How open are we really?

On 22nd April, I read an announcement from my client, Meta:

“Today we’re taking the next step toward our vision for a more open computing platform for the metaverse. We’re opening up the operating system powering our Meta Quest devices to third-party hardware makers, giving more choice to consumers and a larger ecosystem for developers to build for. We’re working with leading global technology companies to bring this new ecosystem to life and making it even easier for developers to build apps and reach their audiences on the platform. This new hardware ecosystem will run on Meta Horizon OS, the mixed reality operating system that powers our Meta Quest headsets.”

The word “open” lodges itself in my brain and will not leave me alone.

Open.

People who live in bubbles. People who don’t know they live in bubbles. People who don’t care they live in bubbles. People who deny they live in bubbles. People who hang out with people who agree with them. People who don’t travel outside the confines of their own minds. People who don’t travel outside the confines of their own habits. People who don’t travel outside the confines of their own culture. People who travel outside the confines of their own culture and compare everything with the culture they stepped out of. People who are uncomfortable being outside their own culture. People who can’t wait to get back to the familiarity of their own culture. People who can’t change their minds. People who won’t change their minds. People who don’t like their faith in the reality they’ve constructed for themselves being even mildly shaken. People who aren’t up for revising their most cherished beliefs. People who don’t go outside. People who don’t look up. People who don’t take holidays in the zone of discomfort. People who don’t reciprocate. People who don’t hold doors open. People who kick the ladder from under them. People who draw lines in the sand. People who dismiss stuff as “silly”. People who dismiss stuff as “pretentious”. People who dismiss stuff they don’t understand. People who dismiss stuff that that doesn’t fit into the containers of the past. People who resist advice. People who’ve figured it out. People who deflect questions. People with answers. People with all the answers. People with templates and formulas and universal laws. People who know the rules. People who enforce the rules. People too busy observing to see. People too busy labelling to see. People too busy judging to see. People who don’t know the difference between observing and truly seeing. People who don’t have the time to see. People who don’t look outside. People who don’t look inside. People who don’t let stuff in. People who don’t let stuff out. People with hidden agendas. People who’ve been kidnapped by agendas and don’t even know it. People afraid of truth. People hiding from the truth. People who gaslight others out of their truth. People who know what they like and like what they know. People who think they don’t need people. People who confuse vulnerability for weakness. People who fear asking for help will be a sign of weakness. People who see collaboration as a loss of control. People who fear collaboration will threaten their cherished identity and prestige. People with habits. People with preferences. People with a repertoire. People who like more of what they like. People who like being spoon fed. People who like recommendations. People who obey the algorithms. People who don’t know the difference between hearing and listening. People who interrupt. People who talk over. People who pretend to listen but are merely waiting for they turn to talk. People who look at their phones when other people are talking. Propagandists. People who don’t know they’re propagandists. People who don’t care they’re propagandists. People who deny they’re propagandists.  Gatekeepers. Border guards. Moat builders. Fortress guardians. Force field maintainers. Exclusion zone patrollers. Thought-police. Enquiry editors. Speculation stranglers. Judges. Critics. Cynics. We, the people. How open are we really?

Fuck me I’ve been infected by the mind of M. John Harrison* I realize. I’ve been body snatched and rendered a plagiarist.

I call upon some expert witness. Speak to me sages, of openness.

The producer says:

“The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe. This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create from, but of the life we get to live.”

- Rick Rubin

The psychoanalyst and the historian say:

“Everybody is vulnerable at every stage of their lives; everybody is subject to illness, accident, personal tragedy, political and economic reality. This doesn’t mean that people aren’t also resilient and resourceful. Bearing other people’s vulnerability - which means sharing in it imaginatively and practically without needing to get rid of it, to yank people out of it - entails being able to bear one’s own. Indeed it would be realistic to say that what we have in common is our vulnerability; it is the medium of contact between us, what we most fundamentally recognize in each other.”

- Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor

The relationship therapist says:

“Intimacy is “into-me-see.” I am going to talk to you, my beloved, and I am going to share with you my most prized possessions, which are no longer my dowry and the fruit of my womb but my hopes, my aspirations, my fears, my longings, my feelings—in other words, my inner life. And you, my beloved, will give me eye contact. No scrolling while I bare my soul. I need to feel your empathy and validation. My significance depends on it.”

- Esther Perel

The chefs and the food writer say:

“We believe that today and in the future, a commitment to excellence requires openness to all resources that can help us give pleasure and meaning to people through the medium of food. In the past, cooks and their dishes were constrained by many factors: the limited availability of ingredients and ways of transforming them, limited understanding of cooking processes, and the necessarily narrow definitions and expectations embodied in local tradition. Today there are many fewer constraints, and tremendous potential for the progress of our craft. We can choose from the entire planet's ingredients, cooking methods, and traditions, and draw on all of human knowledge, to explore what it is possible to do with food and the experience of eating.”

- Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller, Harold McGee

The organizational and management thinker says:

“To stay viable, open systems maintain a state of non-equilibrium, keeping the system off balances so that it can change and grow. They participate in an active exchange with their world, using what is there for their renewal. Every organism in nature, including us, behaves this way.”

- Margaret Wheatley

The philosophers say:

“It had rained heavily during the night and the day, and down the gullies the muddy stream poured into the sea, making it chocolate-brown. As you walked on the beach the waves were enormous and they were breaking with magnificent curve and force. You walked against the wind, and suddenly you felt there was nothing between you and the sky, and this openness was heaven. To be so completely open, vulnerable to the hills, to the sea and to man is the very essence of meditation. To have no resistance, to have no barriers inwardly towards anything, to be really free, completely, from all the minor urges, compulsions and demands, with all their little conflicts and hypocrisies, is to walk in life with open arms. And that evening, walking there on that wet sand, with the seagulls around you, you felt the extraordinary sense of open freedom and the great beauty of love which was not in you or outside you but everywhere. We don't realize how important it is to be free of the nagging pleasures and their pains, so that the mind remains alone. It is only the mind that is wholly alone that is open. You felt all this suddenly, like a great wind that swept over the land and through you. There you were denuded of everything, empty and therefore utterly open. The beauty of it was not in the word or in the feeling, but seemed to be everywhere about you, inside you, over the waters and in the hills. Meditation is this.”

- Jidda Krishnamurti

“The evidence of history is strong, that those societies are most creative and progressive which safeguard the expression of new ideas. Societies appear to remain vigorous only so long as they are organised to receive novel and unexpected – and sometimes unpleasant – thoughts.” 

- Jacob Bronowksi

The biologist says:

“From the physical point of view the characteristic state of the living organism is that of an open system. A system is closed if no material enters or leaves it; it is open if there is import and export and, therefore, change of the components. Living systems are open systems, maintaining themselves in exchange of materials with environment, and in continuous building up and breaking down of their components.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy

The lawyer says:

"Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.”

- Justice Robert Jackson

The artist says:

“An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany”

- Nick Cave

The writer says:

“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. Three years ago I was giving a workshop in the Rockies. A student came in bearing a quote from what she said was the pre-Socratic philosopher Meno. It read, “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” I copied it down, and it has stayed with me since. The student made big transparent photographs of swimmers underwater and hung them from the ceiling with the light shining through them, so that to walk among them was to have the shadows of swimmers travel across your body in a space that itself came to seem aquatic and mysterious. The question she carried struck me as the basic tactical question in life. The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration — how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?”

- Rebecca Solnit

The entrepreneur and business advisor says:

“When CEO of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld was driven from his home to a heliport, then helicoptered into Manhattan, driven in another limo to the bank’s offices where a private elevator sent him up to his office. This ornate commute ensconced him in a physical bubble that no weak signals or accidental encounters could penetrate. This physical manifestation of power may look like luxury but it comes at a cost. The bubble of power seals off bad news, inconvenient detail, hostile opinion and messy reality, leaving leaders free to inhale the rarefied air of pure abstraction. Like the cave dwellers of Plato’s parable, the powerful risk mistaking shadows for reality. Power inserts distance between those who have it and those who do not. It determines whether you fly in the peaceful isolation of a private jet or the middle row in economy, next to the mother who needs help with her restless child.”
- Margaret Heffernan

The poet says:

“I am more and more convinced that in the life of civilizations as in the lives of individuals too much matter that cannot be digested, too much experience that has not been imagined and probed and understood, ends in total rejection of everything — ends in anomie. The structures break down and there is nothing to “hold onto.” It is understandable that at such times religious fanatics arise and the fundamentalists rise up in fury. Hatred rather than love dominates. How does one handle it? The greatest danger, as I see it in myself, is the danger of withdrawal into private worlds. We have to keep the channels in ourselves open to pain. At the same time it is essential that true joys be experienced, that the sunrise not leave us unmoved, for civilization depends on the true joys, all those that have nothing to do with money or affluence — nature, the arts, human love.”

- Mary Sarton

I come to wonder whether concerning all questions and matters relating to relationships - with other people, with those we love, with our teammates, co-workers, partners, collaborators, with our own private selves, with the communities we’re embedded in, with the customers we serve, with the natural ecosystem we’re torching - whether all of those questions ultimately come down to one question - how open are we willing to be?

* M. John Harrison, I Wish I Was Here. An Anti-Memoir, 2023