The Direction of Intention

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“Innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transitions. Our ‘Age of Anxiety’ is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools – with yesterday’s concepts.”

Along with Quentin Fiore, Marshall McLuhan published that thought in 1966. He had some idea of what was coming down the pike for us but I wonder if he could imagine the world we inhabit today. It is the hallmark of our time that we are always in a period of great technological change; we are nothing if not a culture perpetually defined by transition: transition is at the center of this experiment that we call democracy and the United States of America. The idea that we are static, fixed, and that our destiny is manifest is a rusty old tool that’s been outdated for a century or more.

Yesterday’s tools are corporate and tribal. Yesterday’s tools assume opposition – in fact they thrive on opposition. They assume access to knowledge is the province of the few, they assume people will sit passively in front of their television sets as banks make record profits while they lose their homes. They assume that communication has borders. Yesterday’s tools are failing all around us; our education system, our political process, our media, our ideas of who we are and our place in this world. Yesterday’s tools bank on the idea that the red states and the blue states will continue fighting over foggy notions and won’t notice what’s going on in the state of our national being.

“Power over” is a tool from another time. Its shadow reaches into our day (thus the anxiety) but “power with” is on the rise; have you ever known a time when people were more capable of immediate and potent connection (Egypt was not an accident). The pace of technological change is not going to stop anytime soon; neither will our culture of transition. Our tools are changing. Our modes of communication are changing, our way of being in the world is changing and one of those ways is how we view power – power in ourselves and in everyone around us.

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