We live in a world where we seem to naively believe that innovation and technology might magically save us and swiftly fix our problems. We might not believe in God, Nature, or even in the people around us anymore, but we have managed to convince ourselves that innovation will somehow help us.
(And it might, but probably in a very different way from what you think or imagine.)
If you truly understood how much money is invested in the 'innovation' industry in our global economy today, you might wonder how it's possible that the world isn't yet saved, safe, and perfect.
You might be confused to realize that the speed of life (and your personal stress level) is directly related to the money we have invested as a society in 'innovation' over the last century.
Radical innovation might be the biggest contributor to most of our collective disasters today, including global economic, social, and environmental crises.
Yet, we still pretend we can fix it all with the same innovation-driven strategy. So, we continue to innovate more and more, hoping that this time, it will go according to plan. But in most cases, it does not.
More often than not, innovation makes things even worse.
Why?
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Innovation is a very intense and unpredictable force.
If you want to engage with it, you must understand and master how it actually works and why it works this way. If you want to use innovation to your advantage and benefit from it systemically, you need to learn how to play the game by its unique rules.
Innovation is meant to make our lives better and more enjoyable. And it often does. But, it almost always ends up in a real disaster a couple of years later as well. We create wars, nuclear weapons, environmental destruction, water pollution, cancers, mental health pandemics, child abuse, and many other disturbing outcomes we shouldn't be proud of. All of these are usually the consequences of the many 'innovations' we introduce and bring to market maturity too quickly.
Our deep suffering as a global society is actually provoked and driven mainly by radical innovation today.
This is happening because we deeply misunderstand what innovation is and don't know how to appropriately master its dark side, so we might end up being consumed by it one day without even realizing how it happened.
To innovate safely and soundly, you need to understand the very intimate relationship innovation has with trauma. They walk hand in hand. They dance together. They are deeply entangled.
We innovate mainly to ease our personal or collective suffering of some sort. We suffer mainly because of the past trauma that still lives in our personal nervous systems and bodies. We could say that our deeper intention to innovate is to heal ourselves, our community, or the 'system.' So, we count on and expect that innovation will directly deal with our pain, suffering, or existential malaise.
So, we innovate.
We distract ourselves from our deep inner suffering for a while by innovating even more, faster and smarter. We sell it to everybody. We change the world. And somehow, the suffering always seems to come back, even stronger and more intense than before, pushing us to innovate again and again, more and more.
We are collectively stuck in a vicious cycle of very innovative and creatively shared suffering. And we might feel powerless, desperate, and angry when we realize how much we are the masters and creators of our own misery.
In our shared reality today, innovation plays the role of both the 'savior' and the 'persecutor.' And this is actually very inefficient and incoherent.
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Innovation cannot heal or fix your trauma or problems. That's your job and responsibility. This is true on a personal level, and it is also true on a collective level. Humans suffer; humans should be the ones to fix it. Innovation is a tool to make your life happier and more exciting, not to magically heal your guilty, scared, or profoundly ashamed soul.
Innovation doesn't have the power to make your karma disappear without you putting in actual effort to deal with your own demons. The same goes for the system. Innovation cannot heal our ancestral and collective trauma; this is the deep work that conscious and responsible humans should be doing, not technology or innovation.
If you use innovation as a veil or a technique to forget what hurts the most inside, innovation will make you suffer at some point. And your deep trauma will surface again, and it will hurt even more.
If not used consciously and wisely, innovation becomes a catalyst for even more pain and distortions in the entire system. It awakens the collective shadow and forces us to confront why we suffer.
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When we introduce a new innovation into a system, we often need to think about a 'resistance to change' management plan. How will others react and resist the change we are trying to introduce?
The more radical the innovation you try to push on people, the more resistance to change you will experience. This is a well-known and logical correlation between resistance to change and change.
It's logical because we are deeply afraid of change and the unknown. Most of us prefer to continue suffering in a known and comfortable reality rather than face the deep fear of uncertainty and radical change. It's the basics of business psychology. But why are we so scared of change? It's literally the only certainty in this universe, yet we are deeply terrified by it.
We fear natural change so much because of trauma, not because of uncertainty or risk! We are not scared of innovation; we are scared to suffer even more if the change provoked doesn't go according to what is promised!
How do you evaluate and mitigate the fear of suffering when you push a new innovation in the market?
Today, our favorite strategy to help you deal with your fears about innovations is to make you even more scared or just deeply shame you.
''Well, if you don't want to work with this robot and put a chip in your brain, you know where the door is. Many people are looking for a new job, you know.''
''If you don't agree with the new policy the company is adopting, you might lose your benefits or professional license.''
''If you don't take this useless 10-year training, you will not go any further in your career.''
''If you refuse this innovation in your life, you will be blamed, shamed, rejected, and forever banned by your own community and government.''
These are just a few examples of how we treat people who are simply scared of change or too overwhelmed by innovations to coherently adopt them.
When it’s about others, we don't care; we say they should evolve faster and adapt to modernity like the rest of us. But when it’s us who are scared of being re-traumatized by an innovation of some sort, we see how different it feels. How painful it is when people make you even more scared than you already are or when they shame you for being afraid of the change they try to impose on you (most often by force).
You might realize that resistance to change is deeply wise, smart, and important because it reveals the trauma your innovation is touching and awakening within the system. You should listen carefully to the resistance and take it very seriously when implementing your innovation.
If you don't properly listen to the resistance or try to overpower fear with more fear to get your way, you will most likely fail. Innovation will not provide the benefits you want and expect in the long run because trauma will end up winning this game, not innovation.
This is how we end up building atomic bombs and blaming Einstein or science for it for some mysterious reason.
Collective war trauma and deep existential fear created the bomb, not innovation with its seemingly innocent intentions of a more pleasurable and fun life!
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When we talk about the interconnected dynamics between trauma and innovation, we should understand that there are levels of intensity and scale too.
When you introduce a new radical innovation at the level of your organization, you usually deal with a fairly simple trauma complexity. You might not even realize this is what's happening. It might even seem like part of normal and healthy evolution.
When you introduce an innovation that has the capacity to radically change an entire sector of industry, you start dealing with some very intense fears and deep trauma in the system. Many will be afraid of losing their jobs, needing to go back to school, or simply not being able to survive in business anymore. The trauma connected to your innovation is now very powerful and impactful. It might radically change the lives of many people. They might thank you for it, or they might end up blaming and harshly judging you.
The further you go, the more you play with fire.
When your innovation has the potential to deeply impact the entire world, you are literally flirting with and awakening collective-level trauma. The suffering and deepest fears of all humanity. The 'monsters' and pain that might surface from playing this kind of game with innovation at the global macro level might shape the world in a very disturbing and suffering way for all of us.
And this is exactly what is happening.
We have been innovating very radically, very fast, and very globally for the past few years. And we actually don't care anymore about our own resistance to change or our deep fears about it. We are so terrified for our survival that we are almost ready to adopt innovation and technologies as our new gods and blindly count on them to save us from our self-imposed suffering and profound stupidity.
Most of the innovations we are investing in today are connected mainly to collective-level trauma. Most of them have the potential to change (or very easily destroy) the world. If you don't believe humanity is inherently good, kind, and wise, you should probably advocate stopping all global and trans-sectorial innovation initiatives as soon as possible.
If you want systemic innovation to benefit you (and not re-traumatize you even more), you need to have unconditional trust and unshakable faith in our humanity. You also need to be able to welcome the resistance to change with the most open heart and compassion you possibly can.
If you want radical innovation to support and truly help you, you need to address the underlying trauma it awakens with an open heart, too, instead of quickly taking over with overwhelming fear and shame. This is how you might achieve coherence between the trauma, resistance to change, and radical innovation.
If you manage to do that, then innovation will be your best friend and will actually help you reduce your personal and systemic suffering.
If you ignore all that, the dark side of innovation will win again and again, no matter what you do. The innovation paradox might end up consuming you, and you will be left wondering why all your strategies never seem to work properly or according to plan.
The paradox of innovation lies in the wisdom of the universal trauma in your system, not in your cleverness or your intellectual capacity to fool it.
To heal with radical innovation, you must consider radical healing as the main outcome of innovation.
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If you want radical innovation to support and truly help you, you need to address the underlying trauma it triggers with wisdom, mastery, and compassion before reaching the final 'implementation' stage.
Radical innovations that we implement at the macro level of our reality must always be trauma-informed and managed with the utmost care.
If they are not, the dark side of innovation could destroy our collective soul far sooner and with more violence than we might expect.
At this point, we may have only two choices:
Either we halt all the extreme and radical innovations and drastically simplify our lives globally—embracing radical minimalism, simplicity, and a return to the roots as in old times.
Or, we properly address and heal the collective trauma that lies beneath the innovations we are trying to implement today. If we are not ready to say goodbye to innovation, we must relearn how to properly take care of each other and how to love one another deeply.
We need to ensure that innovation helps us become better humans and co-create a more pleasurable reality, rather than allowing and enabling us to harm each other even more.
Most of the innovations and technologies we are currently introducing to the global market are drastically reshaping our shared reality in unimaginable ways. This could be very exciting and beneficial or deeply re-traumatizing and self-destructive. It is our responsibility to decide which it will be, and we are the ones who will live with the consequences of this choice.
Trauma and innovation dance together, but trauma has the upper hand in this game. If you want to innovate safely and enjoyably, you must learn how to honor the trauma in our shared system with compassion and have the actual courage and willpower to heal it first.
Start by dealing with your own personal 'demons' and deep childhood wounds. Only then can you safely engage in the very pleasurable, co-creative, and mind-blowing game of true radical and systemic innovation.
Innovation is not here to make you safer or to help you love yourself more—that is your job, not hers. Innovation is here to give you more fun, more pleasure, and more love—not the opposite.
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