Human inventions often end up at cross purposes with their original intentions—or even at cross purposes with humans, ourselves. Once an idea or an institution gains enough influence, it changes the basic landscape. Instead of the invention serving people in some way, people spend their time and resources serving it. The original subject becomes

When we lose track of figure and ground, we forget who is doing what for whom, and why. We risk treating other people as objects. Worse, we embed these values in our organizations or encode them into our technologies. By learning to recognize reversals of figure and ground, we can liberate ourselves from the systems to which we have become

The people with whom we disagree are not the real problem here. The greatest threats to Team Human are the beliefs, forces, and institutions that separate us from one another and the natural world of which we are a part.

Moreover, when media is programmed to atomize us and the messaging is engineered to provoke our most competitive, reptilian sensibilities, it’s much harder to muster a collective defense.

Where learning was the purpose—the figure—in the original model of public education, now it is the ground, or merely the means through which workers are prepared for their jobs.

Researchers have found, for example, that the algorithms running social media platforms tend to show people pictures of their ex-lovers having fun. No, users don’t want to see such images. But, through trial and error, the algorithms have discovered that showing us pictures of our exes having fun increases our engagement. We are drawn to click on

If Joe has to grow his business bigger just in order to keep up with his rising rent and expenses, it’s only because the underlying economy has been rigged to demand growth and promote scarcity. It is this artificially competitive landscape that convinces us we have no common interests.

Because the interfaces look neutral, we accept the options they offer at face value. The choices are not choices at all, but a new way of getting us to accept limitations. Whoever controls the menu controls the choices.

Once under the control of elites, almost any new medium starts to turn people’s attention away from one another and toward higher authorities. This makes it easier for people to see other people as less than human and to commit previously unthinkable acts of violence.