That was something I needed to read this morning. I've been working on the improbable and trying to make it possible for 25 years. Culminating in a fiction series that reflects the values and ideas of my non-fiction book, The Quiet Revolution: Debt Free & Working Less, How Our Species Survives. It's been a bestseller in Environmental Economics a couple of times on Amazon. Which is nice, but it is an invitation to engage with the improbable and make it possible too. How we got into this mess, how we can find chinks in our species armour to get back out of it and live lives in reciprocity with the living world. In short - system change - but everyone is so locked into the probable they lock out the possible and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - how do we break that human frailty down? My eternal question and your writing was warmly welcome this sunny, but mentally dark morning. xx!
All of life, properly considered, is eucatastrophe. The mechanics of redemption are lubricated by blood and sweat and tears; victory is snatched violently from the jaws of defeat and tears are the fertilizer required for us to finally, violently bloom.
Dear Kevin, what a beautiful and light-filled article.
“God is a million times more difficult to imagine than the devil. We find horror, evil, chaos, destruction much easier to describe in detail than the details of the good, true and beautiful. That’s because the good and the beautiful are improbable, while the destruction is probable, indeed almost certain.”
We don’t need to defend from the good that happens, so we spend more time protecting ourselves from what might disrupt us.
Yet we keep searching for “what’s good,”
strategizing our way toward it to avoid the very negative we so confidently predict.
Whew! I had to ask chatGPT to summarize that for me. I'll share with everyone:
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Here’s a concise summary of the passage:
The author argues that it’s difficult to imagine optimistic futures because good, ordered, life-enhancing outcomes are statistically improbable, while destruction and chaos are highly probable and easy to picture. This asymmetry stems from entropy: the universe naturally moves toward disorder, and our imaginations tend to follow that downhill path.
Life and all “exotropic” systems defy this tendency by creating pockets of increasing order at the cost of generating more entropy around them. Because ordered systems are improbable and follow narrow, unpredictable paths, envisioning specific positive futures is inherently hard—yet life itself is an unbroken chain of improbable events, proving such outcomes can and do happen.
Therefore, we must get better at imagining and believing in the improbable. More importantly, we should strive to become improbable ourselves. Evolution increases specificity, and humans thrive when they cultivate unique, unpredictable talents and perspectives. In a world filled with AI that excels at producing the average and expected, personal uniqueness becomes both irreplaceable and valuable.
The goal—individually and collectively—is to be both improbable and usefully unique, contributing to a society where everyone has the opportunity to develop into a cherished, singular human being, creating an improbably flourishing future.
From the chatGPT interpretation below, this statement stands out for me.
"Therefore, we must get better at imagining and believing in the improbable"
Is this like "Imagining six impossible things before breakfast"?
I think we need a roadmap, KK.
That was something I needed to read this morning. I've been working on the improbable and trying to make it possible for 25 years. Culminating in a fiction series that reflects the values and ideas of my non-fiction book, The Quiet Revolution: Debt Free & Working Less, How Our Species Survives. It's been a bestseller in Environmental Economics a couple of times on Amazon. Which is nice, but it is an invitation to engage with the improbable and make it possible too. How we got into this mess, how we can find chinks in our species armour to get back out of it and live lives in reciprocity with the living world. In short - system change - but everyone is so locked into the probable they lock out the possible and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - how do we break that human frailty down? My eternal question and your writing was warmly welcome this sunny, but mentally dark morning. xx!
All of life, properly considered, is eucatastrophe. The mechanics of redemption are lubricated by blood and sweat and tears; victory is snatched violently from the jaws of defeat and tears are the fertilizer required for us to finally, violently bloom.
Dear Kevin, what a beautiful and light-filled article.
“God is a million times more difficult to imagine than the devil. We find horror, evil, chaos, destruction much easier to describe in detail than the details of the good, true and beautiful. That’s because the good and the beautiful are improbable, while the destruction is probable, indeed almost certain.”
We don’t need to defend from the good that happens, so we spend more time protecting ourselves from what might disrupt us.
Yet we keep searching for “what’s good,”
strategizing our way toward it to avoid the very negative we so confidently predict.
This is one of your best pieces I’ve read, and one of the best pieces I ever read in general.
Be Unique and Be Useful.
This will be my mantra.
Whew! I had to ask chatGPT to summarize that for me. I'll share with everyone:
----
Here’s a concise summary of the passage:
The author argues that it’s difficult to imagine optimistic futures because good, ordered, life-enhancing outcomes are statistically improbable, while destruction and chaos are highly probable and easy to picture. This asymmetry stems from entropy: the universe naturally moves toward disorder, and our imaginations tend to follow that downhill path.
Life and all “exotropic” systems defy this tendency by creating pockets of increasing order at the cost of generating more entropy around them. Because ordered systems are improbable and follow narrow, unpredictable paths, envisioning specific positive futures is inherently hard—yet life itself is an unbroken chain of improbable events, proving such outcomes can and do happen.
Therefore, we must get better at imagining and believing in the improbable. More importantly, we should strive to become improbable ourselves. Evolution increases specificity, and humans thrive when they cultivate unique, unpredictable talents and perspectives. In a world filled with AI that excels at producing the average and expected, personal uniqueness becomes both irreplaceable and valuable.
The goal—individually and collectively—is to be both improbable and usefully unique, contributing to a society where everyone has the opportunity to develop into a cherished, singular human being, creating an improbably flourishing future.