In 2005 I founded MetaCulture, a pioneering culture and conflict management business). During a decades long career, I facilitated complex interfaith dialogues with religious partisans, as well as multistakeholder business/ government/ civil-society consensus building processes. But given the breakdown of multilateral institutions and the collapse of the liberal world order, this work has few takers and may not even be relevant anymore. In this new post-liberal world yesterday’s experience and knowledge may be redundant- while our instincts and intuitions can fatally mislead us. The world is spinning differently these days. Our best and brightest- Ivy Leaguers, TED Talkers, McCarthy Foundation Geniuses- have spectacularly failed to prepare us for this world of perpetual crisis.

But all is not lost. When you can’t trust the media anymore, when your leaders have let you down and your friends are as flummoxed as you are- guess the only thing you can count on?

YOUR OWN MIND- if it is sharp, knowledgeable, disciplined, and fiercely independent.

 Unfortunately, most of us don’t own our minds anymore- they have been leased, mortgaged or sold outright to the highest bidders. We’ve allowed our minds to adapt to the compulsions and exigencies of professional boundaries, economic necessities, political causes and social pressures. Our ‘tutored’ and ‘acculturated’ minds might have worked in yesterday’s predictable world, but they are totally useless in today’s anarchic one. The question you have to ask yourself is this: Was the social acceptance that came with having the same opinions as your peers worth losing your mind’s independence and integrity?