The zero point 2020 and why authenticity is key for our future
By: Fabian Koenig
Tags: Society, Authenticity, 2020, Decentralization

How did we arrive at this zero point?

In the years of the 21st century, despite some setbacks, our society superficially seemed to be moving forward. Fuelled by accelerating technological developments and the wealth passed on from the Boomer generation to the next, many children of the late 80s and 90s lived a life in which hedonism and the accompanying political indifference were at the forefront. The actual state of our society was basically no different than it is today — it was just that people managed to ignore or disregard the grievances. For Boomer children, the motto was, someone, will take care of it. The luxury of social stability led this generation, in particular, to become politically stunted. Passive observations of world affairs became the privilege of those who had nothing to fear because of their background. Few raised their voices and waited for an echo in vain.

Things seemed complex and part of the collective attitude to life in the post-2000s was that the world evaded all attempts at serious engagement with its ills. Instead of engaging in discourse and developing inclusive solutions, our society split into ever finer bubbles within which there was no longer any need to confront disputes. Each of these bubbles developed its own moral standards, and critics within but especially outside their own bubbles were more and more cancelled. As long as one surrounded oneself with people of the same opinion, one could continue to live in one’s ideal world. In the last few years, however, this illusory façade of the post-boomer generations crumbled. It was realised that not all problems would somehow resolve themselves. Even more extreme, they could get much worse if not dealt with. Example after example showed that the world we live in is much more unstable than we ever imagined. It is beset by increasingly severe natural disasters, civil society is becoming more and more divided due to polarising resentments and politics is increasingly devolving into a people-based power game rather than ensuring our coexistence in peace and prosperity. As a most recent example, the Corona pandemic is the culmination of a development that had been in the making for a long time. Certainly, the reasons and contexts due to which our society has been forced to stop and pause by a virus are not yet fully comprehensible. Nevertheless, we could assume that it was the ultimate product of our way of life over the last two decades. This and many more developments seem to finally have led to a zero point in 2020.

A zero point divides into a before and after. It demarcates the positive and negative realms. It lies between polarities. Those who find themselves at the zero point not only feel exhausted and depressed, they also feel a state of lightness, of weightlessness. The possible directions that could be taken are open. As sorrowful as it seems to reach this state, it gives the possibility to reinvent and reorient oneself based on both negative and positive experiences. In the search for meaning, we often try to identify the aspects of our lives that fulfil us and make us happy. At the zero point, one can redefine those. Once you’ve reached it, happiness lies in finding something new that makes meaning. It lies in the energy that is released when one has the courage to question oneself, to detach oneself from the past and to live life forward. This questioning, recalibrating and reorienting will, in many senses, be the central theme of the 20s in the 21st century. However, merely invoking destruction is not sufficient to enable the emergence of something new. The process of actively destroying the self-image must also include an examination of the possibilities of rebuilding it, either incrementally or disruptive. Thinking ahead with existing systems and beliefs as the basis for a new beginning does not seem to be appropriate in this case. This would mean recognising the existing power structures and thought patterns, which one actually wants to question. It is precisely the disruptive challenging of these seemingly “normal” patterns of thinking that is necessary for the process of creative destruction for the confrontation with our new, post-2020 life.

Questioning, recalibrating and reorienting with Design

Despite the atrophy of the human being into passivity, we as a society developed an approach to solving such challenges on a micro-level, namely design. Contrary to the often popularly perceived meaning of the term, it has more to do with beauty or visual perception in a secondary way. In its essence, design is about the structured process of identifying and solving problems by challenging norms with the outcome of a superior “new”. To apply design in this context to create something new, we first question existing structures and processes with which our society functions and define the fundamental problems. Once these have been identified, potential solutions are proposed and examined for their viability. It is particularly important to note that there are no limits when generating solution concepts. Ideas should not initially be reduced to their feasibility or practicability and evaluated accordingly. A diverse range of potential solutions then forms the breeding ground for a dialectical examination of how we view our future. In this context, dialectics means thinking in opposites. According to its principle, the world does not consist of completed and finished matters and facts. Nor do developments proceed one-dimensionally and in a straight line. Rather, a constant process of confrontation and change must be assumed. Opposites constantly clash and form a new higher unity. A thesis is followed by the antithesis, which leads to a synthesis, which then forms a thesis with antithesis and further synthesis as a constant process of renewal. Applying this concept, we can engage in social design processes, creating theses and antitheses to synthesize potential solutions for the structural problems of our society. Protothoughts, in this context, represent an abstract concept of theses and antitheses that are evaluated against each other. Similar to the prototype that corresponds to the elaboration of a solution in the design process, they are thought experiments in which hypotheses are put forward and have to be examined for their confirmation or rejection. This seems to be a reasonable process for realignment, but in a society driven by rational-purposeful actions, the question arises: If protothoughts are the means, how do we determine an end that we pursue with them?

In principle, the mere “new” as an end is first of all value-neutral. But what is the good or improved “new” in comparison to the current state? In this aspect, it is impossible to come to an agreement. All social bubbles that makeup humanity in their entirety, have their own agendas and objectives. Traditionally, the political process sets goals based on international fora such as the United Nations and central organisational bodies such as governments. However, their actual implementation through centrally organised institutions based on existing transnational consensus mechanisms doesn’t seem to function. The Corona crisis can be cited as a good example here. Instead of uniting and coming out of the crisis stronger through cooperation, it became apparent once again that many nations were going their own egocentric way. Correspondingly, instead of pursuing centrally organised goals on a global stage, which in the end are not or only partially achieved anyway, it might make sense to take a bottom-up instead of a top-down end perspective with a decentral consensus creation process.

Decentral consensus-building based on authenticity

Centralised decision-making is characterised by the concentration of decision-making power in a focal point. Decentralised consensus, on the other hand, means the distribution of decision-making power to decentrally distributed nodes. The distribution of power creates a mutual dependency relationship in which the nodes check and supervise each other. If such a decision-making network reaches a consensus, it has a significantly higher legitimacy than with centrally made decisions and could accordingly also act more effectively. Fundamental to this would be in a first step, the seemingly impossible finding of a common minimum consensus along with all participants of the network — our society. As consensus is based on the agreement of opinion, we would have to start with a capacity of humanity that unites all. There are many potential candidates for this, but I see the most essential one in authenticity. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, something is authentic if it is real or true — “being what it appears to be”. Heidegger defines authenticity as standing up for and behind what one does — owning and professing one’s deeds as an agent in the world. In contrast, by “doing what one does”, he suggests, we fail to own who we are. We do not take ownership of our own choices and therefore are not truly the authors of our own lives. To the extent that our lives are not owned or disowned, existence is inauthentic, not our own. No matter where we come from, no matter who we are or what we do — authenticity is a fundamental capacity that, in principle, every human being strives for. The pursuit of individual authenticity can be seen as a means to the end of successful social relationships and coexistence based on respect. Following Ben G. Yacobi, I expand the meaning of the term to make it more accessible: Authenticity stands for the capacity of unbiased self-examination, self-knowledge, reflective judgement, personal responsibility, humility, empathy, understanding of the other and willingness to listen to feedback from others. It is a basic factor of personal attitude and value system which is often hindered by the presence of illusions and biases, including self-deception, wishful thinking and the tendency to behave differently when being observed. Politicians basically cannot be authentic in centrally organised democracies because they have to convince and please diverse groups of people with different values, goals, beliefs and needs. Even if in private, a politician may very well have this capacity, it is impossible for a political figure to behave authentically on a public stage. For this reason, the central organisation of a minimal consensus with authenticity is not possible.

In contrast, it is possible for the individual to be authentic. We can approach the ideal of authenticity not by being true to something given but to ourselves. Heidegger emphasises that this requires embodying virtues such as perseverance, integrity, clear-sightedness, flexibility and openness. In our society, which is characterised by an increasing loss of integrity, it would do us good to teach and promote these virtues in particular. With an emphasis on these values, authenticity could then emerge as a fundament for achieving the goal of decentrally creating a minimum consensus across social bubbles — away from central institutions such as the UN or political entities. Protothoughts could be an avenue to elaborate on authenticity in society and to approach a transnational minimal consensus through a dialectical process. Starting from this, we could burst existing bubbles and follow the end of shaping our future anew from a decentralised, bottom-up perspective.

To summarise — In the last two decades, the emerging Generation Y has been preoccupied with itself instead of seriously addressing the world’s ills. This culminated in a zero point in 2020, from which I propose to think of our coexistence less from centrally determined goals and more from the end to reach decentrally organised consensus. In a world consisting of millions of social bubbles, centralised goal-setting is usually nothing more than trying to serve the self-interests of the respective bubble. Before setting these, we should therefore first explore how we can arrive at inclusivity in the first place. With authenticity as a bottom-up foundation to decentrally find a minimal possible consensus between all members of society, we could create thought experiments (protothoughts) about how we want to shape cohabitation in the future and grow them in dialectic processes. We could then synthesize these into unbiased guiding ideas for a new coexistence after the zero point in 2020. Instead of returning to “normality” after the Corona pandemic, we should question “normality” and create a new reality of “normality” for ourselves — based on a universally accepted consensus.