Genius and Risk in The Age of Discovery

I have been reading the newly published The Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance by Oxford scholars Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna in preparation for a meeting I will be having with one of the authors in a few weeks time, during which we will be hashing out some of the issues pertaining to chaotic transition. I took an interest in their book and in their work because Age of Discovery attempts to interpret our time also as a chaotic transition — as implied by the reference to “New Renaissance” in the subtitle — which they interpret as representing a convergence, or coincidence, of “genius” and “risk”.

I found the book a little uneven, as one might expect from a book written by two authors who might themselves be code-named “Risk” and “Genius”, or who may have specialised in one or the other aspect of that polarity. And I don’t think it probes those issues of risk and genius, and what this means in the context of chaotic transition, deeply enough. Here at The Chrysalis, what they call “risk” we call “disintegration” or “havoc”, and what they call “genius” we call “re-integration” or “consciousness mutation” or restructuration. So I want to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the book in its approach to the meaning, and full depth, of “choatic transition”.

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Pledges and Pipelines

Speaking of “Churn”, yesterday’s announcement by Canada’s Liberal government approving the Line 3 and Trans Mountain (Kinder Morgan) petroleum pipelines (but squashing the Northern Gateway) has lit a fuse. I recieved, this morning, a declaration from the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) vowing resistance to the pipelines and calling for aid, which I here reproduce in full.

The Churn. The Crucible.

“Churn” is just as good a word for our chaotic transition as any, and perhaps easier to absorb. The churn is affecting everything — rationality, truth, social relationships, language, and so on. Canada’s Liberal Finance Minister, Bill Morneau, recently used the phrase “job churn” to describe precarious employment and job opportunities for the young in the future. What Morneau refers to as the churn is what I call the crucible. Precarious livelihood is only one aspect — albeit a big aspect — of the Churning.