People often say that environmentalists want to take us back to the past, to living in caves. But Edo was a time of great cultural flourishing—it was the era of Hiroshige's paintings, Basho's poetry, and sumo wrestling. There was a lot to appreciate about that era, even if we wouldn't want to adopt every aspect of their way of life. Edo was a fully-formed society—rich in culture, deeply sustainable, and with all the complexities and challenges of any civilization.

It reminded me of my childhood and my grandparents who used to follow many similar principles.

My grandpa was a notorious hoarder: empty coconut shells became firewood, stray pieces of iron were turned into sickles and other farming equipment, human waste became manure, and so on. In fact, for half his life, he used to travel from Hosur to Lalbagh on a regular basis to buy saplings to plant and nurture on his farm.

He used to sleep in a tiny room on the farm that was surrounded by what I can only describe as a mini heaven. The room couldn't fit more than 2 people at a time because he had hoarded all sorts of things that others would consider waste. This room was surrounded by fruit-bearing trees and flowering plants of all kinds. It was part of a giant farm where my grandpa and uncles grew everything from grapes to vegetables.

For the longest time, I would jokingly tell him to ensure that I got that tiny plot with the room and the garden. Growing up, I always loved playing around near the tiny room. Now that I think about it, I haven't met anybody else who was so in sync with nature. Living in this miserable city, I can't help but yearn for such a place.

We

One of my favorite parts of the talk was about a sense of “we.”

When I was researching for this book, I discovered an extraordinary Islamic historian from the 14th century—some of you may know him, but I hadn’t heard of him until a few years ago. His name is Ibn Khaldun. He wrote a treatise on history called The Muqaddimah in the early 1370s, while he was living in a castle in western Algeria, surrounded by crumbling and decaying cities and civilizations. He asked himself: What enables a city to thrive and survive? What causes civilizations to fail?

In his book, there is one word that appears over 500 times—asabiyyah. It's an Arabic term that means group cohesion or collective solidarity. Ibn Khaldun believed that the civilizations that thrived were those with strong asabiyyah—a kind of social glue or social trust. On the other hand, those that collapsed were the ones with weak asabiyyah, often caused by factors like wealth inequality, which led to instability and made them vulnerable to external threats. It was all about creating a strong sense of "we."

This concept is particularly relevant today, given the many polarizations in our society, exacerbated by new technologies, especially social media. These technologies feed us news that reinforces our existing beliefs, deepening divides. We see huge polarizations—pro-Trump versus anti-Trump, climate change activists versus deniers, and many others. The challenge is how to overcome these divides and create a stronger sense of collective solidarity.

Asabiyyah—what a beautiful word.

This part of the talk struck me because it spoke to a feeling I've been having for a long time: people seem unmoored. It seems to me that there's a deep-rooted crisis of meaninglessness in society, and I think this partly stems from the feeling of a lack of belonging and community.

If I think about the small towns and villages of my grandparents and relatives, pretty much everybody knew everybody. When I used to go there for my summer holidays, you'd get a warm welcome no matter whose house you went to. But in cities, people are disconnected and we probably don't even know our neighbors. It's kind of a modern tragedy of our own making.

You can see what I mean in this beautiful video I came across on The Marginalian.

The more things change, the more they remain the same

One of the other fascinating parts of the video was about how the printing press led to fake news and religious persecution, much like social media today:

If we want to think about the issue of social media and its effects, historically, the place to start is with the history of the printing press—another great communications technology that, when you look closely, was a source of immense polarization, much like social media today.

This story really begins in 1517 with what could be considered the world's first viral blog post. I happen to have a copy of it here—Martin Luther's 95 Theses. In this document, Martin Luther critiqued the Catholic Church, specifically the corruption within the papal hierarchy and the sale of indulgences. He famously nailed it to a church door in Germany, and his friends translated it from Latin into German. With the help of Gutenberg's mechanical printing press, the 95 Theses quickly spread across German-speaking Europe. Within a month, hundreds of thousands of people had heard about it, marking the beginning of the Reformation and the challenge by Protestant reformers to the Catholic Church.

Luther, a savvy communicator, quickly realized the power of this new medium. He translated the New Testament into German so that everyday people could read it without needing an intermediary priest. If you look at the publications of pamphlets, periodicals, and early newspapers from the first ten years of the Reformation—between 1517 and 1527—over six million pamphlets were printed in German-speaking areas, with more than two million of them being Luther's work. His writings spread like wildfire across Europe, translated into the vernacular, which made them accessible to ordinary people.

For those who were illiterate, Luther’s publications also included woodcuts—like the one from 1523, which portrayed the Pope with a donkey head and fish scales. These visual representations were a powerful tool for spreading Luther's message. In many ways, the printing press helped spread the Protestant ideals and challenged the Catholic Church, which was fundamentally a good thing—it was about challenging the hierarchical power of the established church.

However, as many historians have pointed out, it also inflamed religious conflict and warfare. Over the next two centuries, tens of millions of people died in the wars of religion. There is strong evidence that without the printing press, these conflicts would not have been nearly as extreme. Historian Elizabeth Eisenstein even wrote that Gutenberg's invention probably did more to destroy Christian unity and inflame religious warfare than any of the so-called "arts of war" ever did.

What if we all spoke to each other?

Perhaps the part that I loved the most in the video was about the bright side of the printing press.

Now, this is admittedly the dark side of the printing press, but there is a more positive side to the story. In later decades and centuries, the printing press combined with another technology to help create a democratic culture and a culture of rights—and that technology was the coffee house.

When coffee houses began spreading from Turkey to Britain in the mid-17th century, by around 1700 they had proliferated, especially in London, where there were around 2,000 coffee houses. The one on the left in the image—Manwaring's—was just a ten-minute walk from where we are today.

The interesting thing about these coffee houses was that when you walked in, particularly in London but also in some other European cities, you'd be offered a bowl of coffee (rather than a cup) for a penny. You could stay all day, but the real curiosity about these coffee houses was that they had communal tables. There, you would find periodicals and pamphlets of the time—products of the printing presses—available to read. You would sit down with strangers, often people with different views, and have conversations.

Some coffee houses specialized in scientific discussions, others in artistic or business talk, but above all, they were places for political discussion. This is where figures like Daniel Defoe and Tom Paine exchanged ideas, discussing topics like republicanism and anti-slavery. The combination of coffee houses and the printing press created spaces for dialogue between people with different backgrounds and ideas.

Today, we can think about the ways coffee houses facilitated conversations between strangers and consider how we might harness that historical lesson to address the social fracturing we face, including the erosion of asabiyyah. We need a bit of a historical caffeine fix—something to revitalize our sense of collective solidarity.

One of the key questions is how we could create digital coffee houses for the 21st century. When we think about online political conversations today, it's easy to picture people being incredibly rude to one another, often hiding behind the anonymity of poorly moderated chat rooms. However, there are some promising examples.

One of these is Deutschland spricht ("Germany Speaks"), a project founded in 2017 by the newspaper Die Zeit. The initiative invites people to sign up for online conversations with others who have opposing political views. Since its launch, over 90,000 people have taken part, and the project has spread worldwide. A Harvard study found that in 90% of cases, participants spoke with their so-called adversary for more than an hour, and in 33% of cases, they spoke for over two hours. On average, these conversations reduced intolerance and outgroup prejudice by around 75%.

So, it’s worth considering how we can create more projects like this. I'm also interested in the analog, face-to-face version—reviving physical coffee houses where people can come together for meaningful conversations.

The reason why I loved this is because I've been thinking about starting a small community to not only meet people with a shared love of reading but to encourage more people to read. Like I wrote in a previous post, I've never known the feeling of what it is like to not know something. But it seems to me that a growing number of people do. I see a growing sense of incuriosity in a lot of places and it's bothering me.

Now that I've heard this talk, if I ever get around to doing this, I want the community to embody the ideals of the 17th century coffee houses. Places where people read, talk, discuss and debate. I don't know if it's possible or if it's a fool's errand but I've never been more convinced that our society needs such places of intellectual communion.

Redesigning democracy

Perhaps one of the more provocative parts of the video was when Roman says democracy as we know it is useless in dealing with the challenges of the present:

Let me offer another reason for radical hope from history: the idea that democracy can be redesigned. It’s essential to think about governance and what history can teach us about reinventing it. The political systems we have today seem hopeless at addressing the crises of our time.

Since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, when alarm bells began ringing about the climate crisis, global carbon emissions have more than doubled. I have very little faith in traditional representative democracy to solve these issues, and that’s partly why we’re seeing a growing "democratic fatigue syndrome"—a decline in trust in traditional parties, political systems, and democratic institutions across Europe. This disillusionment helps explain the rise of the far right and anti-establishment politics.

We need to rethink the system.

Looking at the way the world is going, it's hard to argue against him. What was fascinating were examples of alternative democratic systems that he talks about such as Assembly-Based Governance, random selection where citizens are picked to serve on governing councils and citizens' assemblies. These aren't just theoretical examples but there are communities that have been using these systems for centuries.

I could easily argue that these are very cute examples rooted in unrealistic idealism. But the reality of our current democratic systems offers a strong counterargument.

Change, when?

As I was googling randomly to discover more of his writing, I came across another fascinating article of his on how and when change happens:

This sent me on a quest to search history for broad patterns of how crises bring about substantive change. What did I discover? That agile and transformative crisis responses have usually occurred in four contexts: war, disaster, revolution and disruption. Before delving into these – and offering a model of change I call the disruption nexus – it is important to clarify the meaning of ‘crisis’ itself.

So, COVID wasn’t enough, and regional wars like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the chaos in the Middle East aren’t enough. So does that mean World War 3 is what it takes for us to stop doing dumb shit? I don't think the ecological crisis that we are facing will cut it because it's just slow moving. When crises are slow moving, we don't really bother about them because we can kick the can down the road.

I also started watching other videos of Roman and ordered a couple of his books as well. I intend to write more once I read them.

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That’s it for this week.

What did you think?