The ‘psychic commons’, the extra-egoic psychological space we share, is the new frontier of our time. A thread on identity and post-imperialism & how it will change society - inspired by @adamcurtis

Until the last 50 years imperial identity held. There was enough unindustrialised geographic and psychological space for imperialists to claim resources - land, people, concepts, intellectual property etc

As long as there were untapped resources for imperialists to claim, the rest could pin identity on nation-states, institutions, the structures set up / co-opted by imperialists to support imperialism.

Now these psychological and geographic resources have all been claimed & exploited, imperialism can only cannibalise & disrupt already-industrialised land, people, concepts, intellectual property etc

The structures set up by imperialism to maintain it will have to be dismantled by a new cannibalistic, disruptive ‘auto-imperialism’.

Side-note: by imperialism, I mean an instinct we all have to take power. Most of us are happy to let others do our bidding as long as we get enough trickle-down to save us the trouble of being actively imperialistic.

Oldskool imperialists demonised those outside the empire to validate their identity. Now we’re auto-imperialists, demons are thrown rapidly between fragile identity groups like hot potatoes. Identities cannot hold.

The truth has always been that identity is fluid, relative, borrowed - to be relinquished no later than death - but our old imperialist days shielded us from that fact.

In this new world, we’re forced to look the relativity of our identity in the eye daily. Social, cultural and political shifts can be explained by us coming to terms with this new reality. We’re just not used to this yet.

There is understandable denial about this new reality - mainly delusions of regaining lost empires. The anger that creates has strong momentum but is futile so will eventually die out.

The survivors of the new reality will develop a flexible dual psychology - a softly-held, continuously-evolving ego identity and an extra-egoic ‘psychic commons’ where the process of identity-making is compassionately understood.

These survivors will value opportunities to be relational, to advance the continuous progress of identity and advance their knowledge of the process of identity-making.

They will value processes over products, possibilities over positions, conversations over content.

Institutions & businesses that thrive in the next decade will focus on providing contexts for these processes rather than products & content. Some are thriving already (Twitch, Roblox, Clubhouse +++).