For The Person Who Has Everything

whatsimportant.substack.com/p/for-the-person-who-has-everything

What do you get the person who has everything?

This is a question that can help define our era.

Our society is currently shifting in a simultaneous combination of two ways. There’s a bottoms-up revolution
in our collective worldview (the topic of my last piece). There are also signs of a top-down shift in mindset
happening among individuals at the very highest levels of power. These “hyperagents” hold a historically-
unprecedented concentration of wealth, power and resources. Twenty six people currently own as much as
the bottom half of humanity.1 So the positive leverage from them changing their mindset is immense.

The most likely time for a hugely influential person to change their worldview is when the approach
that brought them their prior success stops working.

The kind of focused willpower that leads to greatness is an accelerator. When you’re on the straights it can
be incredibly powerful. But when the road turns unexpectedly, a faster car just means you crash harder. A
winding road, changing circumstances, requires employing a different kind of mindset: the steering wheel.

A steering wheel alone has you spinning in circles. But, paired with a powerful accelerator, you’ll be speeding
around the track in no time.

“Steering Wheel Mindset”

Broad attention, a sensitivity to subtle cues and an intuitive sense of the whole are all features of “steering
wheel mindset.” Although it’s a style of thinking that’s currently out of fashion, it has long had an essential
evolutionary role to play in human culture.

I recently interviewed John Vervaeke on the topic of wealth and wisdom. In one of his early lectures, he talks
about the concept of “soul flight.” A tribe’s shaman would put themselves into the flow state and generate the
experience of flying over the world.2 This allowed them to get a literal “overview” of a complex situation and
help the tribe move forwards safely. In today’s world the shaman's domain isn’t nature, but the landscape of
ideas. And we’re starving for fresh perspectives.

In the West, we often utilize the flow state as a means to achieve individual peak performance. We can learn
faster, become better tennis players or traders. Other times we present it as simply an intrinsically desirable
experience. But that misses the point of this evolutionary adaptation: to generate fresh insights that can help
your entire tribe.

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In fact, Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey is a narrative description of the process by which an individual
leaves a stale paradigm and returns with the “boon”: a more accurate worldview. The hero’s journey isn’t
finished until he comes home with the treasure. The very name of the myth, and its centrality to virtually all
cultures, indicates that this isn’t some fringe skill, but the human ideal.

This insight is at the heart of the work of the remarkable classicist and mystic Peter Kingsley. In a lecture
from 2011 he repeatedly and forcefully made this point.

Spirituality is not about “me.” We’ve come to this crazy, ludicrous situation where we’ve actually come
to believe that spirituality is about me and my progress and my spiritual evolution and my growth and
that is a complete corruption of what spirituality is. And it makes me just want to give up and stop
saying we’re doing anything, especially in America because it is so horrifically perverted. Spirituality is
about the culture we live in. Shamans understood this very well.

Vervaeke argues that hunter-gatherer groups that had a shaman would outcompete groups that didn't. This
is why the shaman figure has always been a relatively universal feature of human societies. In the West this
is no longer the case. We don’t even have a word for them, let alone a central role. And as a result we are
steering straight into the wall.

This argument was further reinforced in another remarkable recent Emerald podcast on the cultural role of
intuitives. With the emergence of modernity, the intuitive wasn’t only marginalized, but in many cases actively
repressed and persecuted. In a society that celebrates the singular focus and drive of the accelerator
mindset, the seer might advocate for pumping the brakes. Our latest techno-cult of “e/acc”, or effective
accelerationism, seems directly opposed to this mindset. Moreover, in begging us to turn the turning the
wheel away from the onrushing wall, the shaman proposes ideas that can initially sound insane. This
threatens the single-minded dominance of whoever happens to be in charge. They used to burn heretics,
now we just fire them. But all transformational ideas must start at the fringe, the edge of the village.

“What’s in it for me?”

A lot of spiritual literature emphasizes the importance of surrendering your egoic willpower in service of some
vague greater good. Hand back the keys to your G6 private jet, downgrade the lifestyle and upgrade the
philanthropy.

But the harsh fact is that the evidence suggests that this isn’t proving a very effective sales pitch! This is
because the highly-effective and successful person is entitled to ask: what’s in this for me?

Translated to modern times, the ancient “shamanic” techniques give us access to the kind of intuitive visions
that can help renew our culture. The shaman that saves the tribe at a time of crisis will be remembered for
generations. We may not be comfortable thinking of them this way, but many of science’s most
transformational insights are closely associated with visionary states. Felix Hoffmann's synthesis of aspirin
was influenced by a dream of white willow bark. James Watson's dream of a spiral staircase played a role in

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the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. Dmitri Mendeleev's arrangement of elements in the
periodic table came to him in a dream. Most people think their best ideas come from their own brains, but
true visionaries know they come from somewhere else.

You know who can get away with proposing ideas that sound crazy without being burned at the stake?
Visionary people who already have the freedoms granted by money and influence.

Moreover, the greatest paradox is that in surrendering some raw accelerator power we gain access to a
much more subtle kind of influence. Writer Alex Komoroske uses a novel framing from Lord of the Rings to
distinguish between these two forms of power. There’s the egoic “Saruman” willpower we tend to celebrate,
and a more subtle “Radagast” form our culture often denies even exists. Radagasts develop an intuitive
sense for complex systems then make tiny harmonious interventions. They do the right things, at the right
time. To an outside observer, it can even look like magic. Not only does Alex argue that Sarumans mostly
become Radagasts when their willpower starts to fail them, but that the most effective people are a
combination of both.

When you hit the wall you’re forced to discover the steering wheel.

Steering wheel mindset may even help us discover the magical place where what only you can do meets
what the world needs. I think what most people, especially hyperagents, really want is reconnection to
purpose. It’s immediately obvious when you meet someone on the right path for them. They become less
comparative, less acquisitive and less anxious. Not only is their daily flow intrinsically desirable, it’s also
meaningful because they can see how it serves the whole tribe. This is the big payoff.

“What’s the how?”

Between 1200 and 1150 B.C., ancient civilization witnessed the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Vervaeke
describes this event as “the closest thing the world has actually experienced to apocalypse. The end of the
world.” More cities went out of existence during this short period than at any other time in recorded history.
There is still uncertainty and debate as to what caused it.

The Axial Age that followed produced a flowering of individual prophets and religions focused on a new
theory of human meaning. From the 8th to 3rd century B.C., the world saw the simultaneous emergence of
Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. In modern terms, five
centuries is a long time for revolutionary deas to spread. But if an equivalent paradigm shift happens again
now, and there are signs it already is, the prophets will have internet access.

In Peter Kingsley’s short book A Story Waiting to Pierce You, he proposes the romantic (and well-
researched) idea that Abaris, an Axial Age prophet-shaman from modern-day Mongolia, helped catalyze
Western spirituality through his contact with Ancient Greeks like Pythagoras.

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Kingsley describes Abaris as traveling in a trance, while holding an arrow that determined his direction.
Some scholars have interpreted this to mean he was in soul flight; above the world but clearly guided on the
right path.

Perhaps coincidentally, in my interview with Vervaeke he described the need for “tonos”. This is a Greek
word for the kind of “tension” that’s created when you pull back a bow string. Our accelerators are our brain’s
powerful, logical but limited left hemispheres, and the steering wheel is our subtle and intuitive right.
Vervaeke described tonos as the “creative tension between the left and the right hemisphere that actually
optimizes my ability to get a good grip on the world.” He thinks that requires adopting a dynamic,
scientifically-supported set of practices to help improve your embodiment and cognition. And then you also
need a community of peers, elders and mentors to support and correct you on that path.

But how do you know where to steer your car or point your arrow? The short answer is wisdom. Wisdom isn’t
about the intelligence stuck inside your head, it’s about how effectively you can interact with subtle relational
forces in the world around you. These can feel like love, aliveness, novelty, interestingness, excitement,
curiosity or attraction. And they are fundamentally non-verbal, right-hemispheric intuitions. Pythagoras,
presumably influenced by Abaris, also is credited with coining the word philosophy. It comes from philo-
sophia; love of wisdom. Philosophy has come to mean playing boring word games, but true pursuit of
wisdom feels like love.

A lot of contemporary spirituality focuses on the cultivation of “inner” states, but often to the neglect of this
“outer”, relational feedback. Entrepreneur

Scott Britton
has written some of the most insightful content on this latter topic. It’s about very carefully watching for
synchronicities or responsive reality. The total simplicity of this approach means it doesn’t get the emphasis
it deserves. But thirty years of research has shown that openness to new ideas and external feedback is one
of the primary correlates of wisdom. And wisdom itself correlates with flourishing and individual wellbeing.3
As it did before in the Axial Age, reconnection to wisdom may yet save us all from our own individual and
societal collapse.
One of Dr. Iain McGilchrist’s central conclusions is that the right hemisphere “master” should have guidance
over the “emissary” left. Although it should be obvious that you don’t steer with your accelerator, this is a
direct inversion of our current cultural ethos. But the one of the most common criticisms of McGilchrist’s
books is that he rarely gives specific advice how to become more right hemispheric. So how wonderful that

River Kenna
recently wrote a spectacular piece on seven practices to bring more right hemispheric balance to our
interactions with the world. He also relates this idea back to Kingsley. Kingsley often uses the word
metis,described as "presence and continuous alertness." It’s an instant, decisive responsiveness to whatever
opportunities the world presents to us. This is akin to balance between both hemispheres, in narrow and
broad focus. The racecar gripping the track. The tonos tension aiming the arrow. Saruman and Radagast.

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Flow. In another beautiful piece this week, River argued that metis is “the one essential quality.” And it’s
hard to disagree.
Wisdom may be the most important thing, and metis may be the essential quality that can cultivate it.
The last people to understand this will be the first ones left behind over the next few years.

The most common pushback from some highly effective and successful people is that the accumulation of
vast amount of power and resources is sufficient evidence that they’re already on the right path. And it’s
simplistic to argue that they’re wrong just because they’re rich. I’m sure evolution rewards pursuing the right
path in a variety of mysterious ways. But to point solely to a single factor, wealth, rather than the whole
picture is often a symptom of the problem. And the key is to get an overview of whether all aspects of one’s
life are equally balanced. Is jamming the accelerator driving you towards the wall?

McGilchrist closes his masterpiece, The Matter With Things, with a story told by a member of the Swiss
Parliament Lukas Fierz:

“Jung told us about his encounter with a Pueblo chief whose name was ‘Mountain Lake.’ This chief told
him, that the white man was doomed. When asked why, the chief took both hands before his eyes and
– Jung imitating the gesture – moved the outstretched index fingers convergingly towards one point
before him, saying ‘because the white man looks at only one point, excluding all other aspects’.”

Later in life, Fierz met a successful industrialist and self-made billionaire.

“I asked him what in his view was the reason for his incredible entrepreneurial and political success.
He took both hands before his eyes and moved the outstretched index fingers convergingly towards
one point before him, saying ‘because I am able to concentrate on only one point, excluding all other
aspects’. I remember that I had to swallow hard two or three times, so as not to say anything …”

What do you get the person who has everything? A better steering wheel.

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